Second defendant pleads guilty in 2008 Shelby County apartment slayings

SHELBY COUNTY, Alabama 
A second defendant charged in the 2008 Shelby County apartment slayings has pleaded guilty, according to his attorney.

Birmingham News file/ Bernard Troncale

Juan Francisco Castaneda, who was facing two counts of capital murder and a possible death sentence, pleaded guilty Friday to two counts of intentional murder, said Everett Wess, who along with Kittren Walker, represents Castaneda.
As part of a plea agreement, Castaneda will receive two consecutive life sentences, with the chance for parole, Wess said.
Castaneda, along with his brother Alejandros, was one of six men charged in the Aug. 17, 2008, deaths of five people at an apartment complex off U.S. 280.
Alejandros Castaneda pleaded guilty earlier this year to two counts of intentional murder, with two consecutive life sentences with the chance for parole.
Juan Castaneda "accepted his responsibility for his part," Wess said tonight.
"He didn't admit to pulling the trigger, being on the crime scene or anything like that," Wess said. "He avoids a potential death sentence and a potential sentence of life without parole."
Efforts to reach prosecutors tonight for comment were unsuccessful. Shelby County District Attorney Robby Owens said after Alejandros Castaneda's guilty plea earlier this year that he expected more guilty pleas in the case.
The Castaneda brothers, along with the four other defendants, were accused of carrying out the deaths of the five victims in a murder for hire over $450,000 in missing drug cartel money.
Authorities say the men were killed by suffocation, stabbing, electrocution or beating.
Their bodies were found at Cahaba Lakes apartments off U.S. 280. Some of the victims' throats had been slashed, and they had been bound, beaten and shocked.
Christopher Scott Jones, Derrick Renone Green, Torre Jovan Gholston and Jaime Duenas-Rodriguez are the remaining defendants charged in the slayings.
Jones, who has been described by a prosecutor as the leader in the slayings, is set to become the first of the six defendants to go on trial in the slayings. Jones' trial is scheduled to begin Oct. 31 before Circuit Judge Dan Reeves.
At a court hearing today, David Simpson, one of Jones' attorneys, told Reeves that he and co-counsel John Robbins would withdraw a plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect that had been filed on Jones' behalf when Jones was represented by a different attorney.