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Jury Votes for Death for Derrick Todd Lee in the 2002 Murder of LSU Graduate Charlotte Murray Pace

The jury took 93 minutes, rejecting the defense's claim that Lee was intellectually disabled. Evidence of four other killings was heard at the trial.

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Illustration of people waiting on wooden benches in a long arched courthouse hallway with ceiling fans in Louisiana. Not an actual scene from the case.

The jury that convicted Derrick Todd Lee of murdering Charlotte Murray Pace took just 93 minutes to decide his fate. On October 14, 2004, it unanimously voted that he should be put to death.

The East Baton Rouge Parish jury rejected the defense's argument that Lee, 35, was intellectually disabled, which under a 2002 U.S. Supreme Court decision would have spared his life. It had found him guilty of first-degree murder in Pace's death after a trial that began on September 13. Pace, 22, had just graduated from Louisiana State University as one of its youngest MBA recipients and was murdered on May 31, 2002. At the trial, the state presented evidence of the murders of Gina Wilson Green, Pamela Piglia Kinamore, Trineisha Dene Colomb and Carrie Yoder, and of the attempted murder of a nurse in Breaux Bridge, to show identity and intent.

"This is not only a victory for Murray and our family, this is a victory for all the families," said Pace's mother, Ann Pace. Prosecutor John Sinquefield, the first assistant district attorney, said Lee "got south Louisiana justice." As he was led from the courtroom, Lee shouted, "God don't sleep." He was taken to the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola.

In August 2004 a West Baton Rouge Parish jury had already convicted Lee of the second-degree murder of Geralyn Barr DeSoto, and he was sentenced to life without parole. Judge Richard D. Anderson formally sentenced him to death for Pace's murder on December 10, 2004, and the Louisiana Supreme Court affirmed the conviction and sentence in January 2008.

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