Following four days of trial and two hours of deliberation, a jury found Bobby Spikes guilty on two counts of murder in the 2021 shooting deaths of Candace Marcell and Stanley Bussell Thursday.
While the jury heard hours and hours of expert testimony, statements from witnesses and others who were involved in the case, interviews and more, it only took them just barely over two hours to come to a unanimous verdict, with Judge John Atkins reading out the decisions.
Along with the guilty verdicts on the two counts of murder, they also found Spikes guilty for two counts of first-degree robbery, one count of tampering with physical evidence and possession of a handgun by a convicted felon—but they did find him not guilty on a charge of kidnapping.
Following a couple of breaks, trial moved into the sentencing phase in the evening, where the jury once again heard testimonies, this time on the type, and length, of sentence they believed would be appropriate for the crimes.
They heard from the father of Marcell, who asked them to impose the strictest sentence they could, saying his daughter had been working hard to get her life back on track—and then that was all brought to a screeching halt by her killer.
Bussell’s sister says she misses her brother every day, and while she knows that God always has a plan, she has a hard time accepting this one, saying her brother brought nothing but light to the world.
Special prosecutor Blake Chambers called on them to perform a hard task—that being sentencing a man to never walk another day as a free man. But he felt that Spikes earned that sentence.
The jury ultimately decided to recommend a sentence of life without the possibility of parole in the murder of Stanley Bussell, and to a sentence of life without the possibility of parole in the murder of Candace Marcel.
For the two robbery charges, it would be a total of 30 years in prison, five years for tampering with physical evidence and ten years on the charge of possession of a handgun by a convicted felon. Those are all absorbed into the life sentence, running concurrently.
Spikes shot and killed Bussell at a Clearman Court residence in Hopkinsville in December of 2021, and also killed Marcel that same night before abandoning Bussell’s vehicle—with Marcel’s body inside—on Cerulean Road in Trigg County. That’s where she would be discovered, sparking the investigation that would lead to his arrest, and eventual conviction.
Final sentencing was set for November 5, with the understanding it could happen sooner.