Opinion ID: 2157140
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 7

Heading: State v. Samuel Mincey

Text: On November 8, 1982, Samuel Mincey broke into the home of a seventy-three-year-old woman, beat her severely, raped and strangled her. He stole two oriental dolls and a television from his victim's home. In November 1988, police recovered one of the oriental dolls while investigating another burglary. An investigation implicated Mincey in the November 1982 murder. Mincey was arrested six-and-one-half years after the murder and was charged with purposeful or knowing murder, felony murder, burglar, kidnaping, and robbery, but the non-murder counts were barred by the statute of limitations. A jury convicted Mincey of murder and felony murder. The State did not seek the death penalty, therefore Mincey was sentenced to life imprisonment with a thirty-year parole disqualifier. It has been suggested by the AOC that Mincey was not charged capitally because the prosecutor may have believed that the statute of limitations would have worked to bar a successful capital prosecution. When arrested, Mincey was living with his wife and four children. He owned his own landscaping business. He admitted to using marijuana and cocaine but denied any addiction. Before this offense, Mincey had been arrested on forty occasions and had sixteen prior convictions for offenses including assault, battery, burglary, escape, aggravated assault, receiving stolen property and auto theft. The AOC coded as present the c(4)(c) (torture or depravity), c(4)(f) (escape detection), and c(4)(g) (contemporaneous felony) aggravating factors and the c(5)(h) (catch-all) mitigating factors.