Federal prosecutors accomplished Monday what the state could not: securing significant jail time for Brian Keith Rose.

The 24-year-old Baltimore man agreed to a 40-year prison sentence as part of a plea deal in which he admitted to committing a 2006 carjacking that led to the death of a store owner at Security Square Mall. He also agreed to give up his right to appeal and to request further documents in the case through the Freedom of Information Act.

A Baltimore County Circuit Court judge had set Rose free after he was charged with murder in 2007, ruling that fingerprint evidence linking Rose to the crime wasn't admissible in the capital case. The decision shook the legal community, which has long relied on such evidence, and led the county state's attorney's office to ask for federal intervention.

Rose put up a small fight at Monday's hearing, insisting that the U.S. government had pushed him into the plea by placing him - essentially - between a rock and a hard place: Go to trial and risk life in prison, or take the deal.

"I was forced to take this," Rose said, as his family, including several small children, and the victim's family looked on. But U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake pointed out that Rose was the one who made the choice. Rose relented after consultation with his attorneys.

According to a statement of facts, Rose - with his 15-year-old nephew in the passenger seat - drove a stolen Dodge Intrepid to the Security Square Mall parking lot in Woodlawn in January 2006. There, he spotted Warren T. Fleming walking toward his black Mercedes-Benz from his Cingular Wireless store.

Rose pulled alongside and attempted to steal the car, arguing with Fleming, who was shot once in the head and died almost instantly. The statement did not say who pulled the trigger. Rose and his nephew fled, leaving Fleming, a husband and father of two, slumped outside the Mercedes' driver's side door with the engine running.

Rose's fingerprints were recovered from the Mercedes, and the stolen Dodge was recovered that evening at the Owings Mills Metro Station. Fleming's blood was found on the Dodge.

Rose was arrested Jan. 18, 2006; his nephew was killed in an unrelated matter on April 30, 2007. Rose was first charged in Baltimore County Circuit Court; the U.S. attorney's office took over the case after the judge's ruling on the fingerprints, and Rose was indicted in April 2008. Seventeen months later, Judge Blake rejected the state judge's ruling and said fingerprint evidence would be allowed.

"I have concluded that fingerprint identification evidence based on [certain] methodology is generally accepted in the relevant scientific community, has a very low incidence of erroneous misidentifications, and is sufficiently reliable to be admissible," she explained in a six-page memorandum filed last month.

As part of the deal, signed Thursday, the Baltimore County state's attorney's office has agreed to not reinstate the Maryland charges.

Rose's sentencing is Jan. 19.