You can learn about alternatives to the death penalty during Lunch with the League on Tuesday, May 2.
Reverend Stacy Rector, executive director of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, will be the guest speaker.
The meeting will take place at noon Tuesday in the Social Room of the Unitarian Universalist Church at 809 Oak Ridge Turnpike. It may also be accessed on Zoom at https://us02web.zoom.us/j/89723362660?pwd=UkMxOVdzZExKamVwRWJxWHp0SlpjZz09
[Read more…]
Sean Finnegan, one of two defendants in a series of gruesome alleged crimes in Oak Ridge in December 2019, including murder, sex crimes, and kidnapping, is pictured above in a mugshot from the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office.
An Oak Ridge man and woman face the death penalty after allegedly kidnapping, raping, torturing, and murdering a 36-year-old woman, and mutilating her body and putting it into a freezer in December 2019.
Dave Clark, Seventh Judicial District attorney general, announced the death penalty decision on Monday.
Oak Ridge Today has previously reported that a decision was expected this month in the criminal case against Sean Shannon Finnegan, 54, and Rebecca Elizabeth Dishman, 23. They have both been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the strangling death of Jennifer Gail Paxton and 10 other charges, including aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, abuse of a corpse, and tampering with evidence.
In a press release, Clark said a district attorney general can seek the death penalty only in certain first-degree murder cases “when one or more factors established by state law are alleged to exist.” Then, it is up to the DA to decide whether to ask the court to impose the death penalty. That decision has now been made, Clark said.
Here are the factors in this case that make the death penalty applicable, according to Clark:
Since the state is now seeking the death penalty, special procedures will apply in the court case. These include the appointment of an attorney qualified in death-penalty cases and the right to a second attorney for Finnegan and Dishman.
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Sean Finnegan, one of two defendants in a series of gruesome alleged crimes in Oak Ridge in December 2019, including murder, sex crimes, and kidnapping, is pictured above in a mugshot from the Anderson County Sheriff’s Office.
An Oak Ridge man and woman face the death penalty after allegedly kidnapping, raping, torturing, and murdering a 36-year-old woman, and mutilating her body and putting it into a freezer in December 2019.
Dave Clark, Seventh Judicial District attorney general, announced the death penalty decision on Monday.
Oak Ridge Today has previously reported that a decision was expected this month in the criminal case against Sean Shannon Finnegan, 54, and Rebecca Elizabeth Dishman, 23. They have both been charged with three counts of first-degree murder in the strangling death of Jennifer Gail Paxton and 10 other charges, including aggravated rape, aggravated kidnapping, abuse of a corpse, and tampering with evidence.
In a press release, Clark said a district attorney general can seek the death penalty only in certain first-degree murder cases “when one or more factors established by state law are alleged to exist.” Then, it is up to the DA to decide whether to ask the court to impose the death penalty. That decision has now been made, Clark said.
Here are the factors in this case that make the death penalty applicable, according to Clark:
Since the state is now seeking the death penalty, special procedures will apply in the court case. These include the appointment of an attorney qualified in death-penalty cases and the right to a second attorney for Finnegan and Dishman.
The rest of this story is available if you are a member: a subscriber, advertiser, or contributor to Oak Ridge Today.
Already a member? Great! Thank you! Sign in here.
Not a member? No problem! Subscribe here: Basic
Pro
Temporary
If you prefer to send a check, you may do so by mailing one to:
Oak Ridge Today
P.O. Box 6064
Oak Ridge, TN 37831
We also have advanced subscription options. You can see them here.
We also accept donations. You can donate here. A donation of $50 or more will make you eligible for a subscription.
Thank you for reading Oak Ridge Today. We appreciate your support!
The history of the death penalty in Tennessee will be discussed in a lunchtime meeting today (Tuesday, May 4).
The meeting is hosted by the League of Women Voters of Oak Ridge. It will be virtual (online). The speaker will be University of Tennessee Lecturer Hemant Sharma.
Along with John M. Scheb, head of the Political Science Department at the University of Tennessee/Knoxville, and others, Sharma authored the 2013 study “Race and the Death Penalty: An Empirical Assessment of First Degree Murder Convictions in Tennessee after Gregg v. Georgia,†a press release said. Published in the Tennessee Journal of Race, Gender and Social Justice, the study analyzed 1,068 first-degree murder convictions in the state following the 1976 Supreme Court decision that ended the four-year court moratorium on the death penalty across the nation.
[Read more…]
The death penalty in America will be discussed during a Lunch with the League meeting at noon today (Tuesday, April 6).
The virtual meeting is hosted by the League of Women Voters of Oak Ridge. It will feature Marshall Jensen, a federal public defender for the Middle District of Tennessee. His talk is titled “‘Spaces of Sorrow Only God Can Touch’: The Death Penalty in Modern America.”
“Most people think that those on death row must be the worst of the worst,†Jensen said in a press release. “But when we examine who ends up on death row in America, what they share is they almost uniformly tend to be poor, mentally ill, intellectually disabled, or suffer from some form of organic brain damage.â€
Having served as a federal public defender for the Middle District of Tennessee in the Capital Habeas Unit since January 2020, Jensen represents people sentenced to death in their final, federal appeals before execution, the press release said. Prior to this work, he served as an assistant public defender at the Knox County Public Defender’s Community Law Office, where he represented indigent individuals in Knox County criminal courts.
[Read more…]
Sabrina Butler Smith
A virtual community forum on “Race, Wrongful Conviction, and the Death Penalty†will be held at 4 p.m., Sunday, October 25.
A focus will be on the planned execution of Pervis Payne, scheduled for December 3 in Nashville. He is a Black man with an intellectual disability and son of a highly respected pastor, a press release said.
The speakers will be Rolanda Holman, Payne’s sister, who will describe the circumstances surrounding his case and the push for DNA testing and commutation of his sentence; Sabrina Butler Smith, exoneree from Mississippi’s death row and Memphis resident, who will connect issues from her case to those in Payne’s case and the broader realities of racial injustice inherent in the death penalty; and the Reverend Stacy Rector, executive director of Tennesseans for Alternatives to the Death Penalty, who will reflect on current issues raised by the death penalty, particularly as they relate to race and wrongful conviction, the press release said. [Read more…]
Note: This story was last updated at 11:45 p.m.
An Anderson County judge on Tuesday denied a motion to reduce the $1 million bond for Rebecca Dishman, and a prosecutor said the state could consider the death penalty in the “especially heinous” murder.
Dishman, 22, is one of two defendants charged with murder, sex crimes, kidnapping, and abuse of a corpse in a series of gruesome crimes allegedly committed against Jennifer Gail Paxton, 36, of Knoxville, in a home in east Oak Ridge sometime between December and August.
Dishman had a hearing in Anderson County General Sessions Court in Oak Ridge on Tuesday afternoon. She was represented by defense attorney Paul Sexton.
Sexton said Dishman waived her right to be in court, and she did not appear to hear the discussion of her case. On Dishman’s behalf, Sexton asked Anderson County General Sessions Court Judge Roger Miller to reduce her bond.
“She’s a woman of limited means,” Sexton said, and there is no way she can afford to be released on bond.
Under the law, Dishman is entitled to a reasonable bond, Sexton said.
[Read more…]
The young granddaughter who died in Oak Ridge in 2011 was malnourished and had been smothered, District Attorney General Dave Clark said Friday, after the child’s grandmother pleaded guilty to second-degree murder last Tuesday.
Emergency workers and law enforcement officers responded to a 911 call at Teller Village Apartments around 1:30 p.m. Monday, April 11, 2011. The grandmother, Valerie Stenson, now 54, was trying to revive her granddaughter, Manhattan Inman, using cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, Clark said in a press release Friday.
“An autopsy reveled that the child was malnourished, and the cause of death was smothering,” said Clark, who is DA in the Seventh Judicial District (Anderson County).
Manhattan was two years and nine months old when she died, Clark said.
[Read more…]A grandmother pleaded guilty Tuesday to second-degree murder in the death of her young granddaughter in Oak Ridge eight years ago, and she was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Valerie Stenson, 54, who has an address listed in Knoxville, was ordered to serve 100 percent of her sentence.
Stenson had been charged with first-degree murder in the death of her granddaughter, Manhattan Inman, who was 18 months old when she was found dead in a home on Teller Village Lane on April 17, 2011.
The first-degree murder charge was reduced to second-degree murder as part of the plea deal entered in Anderson County Criminal Court in Clinton on Tuesday.
Prosecutors had once sought the death penalty against Stenson, but it was withdrawn in March 2018. Prosecutors cited mental health issues, expense, and the strain put on the local court system in death penalty cases.
[Read more…]
Valerie Stenson
Prosecutors will not seek the death penalty against an Oak Ridge grandmother charged with first-degree murder in the death of her toddler granddaughter seven years ago.
Announcing the decision, prosecutors cited mental health issues, expense, and the strain put on the local court system in death penalty cases.
The state filed a withdrawal notice, announcing it would not seek the death penalty, in Anderson County Criminal Court in Clinton on March 16. The withdrawal notice has not been previously reported. [Read more…]
Valerie Stenson
CLINTON—Scheduled for December, the murder trial of an Oak Ridge grandmother who is facing the death penalty has been canceled, and a mental health evaluation has been ordered.
On Thursday, Seventh Judicial District Attorney General Dave Clark in Clinton said he’s not sure if or when the trial for Valerie Stenson, 53, will be rescheduled, and he can’t address why the two-week trial in December has been canceled.
Some of the most recent court documents filed in the case relate to a psychiatric evaluation for Stenson. It’s not clear if that evaluation is related to the cancellation of the trial, which has been rescheduled before, but it does seem that it would be difficult to conduct the evaluation, which could last up to 30 days, before the trial in December.
A status hearing was scheduled for Stenson in Anderson County Criminal Court in Clinton on Monday, and subpoenas filed on Tuesday said the trial is off. It had been scheduled for December 4-8 and from December 11-15.
An August 14 order for a psychiatric evaluation that was filed by Anderson County Criminal Court Judge Don Elledge said Stenson was previously evaluated by State of Tennessee experts and determined to be competent to stand trial and to help with her defense. [Read more…]
Norman Lee Follis Jr., 52, received life without parole on Thursday, May 12, 2016, after being convicted of first-degree murder in Anderson County Circuit and Criminal Court on Tuesday, May 10, for killing his uncle in Claxton more than four years ago. (Photo by John Huotari/Oak Ridge Today)
Note: This story was updated at 11:15 a.m.
CLINTON—An Anderson County man convicted of first-degree murder on Tuesday avoided the death penalty on Thursday, but he did receive a sentence of life without parole.
A jury of eight women and four men unanimously agreed on that decision after more than seven hours of deliberations on Wednesday and Thursday. Besides death and life without parole, they could have also returned a life sentence with the possibility of parole.
The jury said that prosecutors had proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the killing of Samuel “Sammie” J. Adams, 79, sometime in mid-December 2011 was especially, heinous, atrocious, or cruel, and that Adams was 70 or older. Those were two of the four aggravating factors the jury could consider during the deliberations over whether to impose the death penalty against Norman Lee Follis Jr., 52.
Follis is Adams’ nephew, and he was convicted of first-degree murder for killing his uncle in Anderson County Circuit and Criminal Court on Tuesday.
Adams’ decomposing body was found buried under at least 10 blankets in a closet underneath a staircase at his apartment on Patt Lane in Claxton on January 24, 2012. A couch was shoved against the closet door. Adams had been reported missing. He died of strangulation. [Read more…]
Samuel “Sammie” J. Adams, who was killed at 79, is pictured above about five years before his death, which the man convicted of his murder, his nephew Norman Lee Follis Jr., said occurred in December 2011. (Photo courtesy Sandra Follis)
CLINTON—An Anderson County jury is deliberating the sentence for Norman Lee Follis Jr., 52, who was convicted on Tuesday of first-degree murder. The death penalty is one option.
The other two options are life without parole and life. No matter what happens, defense attorney Mart Cizek said, Follis will die in prison. Life with the possibility of parole has a 51-year minimum sentence, meaning Follis would be 103 before he would be eligible for release, if he receives the life sentence with the possibility of parole.
The jury convicted Follis on Tuesday of first-degree murder in the death of his uncle, Samuel “Sammie” J. Adams, 79, sometime between December 2011 and January 2012. Adams’ decomposing body was found on January 24, 2012, under a pile of at least 10 blankets in a closet under an apartment staircase on Patt Lane in Claxton after he was reported missing. He had been strangled. [Read more…]
