Armed Robber's Life Sentence is Illegal, Says Appellate Court

The serial armed robber who stuck up two managers of the Ground Round Restaurant on Hooper Avenue in Toms River in 1993 was illegally sentenced to a second life term in prison, New Jersey’s second highest court ruled Monday.

The Appellate Division of Superior Court panel ruled that James D. Pennington, now 53, formerly of Somerset, could only receive one life term with a period of parole disqualification.

He had already received a life term with no parole for 25 years when Superior Court Judge Vincent J. Grasso imposed an identical sentence for the restaurant heist.

Pennington will have to be sentenced anew for the robbery.

He was convicted after two jury trials of robbing the managers of the popular restaurant at gunpoint as they walked to a bank to put the day’s proceeds in the night depository.

"Give me the money,’’ the managers, Michael York and David Pomeroy recalled Pennington demanding as he pointed a long-barrel silver pistol at them. They complied, handing over $10,290 in cash on Aug. 6, 1993.

The victims made several independent photo identifications of Pennington, leading to his arrest and that of a co-defendant who was also convicted and sentenced to 20 years in prison.

Grasso told Pennington as he imposed the Ocean County sentence that every time he got out of prison he committed another serious crime.

"He’s a violent and dangerous career criminal,’’ Senior Assistant Ocean County Prosecutor William P. Cunningham told Grasso.

Cunningham pressed the judge to impose the extended prison term. Grasso said he needed no urging because of Pennington’s long criminal record, including a conviction for an earlier armed robbery.

Pennington lamented at his sentencing that many lives were being wasted because people were being "warehoused’’ in prison.

Pennington’s convictions dated back to 1978, when he served time for armed robbery, sexual assault and robbery. In 1987 he was sent to prison for aggravated assault, burglary, and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose.

On Aug. 24, 1994, after the Ground Round managers were robbed, but before he was convicted, Pennington was sentenced to terms netting life and 35 years without parole for kidnapping and robbery in Middlesex County, where he was preying on motel guests in the Route 1 corridor between Princeton and South Brunswick.

It was that earlier life sentence and parole disqualifier that the appeals court ruled yesterday made Grasso’s sentence illegal.

The Ground Round has changed hands twice since the managers were robbed. It became Joshua Huddy’s, and is now the Tuscan House.