Spencer Antowyn Pierce Sr. (Johnston Police Dept.) and the Sonic Drive-In where he killed a 20-year-old employee (KCCI screenshot)
A 56-year-old man in Iowa will spend the rest of his life behind bars for attacking a Sonic Drive-In employee who he claimed was sexually harassing his granddaughter, stabbing the 20-year-old man to death with a folding knife in the restaurant’s kitchen area last year.
Des Moines County District Court Judge Lawrence P. McLellan ordered Spencer Antowyn Pierce Sr. on Wednesday to serve a sentence of life in a state correctional facility without the possibility of parole for the slaying of Jermaine Whitaker Moses, authorities announced.
A jury in December found Pierce guilty on four felony charges, including one count of first-degree murder, two counts of first-degree burglary, and one count of “going armed with intent” in the March 2022 attack on Moses and another Sonic employee. In addition to the life sentence, Pierce was also sentenced to two 25-year sentences on the burglary charges and a five-year sentence on the “going armed” charge, to run concurrently with the life sentence.
Pierce’s granddaughter was also an employee at the eatery where the victims worked.
According to a copy of the criminal complaint obtained by Law&Crime, police responded to a reported stabbing at about 5:16 p.m. on March 7, 2022, at the Sonic Drive-In at 5350 Merle Hay Road in Johnston, which is about nine miles northwest of Des Moines. Once there, responders said they found Moses suffering from a stab wound to the chest.
A closed-circuit security camera at the restaurant captured Pierce sitting in the outside dining area of the Sonic, appearing to wait for Moses and another employee named Donald Schisler. When the two men arrived for their shifts, Pierce can be seen following them into the building “in an area not open to the public.”
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“In the presence of other employees, the defendant assaults Schisler by striking him with his fists, causing bodily injury and pursues him as Schisler attempts to escape,” the affidavit states. “The defendant then produces a concealed folding knife as he approaches Moses before striking him with his fists. While striking Moses, the defendant deliberately stabs him in the chest. The defendant fled the scene but later returned while in possession of a folding knife covered in an apparent red substance consistent with blood.”
Pierce, who represented himself in the case, argued that he killed Moses in self-defense.
In addition to his prison sentence, Pierce was also ordered to pay $150,000 in restitution to Moses’ family.
In a press release from the Polk County Attorney’s Office, prosecutors noted that this was the second time Pierce had been convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison. Pierce was convicted in 2013 of helping a woman named Deanna Hood fatally shoot 35-year-old Steve Harmon in Des Moines. Harmon was allegedly a known meth dealer. Prosecutors said that conviction was subsequently overturned in 2015 by the Iowa Court of Appeals, reasoning he was convicted based on “shaky evidence.”
“The weight of the evidence, even when taken in the light most favorable to the State and when making all fair and reasonable inferences, convinces us that a rational trier of fact could not have found, beyond a reasonable doubt, that Pierce killed or robbed Harmon, or aided and abetted another in doing so,” the court said in its ruling. “Pierce’s alleged involvement in these crimes is speculative and based primarily on his presence with Hood several hours before and shaky evidence that he was with Hood afterward.”
Hood’s conviction in that case was upheld by the appeals court.
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