 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Jury recommends death for stabbing
By CHRISTOPHER GOFFARD, Times Staff Writer
TAMPA -- Jurors decided Tuesday that Troy Lee Green, a part-time mechanic and gardener, should be executed for stabbing a cerebral palsy victim 39 times and leaving her to bleed to death. Capping a three-week trial, the jury deliberated for just over an hour before voting 8-4 to impose the death penalty on Green for the murder of 34-year-old DeCarla Dixon. Last week, the same jury found him guilty of first-degree murder. Dixon, who used a wheelchair, was attacked in her Tampa home on Nov. 8, 2000. Her two young daughters found her slashed body when they came home from school. Before Dixon died, her daughters and rescue workers heard her identify her attacker as "Troy." That led investigators to Green, a family friend. Prosecutors said he made statements placing him at the scene, and Dixon's DNA was found on his clothes. Green, 47, showed no emotion at Tuesday's verdict. In his closing argument to the jury, prosecutor Jalal Harb underscored the savagery of the attack. "Thirty-nine stab wounds!" he said. "That lady was conscious. That lady was being tortured. . . . That lady was slaughtered." Defense attorney Deb Goins said the stabbing occurred "quickly and sporadically . . . possibly as an explosive situation." Pleading for Green's life, Goins noted that his IQ was in the mid-70s, the borderline retarded range. Lawyers on both sides will have another chance to present evidence before Hillsborough Circuit Judge J. Rogers Padgett at a Feb. 20 hearing.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From the Times |
