Opinion ID: 2299781
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 30

Heading: Thomas Dollard

Text: On July 14, 1990, Thomas Dollard and two co-defendants, Dwayne Knight and Leon Durhan, entered an apartment building in search of someone to rob of money or drugs. Dollard was armed with a handgun and Knight with a shotgun. The trio encountered a couple in the stairwell of the building, and asked the couple if they had drugs. The couple stated that they did not, and the three made the couple take down their pants and the three searched the couple for drugs. The three forced the couple to knock on an apartment door and to try to use the resident's familiarity with the couple to get them to open the door. When that did not work, Knight kicked in the door. Dollard ran into the apartment while Knight and Durham brought the couple into the apartment. One of the residents of the apartment, a forty-seven year old man, began to get out of bed. Dollard told the man to lie down. When the man asked why Dollard was doing it, Dollard shot the man in the chest. The man asked why he did it, and then collapsed. He died from his wounds. Durhan later gave a statement to the police in which he implicated Knight and Dollard. Knight gave a statement implicating Durhan and Dollard. Dollard was charged with burglary, two counts of aggravated assault, three counts of robbery, felony murder, murder, possession of a weapon, two counts of unlawful possession of a weapon, and two counts of possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose. He was convicted of all counts and was sentenced to an aggregate sentence of life plus ten years with a thirty-five-year parole bar. At the time of the murder, Dollard was twenty-one years old. He lived with his grandmother and worked as a material handler. Dollard dropped out of high school in the eleventh grade. He is in good mental health, but suffers from bleeding ulcers, sickle cell anemia, and an old shotgun wound to the leg. Dollard admits to using cocaine, hits, and p-dope. Dollard had one prior conviction for unlawful possession of a weapon. The AOC narrative classifies this case as having aggravating factor c(4)(g), contemporaneous felony, and mitigating factors c(5)(c), the defendant's age, and c(5)(h), the catch-all.