Opinion ID: 2299781
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 15

Heading: Carlton Felder

Text: On September 14, 1989, Carlton Felder had smoked approximately ten jumbo vials of crack cocaine and was extremely wired. Felder went to a neighbor's apartment where a seventy-five-year-old woman was babysitting three small children. Felder rang the door bell, and when the woman opened the door, Felder pushed her inside and started stabbing her in the chest, killing her. When she stopped resisting, he grabbed the gold chains from her neck and went upstairs looking for money. When he could not find any more money, he took a VCR and left the apartment. Felder stated that he killed the women in an act of desperation to obtain money for crack. Felder was initially charged with purposeful-or-knowing murder, felony murder, robbery, burglary, possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, and unlawful possession of a weapon. Felder pleaded guilty to aggravated manslaughter, robbery and burglary. He was sentenced to thirty years with a fifteen year minimum for the aggravated manslaughter, a twenty-year consecutive sentence with a ten-year parole bar for robbery, and a five-year concurrent sentence for the burglary. The AOC classifies this case as having aggravating factor c(4)(g), contemporaneous felony, and mitigating factors, c(5)(c), defendant's age, c(5)(d), mental disease, or defect or intoxication, c(5)(f), no significant prior criminal record, and c(5)(h), the catch-all factor. Felder was eighteen years old at the time of the killing. He dropped out of high school in ninth grade. Prior to the killing, he had been working at a fast-food restaurant for about a month. Felder stated that he was addicted to crack cocaine and had used it daily since the age of fifteen.