A Tennessee man was sentenced to death by lethal injection in an Anderson County court for the torture, rape, murder, and abuse of a corpse in Oak Ridge in 2019, according to multiple reports.
Monday, Sean Finnegan was found guilty of the following crimes against a homeless woman named Jennifer Paxton:
- Two counts of first-degree murder
- Criminally negligent homicide
- Attempted aggravated rape
- Aggravated rape
- Aggravated kidnapping
- Especially aggravated kidnapping
- Conspiracy to commit aggravated rape
- Conspiracy to commit aggravated kidnapping
- Abuse of a corpse
- Tampering with evidence
The typical sentence for murder in Tennessee is life in prison unless there are specific aggravating factors that meet the criteria for putting a defendant to death.
The same jurors who convicted Finnegan (pictured above) decided Wednesday morning that Finnegan’s actions met those aggravating factors.
Those factors are:
- The murder was especially heinous, atrocious or cruel
- It involved serious torture or abuse beyond what was needed to produce death
- The murder was knowingly committed, solicited directed or aided by the defendant, while the defendant had a substantial role in committing any rape or kidnapping
- The defendant knowingly mutilated the body of the victim after death
On November 7, Finnegan will be sentenced for the non-capital crimes. Finnegan will be transported to the Tennessee State Penitentiary in Nashville.
Separately, Finnegan has been charged with the alleged sexual abuse of a three-year-old child in 2020, for which he will stand trial at a later date.
According to “Court TV,” which tracked the case, Finnegan and his girlfriend Rebecca Dishman lured Paxton into their home by promising her a place to stay. Inside the home, Paxton was beaten with q baseball bat, shackled to a bed, repeatedly raped and tortured. She was eventually strangled to death.
Finnegan then brutally mutilated her corpse, cutting off her nose and one of her breasts while breaking her bones to fit her body in a stand-up freezer. There, her body remained until August 5 2020, when police executed a search warrant on Finnegan’s home in relation to the murder.
State law requires the criminal court of appeals to review all death sentences.
Dishman pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and two counts of rape of a child on September 5, 2023, to avoid a potential death sentence. She was required to testify against Finnegan as part of the plea deal.
She has been sentenced to life in prison plus an additional 50 years, with no opportunity for parole.
In 2022, Gov. Bill Lee (R) halted death sentences pending a review of the state’s method of lethal injection after an oversight led to the lethal injection of Oscar Franklin Smith being delayed for hours, and eventually temporarily reprieved.
“I review each death penalty case and believe it is an appropriate punishment for heinous crimes,” Lee said at the time. “However, the death penalty is an extremely serious matter, and I expect the Tennessee Department of Correction to leave no question that procedures are correctly followed.”
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Peter D’Abrosca is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Peter on Twitter/X.
Photo “Sean Finnegan” by Anderson County Sheriff’s Office.
