Opinion ID: 2157140
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: State v. Eugene Edwards

Text: On July 10, 1987, Eugene Edwards and Michael Prater raped, robbed, and killed a twenty-three-year-old prostitute. Earlier that evening, the two men succeeded in luring the victim into Edwards's house by promising a trade of drugs for sex. Once inside, Prater forced the woman to undress at knifepoint. Prater raped the woman while holding a knife to her head, then after urging Prater to hurry, Edwards took his turn raping her. Edwards left to clean up and while he was gone, Prater stabbed the woman. Because the woman did not die, Edwards strangled her with a belt and attempted to suffocate her, while Prater stabbed her three or four more times. The woman's pulse stopped, yet Prater hit her over the head with tin cutters to ensure she was dead. Afterward, the men went upstairs and fell asleep. The next day, Edwards took the victim's purse and watch. He threw her purse off a bridge, and threw the knife onto a church roof next door. In the evening, Edwards put the victim's body along an outside wall of his home. The body was found in the morning and Edwards was arrested the following day. Edwards and Prater eventually confessed, each implicating the other in the crime. Edwards was charged with murder, felony murder, robbery, aggravated sexual assault, and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose. He pled to purposeful or knowing murder, robbery and aggravated assault. Edwards received a life term with a thirty-year term of parole ineligibility for the murder count, a concurrent term of twenty-years for the robbery with a ten-year term of parole ineligibility, and a consecutive term of twenty years for the aggravated sexual assault with a parole ineligibility term of ten years. The felony murder charge and two remaining aggravated assault charges were dismissed. Edwards had no prior record and no history of mental problems. The AOC coded the following factors as present: c(4)(g) (contemporaneous felony) aggravating factor, and c(5)(d) (mental disease or defect or intoxication), c(5)(f) (no significant criminal history), and c(5)(h) (catch-all) as mitigating factors.