Local News
Former Tifton resident sentenced to death
TIFTON — A judge has sentenced an Ashburn man, a registered sex offender who once lived in Tifton, to death after he was convicted in July for the rape and stabbing death of a Clearwater, Fla., woman.
John Lee Hampton, approximately 36 years old, was found guilty of beating, raping and stabbing 25-year-old Lashonda McKinnes to death on June 10, 2007.
Hampton was living in Tifton in 2005 and 2006. He was arrested here in 2005 for giving a false name or address to a law enforcement officer, and was held then on a Turner County burglary warrant. Then in 2006, he failed to register as a sex offender with the Tift County Sheriff’s Office, and was also charged at that time with giving false information. Hampton was also previously convicted of child molestation in Turner County, and sentenced to 10 years probation.
At one time, the Ashburn Police Department had warrants on Hampton for kidnapping, rape and aggravated assault of a woman there, but Hampton had fled to Florida before those warrants could be served.
An article that ran in the St. Petersburg Times on Feb. 19 stated a Pinellas County jury convicted Hampton of murdering McKinnes. Until Hampton was sentenced, prosecutors and defense attorneys argued in court papers about whether or not Hampton deserved the death penalty. Hampton was taken in for questioning after McKinnes was killed, and he gave several different accounts to explain incriminating evidence, including blood on his clothing.
Hampton ultimately said he accidentally killed McKinnes because she came after him while he riffled through her possessions. He raped her and slit her throat, and then tried to wash his DNA off her body with cleaning chemicals and lighter fluid. Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Richard Luce, found some mitigating factors that argued against the death penalty, including the fact that Hampton suffers from mental health problems.
“The aggravating factors in this case are horrendous. The defendant was on probation for failing to register as a sex offender in Georgia when he murdered McKinnes,” Luce said in the article, and also he “committed the murder during the course of burglary, robbery, sexual battery.” Luce also gave great weight to the jury’s 9-3 vote in favor of giving Hampton the death penalty.
McKinnes left behind three daughters.
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