Cones sentenced to eight more years

By Cleve Wiese

Published: June 26, 2008

A man with a history of mentally illness already serving a ten-year prison sentence for crimes in Augusta and Powhatan county was sentenced to another eight years behind bars today for a 2006 armed robbery near Staunton.

Oscar Alcibioges Cones, 49, was arrested in February 2007 after authorities pulled him over in a van matching the description of one spotted at the scene of a Dec. 20, 2006 gunpoint holdup of the Quality Inn on Route 254 near Staunton, according to court testimony.

Defense attorney Peter Boatner said Thursday that when police initially interviewed Cones about the crime, he did not deny his participation. Instead, he told investigators that he couldn’t remember the incident, but that if “people had seen him, he must have done it and he was sorry,” Boatner said.

“I think that fits in with what we know about his long mental health history,” Boatner said.

Cones testified today that he had run out of medication prescribed for him in a Florida hospital shortly before the robbery, and that three other individuals, whose names he could not recall, had been supplying him with methamphetamine during the intervening period.

“I was real sick,” Cones said. “I just can’t remember, I swear.”

Cones was sentenced in March in Powhatan County to nine years in prison for two charges of breaking and entering and three charges of grand larceny for incidents that occurred in January 2007. He was also sentenced in December 2007 in Augusta County to one year in prison for writing a bad check.

Judge Thomas H. Wood sentenced Cones today to five years in prison for the robbery charge and three years for the charge of using a firearm to commit robbery. The eight-year total sentence was slightly less than the minimum nine year three month punishment recommended in Cones pre-sentencing report.

“I just say I’m sorry,” Cones said when asked if he wanted to make a statement before a sentence was handed down.