A Mobile man serving life in prison without the possibility of parole will not get another shot at an appeal, after the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals denied his request for a rehearing.
Bryan Matthew Kennedy, now 38, was convicted by a jury of robbing a Summitt gas station in Mobile, marking his third robbery conviction since 1995. Court records show Kennedy had already served more than ten years in prison for earlier offenses before committing the gas station robbery that led to his current sentence.
Circuit Court Judge John Lockett handed down the life-without-parole sentence under Alabama’s Habitual Felony Offender Act, which mandates that punishment for defendants previously convicted of a Class A felony who are found guilty of another qualifying offense. Because of Kennedy’s criminal history, the sentence was not discretionary once the jury returned its guilty verdict.
At trial, prosecutors built their case entirely on circumstantial evidence, telling jurors that cellphone records tied to Kennedy were the key piece of evidence linking him to the crime. Investigators say the robbery took place in January 2012, when a man used a 9mm pistol to hold up the gas station.
Kennedy’s attorney represented him throughout the trial and subsequent appeal process, but the state’s appellate court found no grounds to grant a rehearing, effectively closing off that avenue for challenging the conviction and sentence.
The case highlights how Alabama’s habitual offender laws can result in mandatory life sentences for repeat offenders, regardless of whether the underlying offense in a given case involved violence resulting in injury. Legal experts say the law is designed to keep repeat violent offenders off the streets by removing judicial discretion once a defendant’s criminal history meets the statute’s threshold.
Mobile prosecutors have used the Habitual Felony Offender Act in a number of high-profile cases in recent years, arguing that repeat robbery convictions demonstrate a pattern that puts the public at continued risk. Defense attorneys have periodically raised constitutional challenges to mandatory sentencing under the act, though Kennedy’s case does not appear to have altered how the law is applied in Mobile County courts.
With the rehearing petition denied, Kennedy’s legal options for challenging his conviction and sentence in state court appear largely exhausted, though further appeals at the federal level remain possible in habitual offender cases like his.