A Tennessee man convicted of savagely raping, torturing and killing a woman with his girlfriend has been sentenced to death, a jury ruled on Wednesday.
Sean Finnegan turned white as a ghost in the courtroom as the judge delivered the jury’s verdict — death by lethal injection, video shows.
Wide-eyed, he fussed with his long, greasy hair but remained silent — as he had been throughout the disturbing case — as he took a seat, WATE reported.
Finnegan, 56, was found guilty of killing 36-year-old Jennifer Gail Paxton with his girlfriend Rebecca Dishman, 26, in 2019 after her battered and mutilated body was discovered in a freezer at their Oak Ridge home.
Her body was kept in the freezer for roughly eight months, during which time Finnegan would view her corpse for sexual pleasure, authorities said.
Finnegan had hidden the body underneath his bed before police searched the residence in 2020.
The couple lured Paxton, who lived in a nearby homeless camp, into their home by offering her a place to stay — but instead held against her will and beat her with a baseball bat, prosecutors said.
She was restrained with a dog collar, chained to a bed and had her arms bound with zip ties, according to court documents.
Paxton was also repeatedly raped and denied food and medical care before she was strangled and left to die in the freezer. Part of one of her breasts and her nose were cut off, officials said.
Dishman pleaded guilty to murder last year after agreeing to testify against Finnegan.
Finnegan will be transferred to the state penitentiary in Nashville for execution by lethal injection, the judge said.
“It is the heaviest of decisions to seek to put someone to death,” Anderson County District Attorney General Dave Clark said in a statement.
“In concert with the victim’s family, I felt that it was important to ask an Anderson County Jury to sentence Sean Finnegan to death based upon what he did to Jennifer Paxton. To do less may have sent the wrong message, dishonored Jennifer’s memory, failed to acknowledge her suffering or not acknowledged the degree of Finnegan’s conduct,” he added.
Finnegan was convicted on 11 counts on Monday, including criminally negligent homicide, first-degree felony murder during the perpetration of/attempt to perpetrate aggravated rape, abuse of a corpse, and conspiracy to commit aggravated rape, WATE reported.
He is scheduled to appear in court again on Nov. 7 for a hearing regarding his non-capital convictions.
Following the verdict, Paxton’s family were seen crying in the courtroom, according to the outlet. Finnegan shook his attorney’s hands and thanked them after everyone had been dismissed.
The only time Finnegan ever expressed any emotion during the proceedings was when his brother’s ex-wife testified on his behalf and detailed how he was the victim of physical and sexual abuse as a child.
There are now 46 people on Tennessee’s Death Row — however, Gov. Bill Lee paused executions in June 2022 awaiting the results of an independent investigation into the state’s lethal injection methods.
