Stephon Lindsay was sentenced to death by the State of Alabama for the murder of his twenty month old daughter with a sword
According to court documents Stephon Lindsay would strike his twenty month old daughter multiple times with a sword causing her death
Stephon Lindsay would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
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Stephon Lindsay is incarcerated at Holman Prison
Stephon Lindsay Case
The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals upheld the conviction and sentence of a Gadsden man in the horrific 2013 slaying of his 21-month-old daughter.
Stephon Lindsay was charged with capital murder in March 2013 after his daughter Maliyah Lindsay’s body was found in a duffel bag, tossed in a garbage-strewn area off Plainview Street and Block Avenue in Gadsden.
Testimony at trial — including Lindsay’s own recorded confession — revealed that he held the child’s face against the floor with enough force to leave bruises, while he chopped into her throat with a small hatchet, almost severing her head.
He claimed he killed the toddler because the god he worships told him to
Lindsay pleaded not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect, but at trial the prosecution told jurors that just because he held extreme religious beliefs, that didn’t mean he was insane under the law.
The fact that he hid her body, and lied for days about where she was, indicated he understood his actions were wrong, the state said at trial.
The Court of Criminal Appeals had earlier affirmed Lindsay’s conviction, but remanded the case to Etowah County Circuit Court to amend its sentencing order by making specific written findings on each statutory mitigating and aggravating circumstance.
The higher court remanded the case a second time after the circuit court failed to fully comply with the instruction to make specific findings of fact on each of the mitigating and aggravating circumstances.
The court ruled on the second remand of the case.
The only issues not addressed in the earlier decision upholding the conviction were Lindsay’s contention that the circuit court erred in failing to find two statutory mitigating circumstances: that he was under the influence of extreme mental or emotional distress, and that he lacked the capacity to appreciate the criminality of his conduct or to conform it to the requirements of the law.
Lindsay argued in the appeal that a psychologist testified he suffered from paranoid schizophrenia and had exhibited “delusions of grandeur and hallucinations.” He maintained the court was required to find his mental health a statutory mitigating circumstance.
Alabama’s appeals courts have long held that it’s within the sentencing court’s discretion whether it finds evidence to be mitigating, the decision stated.
The circuit court’s amended sentencing order said the psychologist testified he couldn’t give an opinion as to whether Lindsay’s symptoms were caused by actual mental illness or extensive polysubstance abuse. The court found Lindsay’s mental health to be a nonstatutory mitigating circumstance.
The appeals court decision addressed the mitigating and aggravating circumstances in the case, including Lindsay’s previous conviction for six counts of robbery, and the brutality of the crime for which he was convicted and sentenced to die.
Its finding: Lindsay’s sentence was not disproportionate or excessive when compared to sentences imposed in similar cases.
