COURT: ROBBERS WON'T GET LIFE JUDGES DROP DUO'S KIDNAPPING CONVICTIONS.

Byline: Karen Maeshiro Staff Writer

LANCASTER - A former Sam's Club employee and his nephew convicted of robbing the membership warehouse store no longer face life in prison after an appellate court struck down their kidnapping convictions.

A three-judge panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal reversed the aggravated kidnapping convictions, which carry life sentences, for Arthur Ross and Robert Jones and reduced them to a lesser offense of false imprisonment by violence.

The appellate justices ordered the men returned to Antelope Valley Superior Court for new sentences.

``He is out from under a life sentence,'' said Jones' appellate attorney, Victoria Stafford. ``I can't say exactly what he's going to get, but it won't be a life sentence, which is a victory. The whole configuration of the sentence is going to be changed now that the life sentence is gone.''

The appellate court otherwise affirmed the convictions of Ross, 36, and Jones, 21, for the Jan. 5, 2004, robbery. Ross was sentenced in November 2004 to 15 years to life in prison, and Jones to approximately 23 years to life following their convictions for kidnapping for robbery, robbery, attempted robbery and assault.

The sentencing range for false imprisonment is 16 months, two years or three years in state prison.

Ross, who had worked for the Palmdale Sam's Club since it opened in 2003, was found guilty of planning the Jan. 5 robbery with Jones, who was convicted of being the gunman who carried out the robbery.

Family members of both men said they were innocent and protested outside the Antelope Valley Courthouse, saying the men were wrongly convicted.

Deputy Attorney General Roy Preminger said his office was evaluating whether to appeal the appellate court ruling to the California Supreme Court.

The kidnapping for robbery charge involved an employee who was confronted by the gunman and forced to walk to the store's upstairs cash office. The penal code section states that the charge applies, ``if the movement of the victim is beyond that merely incidental to the commission of, and increases the risk of harm to the victim over and above that necessarily present in, the intended underlying offense.''

``We agree with defendants that the movement of 17 feet from one room to another, all of it on the same floor inside the Sam's Club store, did not substantially increase the risk of harm over that inherent in the crime of robbery,'' the ruling said.

The robber left without getting into the cash office but on the way downstairs encountered another employee carrying a cash register tray and took that, the ruling said.

The ruling said investigators became suspicious of Ross after viewing surveillance tapes that showed Ross, just prior to the robbery, standing at the bottom of the stairwell that led up to the money counting room and cash office. He looked up the stairs and walked up and down the stairs, the ruling said.

At one point, Ross and the robber were in a nearby restroom at the same time, the ruling said.

Jones wrote out a statement that said, ``The night of the robbery, I don't remember much. I went in the room, and I ran out with the money. I got in a car. I don't know what kind it was. I throw the money in the back and drove off. I didn't receive any of the money or even heard about its whereabouts,'' the ruling said.

Jones' trial attorney argued that said Jones wrote out what he believed the investigators wanted to hear, the ruling said.

Karen Maeshiro, [phone]

karen.maeshiro(at)dailynews.com