Loading ...Death Sentence in Clearwater Murder Case
Late last week, Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Richard Luce sentenced John Lee Hampton to death for murdering Lashonda McKinnes in Clearwater in 2007.
Hampton was convicted of the murder back in June 2009. After returning a guilty verdict and hearing additional evidence and testimony related to sentencing, the jury voted 9-3 vote in favor of giving Hampton the death penalty.
Although Hampton gave police several different accounts to explain the incriminating evidence, including blood on his clothing, he ultimately said that he accidentally killed McKinnes because she came after him while he was going through her apartment looking for cocaine. Prosecutors aid Hampton raped McInnes and slit her throat, before trying to wash his DNA off her body with cleaning chemicals and lighter fluid.
Luce found statutory aggravating factors included that Hampton was on probation for failing to register as a sex offender when he committed the murder and that the murder was committed during the course of a burglary, robbery and sexual battery. He also found some mitigating factors that argue against the death penalty, including the fact that Hampton suffers from mental health problems.
Ultimately, Luce found the aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating factors and gave great weight to the jury’s vote before imposing the death sentence.
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