MEMPHIS, TN -- Shelby County District Attorney Bill Gibbons announced on Monday that over the weekend, a criminal court jury sentenced a twice convicted murderer to death for raping and killing a 77-year-old woman in 1991.
This was the third jury to sentence Richard Odom to the death penalty. Odom had been previously sentenced to death by two separate juries, but those sentences were overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court.
In 1991, Odom escaped from a Mississippi jail where he was serving a life sentence for a 1978 murder. He traveled to Memphis where he raped and stabbed Mina Johnson, 77, to death in a midtown parking garage.
Assistant District Attorneys Robert Carter and Amy Weirich prosecuted this case. |