Jury hears story of tortured childhood for killer of two

Bill Gang

Friday, Feb. 4, 2000 | 10:24 a.m.

There is no dispute that Kenshawn Maxey had a deprived and abuse-filled childhood before he was arrested at 17 coming out of a bar where he had killed two people -- the bartender and his own best friend.

His mother was a drug-using prostitute who eventually was killed and buried in a desert grave when Maxey was only 7 years old. He learned about her death from other children at school.

His father, Joe Maxey, is an admitted drug dealer who has spent the last 10 years in a federal prison outside Phoenix.

Joe Maxey, who was around his son for only three years, told the jury at a penalty hearing Thursday that drugs, not his child's welfare, had been his primary concern and he would choose buying a rock of cocaine over a bag of groceries.

Kenshawn Maxey was raised by a parade of relatives as well as spending time in a foster home and a Boulder City group home.

The jury that convicted Maxey last week of first-degree murder and a variety of other charges could decide today if his punishment should be a death sentence or life in prison with or without the possibility of parole.

The defendant, now 19, was scheduled to speak on his own behalf to the jury today and plead for leniency. He already had taken the witness stand once at his trial and tearfully admitted that he was the one who pulled the trigger and killed the two victims in the robbery attempt at O'Aces Bar an Grill on Rainbow Boulevard.

Prosecutors have said the fact that two people were killed, including bartender Sal Zendano, who suffered multiple gunshot wounds, justifies the ultimate punishment. Friends and family of the victim and others who were in the bar robbery already have told of the devastating impact the May 1998 incident has had on their lives.

But even if Maxey is given the lightest sentence of life with the possibility of parole, it would keep the teenager behind bars for 40 years before he would be eligible for parole.

What the jury in District Judge Mark Gibbons' courtroom won't hear about during the penalty phase of the trial is an international treaty the United States signed that has a provision prohibiting the death penalty for anyone under the age of 18 who committed a murder.

Members of Amnesty International mounted a furious letter-writing campaign to prosecutors before the trial in protest of the efforts to obtain a death sentence for Maxey.

Although the United States signed the human rights treaty, it reserved the right to continue its death-penalty pursuits.

Special Public Defender Phil Kohn said he wanted the jury to hear that during the last 10 years, six countries executed persons who were juveniles when they committed murder -- the United States, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Nigeria, Pakistan and Yeman.

During the past two years only two countries have staged such executions -- the United States and Iran.

The judge ruled the treaty information was not legally admissible as evidence in the penalty hearing.

Maxey has said he was "another person that day" when he joined two friends in the robbery. He said he needed money because his girlfriend was pregnant.

Maxey told how he, Lashaun Levi, 18, and Artis Moore, 20, chose O'Aces as the target and how he and Levi entered the bar, with guns drawn. He recalled how he raced around waving his laser-sighted pistol to scare the patrons into lying on the floor.

As Moore waited in the getaway car, Levi went behind the bar to empty the cash register but instead found himself in a struggle with the bartender.

As they wrestled over Levi's shotgun, Maxey said a shot rang out, and he heard Levi yell for his companion to shoot the bartender.

Maxey said he opened fire at Zendano, diverting his eyes as he did.

Maxey began to cry in court as he told how his bullets not only killed Zendano, but also hit Levi.

As he tried to drag his friend from the tavern to the waiting car, police arrived and arrested him.

Moore also was caught, convicted of first-degree murder by a jury at an earlier trial and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.