Opinion ID: 2299781
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 13

Heading: Duane Vance Caviness

Text: On or about June 8, 1984, Duane Caviness and two co-defendants entered the apartment building where Caviness's stepfather lived. Caviness later acknowledged that they had intended to rob and kill his stepfather until they discovered that the alarm system was operating in the stepfather's apartment. Instead, they broke into an apartment belonging to a fifty-five-year-old man. The assailants tied up the man and Caviness hit him with a baseball bat. They ransacked the apartment looking for items with resale value and they took some items. They then ransacked another apartment in which no one was home. The fifty-five-year-old man was later found dead with his hands and feet bound. The autopsy revealed ten wounds and identified the cause of death as physical assault with multiple head, neck, and chest injuries caused by blunt force. Caviness was nineteen years old at the time of the murder. He was educated through the tenth grade. He had a sporadic work history and was unemployed at the time of the offense. He had a history of cocaine, marijuana, and pill abuse. His adult police record consists of two arrests for burglary, but no convictions. Caviness and the co-defendants blamed each other. The prosecutor initially sought the death penalty against Caviness, and charged him with purposeful-or-knowing murder. Ultimately, Caviness pleaded guilty to felony murder and two counts of burglary. He was sentenced to life imprisonment with thirty-years parole ineligibility on the murder, and four years in prison for each burglary. The AOC classifies this case as having two aggravating factors, c(4)(f), murder to escape detection, and c(4)(g), contemporaneous felony, and three mitigating factors, c(5)(c), defendant's age, c(5)(f), no significant prior record, and c(5)(h), the catch-all factor.