Lawyer wants some charges dropped in jewelry heists

PANAMA CITY, Fla. (AP) — An attorney for a woman accused in a string of armed jewelry store robberies across the South says some of the charges against her should be dismissed because they don’t qualify as a “crime of violence.”

Attorney Michelle Daffin argues in a motion that forcing clerks at gunpoint to be bound in a back room is not violent by definition. She cites a U.S. Supreme Court case known as the “Hobbs Act.”

The News Herald reports 24-year-old Abigail Kemp and three men are accused in the robberies of stores in Georgia, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina and
Tennessee.

The FBI says Kemp and Lewis Jones III stole an estimated $4.3 million in jewelry. Two other men are accused of providing security for the crimes.