Murders Of Channon Christian And Christopher Newsom
Channon Gail Christian, 21, and Hugh Christopher Newsom, Jr., 23, were a couple from Knoxville, Tennessee. They were raped, tortured, and murdered after being kidnapped early on the morning of January 7, 2007. Christian's vehicle had been carjacked. Five suspects were arrested and charged in the case. The grand jury indicted four of the suspects on counts of capital murder, robbery, kidnapping, rape, and theft, while a fifth was indicted at the federal level.
Of the four charged at the state level, three (Letalvis D. Cobbins, Lemaricus Davidson, and George Thomas) had multiple prior felony convictions. After a jury trial, Lemaricus Davidson was sentenced to death by lethal injection and Letalvis Cobbins and George Thomas were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Vanessa Coleman has been convicted of facilitating the crimes and sentenced to 53 years in prison, and Eric Dewayne Boyd has been convicted of federal charges as accessory after the fact to carjacking and sentenced to 18 years in prison. The state convictions were set aside because of misconduct by the presiding judge, who has since been disbarred; retrials (pending appeals in all except the Coleman case, whose retrial is not being contested) had been tentatively slated for the summer and fall of 2012, but in May 2012 the Tennessee Supreme Court vacated the motion for new trials. All of the state convictions were permitted to stand and the defendants remain incarcerated pending appeals.
Read more about Murders Of Channon Christian And Christopher Newsom: Victims, Crime, Suspects and Indictments, First Trials, Appeals and Retrials, Reaction and Accusations of Racism
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