Opinion ID: 2299781
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 19

Heading: Incenzio Mendez

Text: On September 25, 1983, Incenzio Mendez was planning to rob the home of the owner of the farm on which he was working. The owner of the farm was Ms. Lum, a ninety-five-year-old woman. Mendez checked to see if Ms. Lum was home. He then saw Ms. Lum approaching, so he came up behind her with a stick he found near the house. Using the stick, Mendez knocked her down with three blows to the head. When Ms. Lum attempted to get up, Mendez kneed her in her side and struck her in the neck. She died from her injuries. After killing Ms. Lum, Mendez went into her house looking for money and jewelry. Mendez later gave two statements to the police. In the second statement, he admitted that he struck Ms. Lum to kill her so that she could not identify him later. Mendez was twenty-seven years old at the time of the murder. He is mentally retarded, with learning disabilities and a mental age of six years old. Mendez was one of fifteen children, and his parents were second cousins. Mendez was a resident of Puerto Rico, but periodically came to the United States to work as a migrant farm laborer. He left the sixth grade at the age of twenty-two and does not read, write, or understand English. Mendez had no prior criminal record. In a capital trial, defendant was convicted of purposeful-or-knowing murder, felony murder (two counts), aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, armed robbery, burglary, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, and unlawful possession of a weapon. The jury found aggravating factors c(4)(c), outrageously vile, and c(4)(g) contemporaneous felony, and mitigating factors c(5)(f), no significant criminal record, and c(5)(h), the catch-all factor. The jury found that the mitigating factors outweighed the aggravating factors. Mendez was sentenced to life imprisonment for the murder conviction. He also was sentenced to consecutive terms of twenty years with a ten-year parole bar on the armed robbery count, and ten years with a five year period of parole ineligibility on the burglary count.