Opinion ID: 2299402
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Celestine Payne 1

Text: During the investigation of another murder committed by Celestine Payne, the police became suspicious of the circumstances surrounding the death of her husband. Further investigation revealed that Payne had asked Eugene Cooper to fatally shoot her husband but that Cooper declined. Later, Payne's husband died in his bed and Cooper, Payne, and Payne's children placed the victim in a box and put the box next to a road. Because she had regularly threatened to poison her husband, Cooper assumed that Payne had carried out her threats. Payne's daughter, Wendy, also believed her mother killed the victim because Payne often put medicine in her husband's food and told the children not to eat or drink it. Wendy guessed that her mother killed the victim in order to collect life insurance proceeds because the family was in danger of losing their home. Payne collected $49,000 in life insurance after the death of her husband. An autopsy revealed that the victim had died of a mix of antianxiety and antidepressant prescription drugs. Notably, although the victim did not suffer from depression, the drugs that caused the victim's death matched the Celestine Payne's prescribed medication. At the time of the murder, Payne was a forty-one-year-old mother of four children. She had graduated from high school, but read and wrote poorly and had last worked ten years earlier as a bookbinder. Payne had a history of psychiatric problems and had been under psychiatric care for approximately two years. In August 1987, she complained that she was depressed and heard voices. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was given prescription medication. Her dosage was increased after she expressed anger toward her husband and threatened to kill him. By June of 1988, Payne was experiencing auditory hallucinations and was paranoid at times. Payne had no prior convictions. After she murdered her husband, however, she took out life insurance policies on behalf of two other individuals and arranged for Charles Pinchom to kill both of them. Pinchom killed one victim, but his stabbing of the other did not result in that victim's death. Charged with, inter alia, two counts of murder and conspiracy to commit murder, one count of attempted murder, and various other charges, Celestine Payne pled guilty to all charges on May 28, 1997. On each murder conviction, the court sentenced her concurrently to life imprisonment with a thirty-year parole disqualifier. On the attempted murder conviction she was sentenced to a consecutive twenty-year prison term. The AOC coded as present the c(4)(d), pecuniary-motive, aggravating factor and mitigating factors c(5)(d), diminished capacity; c(5)(f), no significant criminal history; and c(5)(h), the catchall mitigating factor.