 "Photo: Andrew Rogers")
Former UT football players Andre Jones and Robert Joseph were in Travis County Jail Monday afternoon following their sentencing for the July 2007 robbery of a Riverside Drive apartment.
Jones and Joseph attended a court hearing on June 26 to accept the conditions of their plea agreements.
Joseph was jailed temporarily following Monday's hearing for outstanding warrants he incurred in Jefferson County. He is expected back in court Friday after consulting with his attorney, who was out of town for the hearing.
Judge Brenda Kennedy told Joseph, who had planned to play football in the fall for Kilgore College, that he would not be able to play with outstanding warrants. UT suspended Joseph indefinitely in July 2007 for previous criminal convictions before the robbery and his affiliation with the Bloods street gang, she said.
Jones returned to jail after the hearing to complete the 30-day sentence, which he began serving 15 days ago. State prosecutor Clinton Butler said Jones would be able to complete his sentence before the start of UT classes on Aug. 27. Jones said he hopes to return to UT and train with the football team after he is released.
"He's got a list of conditions, pretty extensive, to comply with," Butler said, adding that Jones faces 20 years in prison if he breaks the conditions of his plea agreement. "The ultimate goal is to get this kid to be a good young man."
Judge Kennedy said Jones would have to either go back to school or get a job after he serves his month-long sentence. Jones will also return to jail if he tests positive for marijuana, as he did when he was at UT, she said.
Jones accepted the state's plea agreement to avoid a criminal record by completing 10 years of deferred ajudication probation, meaning that his record will be wiped clean if he does not violate his probationary terms. Jones' Austin-area attorney, Ariel Payan, said Jones accepted the plea agreement because he was not able to afford to take the case to trial as he had wanted.
"It's been extraordinarily difficult," Payan said, adding that the trial's development has made individual training and going to school difficult for Jones. "The timing was amazingly bad."
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