North Braddock man faces 46 years in Monroeville crime

Saturday, September 20, 2003

By Torsten Ove, Post-Gazette Staff Writer

Bank robber Charles Stubbs ended up yesterday right where he started: staring at 46 years in federal prison.

After a legal odyssey that saw him represent himself in court, get convicted and then win a new trial because of a mistake by the judge, Stubbs was sentenced yesterday to 562 months behind bars, the same sentence he received the first time.

Stubbs, 38, of North Braddock, and his brother, Jasper, were convicted by separate juries of robbing the Dollar Bank in the Miracle Mile Shopping Center in Monroeville on Oct. 7, 1999. A third man, Larry Brown, of Homewood, pleaded guilty.

The FBI said the three men wore ski masks, gloves and hooded sweat shirts and stole $12,259. The Stubbs brothers also had guns, according to witnesses.

Jasper Stubbs and Brown went to prison without much fuss, but Charles Stubbs put up a fight at every turn.

A veteran bank robber who knows his way around a courthouse, Stubbs decided he knew how to handle his case better than his court-appointed lawyer during his 2000 trial.

So, just as the trial was about to end, he dumped the attorney and told Chief U.S. District Judge Donetta Ambrose that he wanted to represent himself the rest of the way.

He wanted to use his closing argument to introduce evidence of what he said were FBI lies. The idea was to avoid having to testify and be cross-examined by the government.

The rules don't allow that, however, because you can't say anything in a closing argument that hasn't been said during the trial. Ambrose explained that, the jury found Stubbs guilty, and he ended up sentenced to 46 years.

But on appeal, Stubbs said Ambrose didn't explain to him in terms he could understand the dangers of acting as his own lawyer. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed and sent Stubbs back for another trial.

The second trial ended with the same verdict, however, and now it's ended with the same sentence.

In 1999, the FBI had Stubbs and the others under surveillance for two days before the heist as they cased banks in the eastern suburbs. On Oct. 7, agents watched as one of the men pulled a ski mask over his face before the trio drove to the Great Valley Shopping Center, where they cased a bank but decided not to rob it.

The surveillance continued, but at 1:23 p.m. that day agents lost their targets. About 20 minutes later, the Dollar Bank was robbed. At about 2 p.m., the FBI said, Brown and the Stubbs brothers showed up at Brown's house, where agents arrested them, searched the car and found the cash, masks and guns.

In his appeal, Stubbs tried to argue that the search was illegal because the FBI didn't have a warrant. But the circuit judges, in a rare flash of humor, said agents didn't need one.

"The agents followed Brown and his companions as they circled blocks, drove around banks without going in, and put on ski masks while parked in the parking lot near one of the banks," one judge wrote.

"At that point, the agents could fairly conclude that Brown and his companions had not gotten lost on the way to a downhill slalom competition."

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