A Lawrence man convicted of robbing a convenience store at gunpoint stood up in court Friday and delivered a speech that he hoped would help keep him from going to prison.!“I felt like the world was closing in on me and I had no other choice,” 20-year-old Darnell Thomas told District Court Judge Robert Fairchild.Thomas said that in the months prior to the Aug. 24 robbery at Presto, 2330 Iowa, he’d lost his job, become homeless, and was sleeping on the floors of crack houses, even though he said he didn’t use drugs.”I lost a lot of weight. My hygiene was bad. I was headed nowhere fast,” he said. “In the midst of me losing myself and forgetting where I came from, I hated my own skin.”Thomas initially was charged with two counts of aggravated robbery, but prosecutors allowed him to plead guilty to one count of the lesser charge of robbery. Assistant Dist. Atty. Brandon Jones said the state agreed to the plea because of Thomas’ young age and relatively short criminal history, which included a conviction for making a threatening gesture at a teacher.Under sentencing guidelines, Thomas faces a 52-month prison sentence, but he’s asking the judge to make an exception to the guidelines to allow boot camp or probation. Jones said he could agree to a 36-month prison sentence for Thomas, but not probation.”There’s really no excuse to justify taking a weapon… putting it in the face of two individuals who were obviously terrified just to steal money,” Jones said. “Even though he may have been in a bad time in his life, it does not justify doing that.”Fairchild postponed making a decision, but he said he would consider the six-month boot camp in Labette as an alternative to prison. Thomas will be back in court Jan. 9.A co-defendant, Marcus J. Bell, age 20 at the time of his arrest, still has charges pending.-contributed by Eric Weslander.