The convicted killer who murdered his ex-girlfriend and University of Miami linebacker Marlin Barnes in a “jealous rage” had his death row sentence reversed and will spend the rest of his life behind bars, sparking outrage from the victims’ loved ones.
Labrant Dennis was sentenced to life in prison without parole in a Miami-Dade courtroom on Thursday, nearly 30 years after he was convicted in the bludgeoning deaths of Barnes and Timwanika Lumpkins inside the football player’s campus apartment, NBC Miami reported.
Dennis was convicted of the double murders in 1998 and spent nearly two decades on death row before he was granted a new sentencing trial by the Florida Supreme Court in 2017 due to constitutional issues with the state’s death penalty.
His death sentence — imposed after a non-unanimous jury recommendation in 1999 — was later ruled unconstitutional.
Florida’s death penalty rules have shifted since Dennis’s first sentencing. Under the latest law, a judge can impose death if eight jurors agree.
Despite prosecutors urging jurors to recommend Dennis be executed again, his defense attorneys pleaded with jurors to spare the killer’s life since he’s shown good behavior for the last 30 years.
“He’s done almost 30 years in prison,” one of Dennis’s attorneys, Terrance Lenamon, told the jury. “He is not the same man who was involved in these killings.”
The jury’s decision to spare Dennis’s life sent shockwaves through the courtroom as Barnes’ family was left heartbroken by the verdict.
“I’m not getting my kid back anyway,” Barnes’ mother, Charlie Postell, told the Miami Herald, adding that her son’s killer will now only have to face the Lord’s judgment for the heinous murders.
Barnes’ sister, Charlisia Preston, reiterated her mother’s feelings and said Dennis “ruined our life” when he killed her brother.
“He can escape man, but he can’t escape the judgment God has for him,” Preston said. “He will suffer.”
The resentencing revived painful memories of the 1996 double murder that stunned the two victims’ loved ones and the University of Miami community.
Investigators said the killer encountered Barnes and Lumpkins at a South Beach club the night before he forced his way into Barnes’ apartment and killed them, the Miami Herald reported.
Barnes and Lumpkins, both 22, were left unrecognizable from the brutality of the attack. Barnes had been struck in the head more than 20 times with the butt of a shotgun.
The murders were so horrifying that Barnes’s roommate and former NFL safety, Earl Little, testified at Dennis’s murder trial in 1998 that he found the star linebacker “lying in a pool of blood, his face crushed.”
Barnes was declared dead at the scene, and Lumpkins — who was also the mother of Dennis’s 3-year-old daughter — died on the way to the hospital.
The murders happened about a week after Dennis and Lumpkins had separated, and she turned to Barnes, a friend from high school at North Miami High, for help.
Police identified Dennis as a suspect immediately, though he wasn’t arrested until a month later, the Miami Herald reported.
Postell testified at Dennis’s trial on Tuesday, telling the court that Barnes’s first love was football and that her son co-founded the “Right Track” program to keep local kids safe from drugs and gangs through tutoring and sports during his time at the University of Miami.
Her son had also been named the team’s Most Improved Player the same year he was murdered.
She also disclosed the heartbreak she felt having her role model son taken away from her.
“I suffered a pain that still, to this day, is indescribable,” Postell said. “My kid had a right to live a full and happy life.”
Lumpkins’ best friend, Keisha Carter, also testified that Dennis’s actions robbed the 22-year-old of the opportunity to see her daughter graduate or become a grandmother.
“We were supposed to grow old together,” Carter said. “She was supposed to be my daughter’s godmother.”
