FARMINGTON — The alleged triggerman in a fatal drug robbery claimed his attorney frightened him into confessing.

Angel Christopher Abreu said his original defense attorney, Roy Cole, told him if he cooperated with Layton police, he would “only get five years at most.”

Otherwise, he “would get a needle in the arm,” a reference to the death penalty, Abreu contended.

But Abreu’s effort to get his confession thrown out of court has been rejected by 2nd District Court Judge David Connors.

“The factual underpinnings of (Abreu’s) claim are not credible,” Connors wrote in his Oct. 21 findings on the defendant’s bid to suppress the confession and physical evidence, including two guns and a mask to which Abreu led officers.

Abreu, his mother and Cole met with Layton detectives the day after the fatal shooting.

Abreu, 24, of Ogden, is one of three charged in the Sept. 27, 2018, shooting death of Anthony Child, 26, inside a Layton mobile home.

Prosecutors allege Abreu, Kevin Content, 26, and Brandon Hinojosa, 17, plotted to rob people at the reported drug house so Content could repay an $8,000 drug debt to Abreu.

In testimony in September over the evidence suppression motion filed by Abreu’s new attorney, B. Kent Morgan, police said Abreu contacted them saying he wanted to talk.

Cole testified that he believed, based on what Abreu told him about the crime, Abreu would be “entitled to a finding of imperfect self-defense.”

Cole and police said Abreu initially said “someone shot at him and he shot back.”

The attorney said he told Abreu that when multiple people are charged in a crime, “the first person in the door gets the best deal.”

In the police interview, Cole learned Abreu already had been charged with first-degree felony aggravated murder.

Cole told Abreu he could not guarantee a plea bargain deal of three to five years in prison. First-degree felonies carry a penalty of at least five years to life.

The attorney testified he told Abreu “he is going to face the death penalty if he is not careful.” He did not tell him he could negotiate it down to manslaughter or a five-year term.

He told him to tell the truth and turn over evidence to get the best deal possible.

Abreu contended he was a victim of ineffective counsel by Cole and coercion by detectives during the interview.

The Davis County Attorney’s Office later offered a plea bargain reducing the aggravated murder charge to felony murder, which does not carry the death penalty.

The bargain also offered that his sentence on a related charge of aggravated burglary would run concurrently.

In return, Abreu would testify against Content and Hinojosa.

Abreu rejected the plea bargain.

In the suppression hearing, a detective testified Abreu dropped his self-defense claim and without prompting offered to lead officers to a rifle, handgun and mask used in the robbery.

He said he would do so if he could have a hug from his girlfriend before he was arrested. They agreed.

Connors said he evaluated the admissibility of the confession based on previous court rulings governing “the totality of circumstances” involved.

An interrogation’s duration, the persistence of the interrogators, “coercive tactics, police trickery, the absence of family and counsel,” and threats and promises, must be considered, the ruling said.

The judge said he “found no instances of coercive police tactics.”

The record showed Abreu was interviewed for about half an hour “before he began making incriminating statements to the officers.”

The detectives “did not create an unfairly coercive environment that would have undermined his will and caused him to speak when he would not otherwise have spoken,” Connors said.

The officers were “low-key and straightforward” and “did not threaten or try to trick him into believing there was evidence against him that did not actually exist,” the judge said.

Connors likewise ruled Cole’s counsel was not ineffective.

“The court finds that Mr. Cole’s strategy to ‘get ahead of the situation’ and be the first defendant in the door to confess to the crime in the hopes of receiving a good deal from a prosecutor was objectively reasonable,” Connors said.

“While a different attorney may have secured a deal before advising a client to confess, it was not unreasonable for Cole to advise his client to show complete cooperation,” he said. “It is objectively reasonable to assume such cooperation would lead to a more favorable deal from prosecutors.”

Abreu, Content and Hinojosa remain jailed without bail pending trial.