Before being sentenced to up to 30 years in prison for his role in the murder of an Ypsilanti Township man, Keywone Walker was confronted with the human cost of the crime.

Alice Carroll — the mother of Jason Hoover, who was shot and killed during a Nov. 6 robbery at the Schooner Cove Apartments — told Keywone Walker that her son was dead because he made the choice to drive her son's killer and another man to the apartments.

Carroll told Keywone Walker, 23, at the beginning of her testimony in front of Judge Melinda Morris to look at her while she spoke to him. In an emotional moment during a speech full of them, Carroll told Walker his family could still visit him in prison, but she will never see her son again.

“I visit a cemetery. I talk to grass, and it doesn’t talk back, and it’s very cold,” Carroll said through tears.

Keywone Walker will serve a minimum of 17 years and 9 months in prison, with a maximum of 30 years, for 1 count of armed robbery and 1 count of conspiracy to commit armed robbery. He had originally faced a felony murder charge, a felony firearms charge and a charge of carrying a concealed weapon, which were all dropped in a plea agreement with Washtenaw County prosecutors.

Willie Walker, brother of Keywone Walker, pleaded guilty in June to second-degree murder for firing the shot that killed Hoover. He will serve between 35 and 50 years in prison for the murder charge and a felony firearms charge.

Emotions ran high in the courtroom, with Keywone Walker’s eyes rimmed with tears, and his family members gathered in the courtroom were emotional as they tried to communicate with him before and after the hearing began.

Carroll shook as she told him what she had lost when her son was killed, and did her best to explain to Keywone Walker what she expected of him when he eventually left prison.

She told him that she didn’t believe in hate and didn’t hate him. But, she still blamed him for having to face the rest of her life without Hoover.

“I don’t hate you, I hate the choice that you made that brings us here today,” she said.

Keywone Walker drove James Lester and Willie Walker to the apartment complex, where he sat in the car while the 2 other men went inside to meet Hoover. He has admitted the 3 men had agreed to rob Hoover, at gunpoint if necessary, of the marijuana they had agreed to buy. The Walker brothers and Lester later drove to the Village Grove Apartments in Ypsilanti Township, where they divided up the marijuana and money taken from Hoover’s apartment.

Police responded to a 911 call at 8:23 p.m. Nov. 6 at Hoover’s apartment, where they found him dead from a single gunshot to the chest. He left behind his 1-year-old daughter, Makayla.

Walker apologized for the decisions he made that night and said it will be up to him to explain to his daughter why he will be out of her life for at least 17 years and 9 months.

“I made a horrible decision that will haunt me for the rest of my life,” he said.

Morris’ sentence was somewhat bound by the sentencing agreement reached on Aug. 26, which made the minimum sentence 17 years and 9 months. However, she had some discretion on the maximum sentence.

Calling Keywone Walker the “least culpable” defendant in the crime because he never entered the apartment, Steve Tramontin, Keywone Walker’s attorney, asked Morris for a maximum of 27 years in prison. Washtenaw County Chief Assistant Prosecutor Joseph Burke asked for a maximum of 35 years in prison.

“He can’t shelter himself by saying, ‘All I did was drive a car,’ ” Burke said. “If they were never driven there, it would have never happened.”

Kyle Feldscher covers cops and courts for AnnArbor.com. He can be reached at kylefeldscher@annarbor.com or you can follow him on Twitter.