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Thread: Marcus Jovelt Pinckney Sentenced to Life in 2018 FL Slaying of Tracy Height

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    Marcus Jovelt Pinckney Sentenced to Life in 2018 FL Slaying of Tracy Height





    'He shot my dad in the face': Man testifies during accused drug dealer's death-penalty trial

    By Frank Fernandez
    The Daytona Beach News-Journal

    A man testified during a murder trial Friday that a drug dealer named Marcus Pinckney had threatened both himself and his father.

    Trevon Height said Pinckney told him: "If you choose your father over me, you both are dead.”

    And Height testified that Pinckney followed up on that threat early on a July morning four years ago.

    Marcus Pinckney, 44, is on trial, accused of killing Height’s father, Tracy Height, 57, and trying to kill 27-year-old Trevon Height, as well as a third man named Robert Singleton.

    Pinckney was charged with first-degree murder with a firearm, two counts of attempted first-degree murder with a firearm, kidnapping with a firearm, and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

    If convicted of first-degree murder, Pinckney could face the death penalty.

    During opening statements, Assistant State Attorney Andrew Urbanak, who is prosecuting the case along with Assistant State Attorney Jason Lewis, said Pinckney was an angry drug dealer who claimed the three men had been ripping him off of drugs and money.

    Pinckney had decided to kill the three men, but first he picked up his girlfriend, Christy Armstrong. Pinckney pulled a knife on his girlfriend, accused her of cheating on him and then bound and gagged her, Urbanak said. He then drove around with her before heading to the Sun Plaza Motel in Daytona Beach.

    “He told her he was going to kill three men,” Urbanak said.

    Pinckney sat next to his attorneys, Terence Lenamon, Jessica Manuele and Joyce Brenner. During his opening statement, Lenamon said that Pinckney’s girlfriend told police that Pinckney had been using drugs and was paranoid.

    Lenamon said that the Heights and Singleton carried knives.

    Lenamon said that Pinckney’s girlfriend knew about his drug dealing but benefitted from the money it generated, since it paid her bills.

    During his testimony, Trevon Height told Urbanak that he and Singleton were standing and talking outside the Sun Plaza Motel, 1011 S. Ridgewood Ave., early on the morning of July 19, 2018, when Pinckney drove up.

    Trevon Height said his father walked over to Pinckney’s car and the two men were talking.

    'Shot my dad in the face'

    “I looked over at Robert, started talking to him some more, and then he shot my dad in the face,” Trevon Height said.

    Urbanak asked him what else happened.

    “He shot my dad, turned toward me and I was just like, sorry for my language, ‘Really (expletive),’ and he shot me,” Trevon Height said.

    He said once he was shot he did not remember anything else.

    Trevon Height also said neither he, nor his father nor Singleton were armed with weapons.

    Pinckney then shot Singleton, according to records.

    During cross examination, Lenamon said that the room Trevon Height and his father were living in at the Sun Plaza was a “drug den.”

    Trevon Height at first disagreed, but later agreed that there was drug use there.

    Lenamon also asked him if prostitutes frequented the room.

    Trevon Height said he had no control over that. He also testified that both he and his father used drugs.

    Pinckney, who has a criminal record, was charged with attempted murder in March of 2004, but pleaded to a lesser charge of aggravated battery and served nearly 10 years in state prison. In that case, he used a 12-gauge shotgun to shoot another man.

    Life or death

    After jurors had left the courtroom for the day on Friday, Circuit Judge James Clayton asked a woman who was close to Tracy Height whether she would agree to a term of life in prison for Pinckney.

    Clayton said that Pinckney would plead guilty and spend the rest of his life in prison if the prosecutors dropped the death penalty.

    Clayton said the actual imposition of the death penalty would take a long time.

    “I’m going to be dead before he is,” Clayton said.

    The woman said she would not and indicated other family members also would be opposed to dropping their pursuit of the death penalty.

    Clayton said to let him know if they changed their mind.

    The woman did not want to comment when approached by a reporter afterward.

    The trial continues Monday.

    https://www.news-journalonline.com/s...h/10809682002/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Woman testifies ex-boyfriend waited all day to kill 3 men in Daytona Beach and said she would be next

    By Frank Fernandez
    The Daytona Beach News-Journal

    Marcus Pinckney told his girlfriend he had been waiting all day to kill three men, the woman testified Monday at his murder trial.

    Christy Armstrong also testified that Pinckney said after he killed the men, he was going to torture and kill her.

    “He's telling me that he’s been waiting all day to do this,” Armstrong said. “He's going to shoot and kill those three people."

    The 44-year-old Pinckney carried out his plot, but managed to kill only one of the men, prosecutors said during his trial before Circuit Judge James Clayton at the Volusia County Courthouse in DeLand.

    Pinckney was charged with first-degree murder with a firearm in the killing of Tracy Height, 57. If convicted, Pinckney could face the death penalty.

    Pinckney was also charged with two counts of attempted first-degree murder with a firearm in the shooting of Height’s son, 27-year-old Trevon Height, and a third man named Robert Singleton. He is also charged with possession of a firearm by a convicted felon and kidnapping with a firearm.

    The deadly gunfire erupted early on the morning of July 19, 2018, in the parking lot of the Sun Plaza Motel at 1011 S. Ridgewood Ave., in Daytona Beach. Pinckney was a drug dealer who believed the three men were ripping him off of drugs and money.

    Armstrong recalled the terrifying night under questioning by Assistant State Attorney Jason Lewis, who is prosecuting the case along with Andrew Urbanak.

    Shortly after 1 that morning, Pinckney called Armstrong, who was “Ubering,” working for the ride-share company.

    She went to meet him in her Mazda 6 at his grandmother's property on Tennessee Street.

    Pinckney accused her of being unfaithful, which she denied. When a car approached on the street, Pinckney pointed a gun at her and threatened to shoot her if she moved, she testified.

    He then used a cellphone charger cord to tie up her hands, binding he would later reinforce with a belt. He also tied up her feet. Pinckney moved her to the passenger seat, which he reclined. He took off his T-shirt, cut it up and used it to gag her, she said.

    He told her he had been waiting all day to shoot the men. And he also told her something else.

    “The last thing that he said he was going to do to me is take me to a secluded place and torture me and kill me,” Armstrong said as her voice trembled.

    Armstrong, a single mom, said she was worried and scared and wondered who would raise her daughter. She said she was upset and crying.

    He planned to get the three men close together

    Pinckney drove to the Sun Plaza Motel. Armstrong said that since the seat was reclined, she could only see a fragment of what was happening but she recalled his plan.

    "His plan was to get these three people close together so that when he stopped the car … he'd be able to shoot all three in close range," Armstrong said.

    She said when they got to the motel, Pinckney yelled that he was on a personal call because she believed someone was approaching the car.

    When the men came over, Armstrong testified Pinckney placed the gun low so the men could not see it.

    She said she saw a person approach the car, but could not say who it was.

    "Do you see Marcus do anything to that person?" Lewis asked.

    “I see Marcus shoot him, uh, directly in the head,” Armstrong said. "And the person fell."

    She said the other two people fled. She was not able to see, but she heard five gunshots.

    She heard a high-pitched scream, which she said sounded like a female. Then Pinckney got back in the car and drove away with her still tied and gagged.

    “I just felt like it was my turn. I'm just seeing my life flash before my eyes,” she said.

    She said Pinckney seemed upset.

    She said they eventually drove to Bunnell where they stopped at a gas station and Pinckney untied and ungagged her so she could buy some gas, and get him some water and a cigar.

    She said Pinckney let her go around 6 a.m. at Bill France and Clyde Morris boulevards, back in Daytona Beach.

    She said Pinckney told her he was not going to hurt her or her daughter because her daughter reminded him of his youngest daughter.

    Pinckney also suggested if a reward was offered that she should claim it and give the money to his kids.

    "He gave me a kiss, I believe, and then he sped off," Armstrong said.

    Pinckney did not betray any emotions while his ex-girlfriend testified. He appeared to look straight ahead as he sat with his attorneys, Terence Lenamon, Jessica Manuele and Joyce Brenner.

    When Lenamon asked Armstrong whether, after Pinckney’s arrest, she would still tell him that she loved him, missed him and he was still important to her, she said she did.

    She agreed with Lenamon that Pinckney on the night of the killings was not acting like himself.

    She said Pinckney had never hit her before that night. Under questioning by Lewis, she said he punched her in the right eye inside the car.

    Armstrong agreed when Lenamon said that Pinckney was paranoid and was not acting himself and had been sleeping with a gun under his bed.

    Lenamon said that after Pinckney dropped her off, she could have taken the binding off her hands and the gag out of her mouth, but she wanted police to see them. Armstrong agreed.

    Armstrong said that even though she and Pinckney had fought a few days before the incident, she still hoped to reconcile.

    She said Pinckney had some college credit and she was hoping he would leave drug dealing and finish his college education.

    Armstrong said she knew he was a drug dealer and he would give her money to help her with the bills. But she said she did not know he was using drugs until the night of the shooting when he used cocaine in front of her.

    “He wasn’t a good drug dealer, was he?” Lenamon asked

    “No,” Armstrong said and smiled.

    “He didn’t even have a car; he used your car,” Lenamon said.

    The trial continues Tuesday.

    https://www.news-journalonline.com/s...l/10837792002/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Marcus Pinckney was convicted of first degree murder

    By upjobsnews.com

    On Monday, jurors will begin hearing evidence about whether a Daytona Beach man should be sentenced to death after a commission this week found him guilty of a triple shooting that killed one man and wounded two others.

    Marcus Pinckney, 44, was found guilty Wednesday of first-degree murder with a firearm in the killing of Tracy Haight, 57. The jury also found Pinckney guilty of two counts of attempted first-degree murder with a firearm in the shooting of Haight’s son. , 27-year-old Trayvon Height, and a third man named Robert Singleton. Pinckney was also convicted of kidnapping with a firearm and possession of a firearm by a convicted felon.

    Pinkney did not testify. He occasionally spoke to his lawyers and occasionally waved to a couple of people in the gallery as he was led in and out of the courtroom.

    https://upjobsnews.com/marcus-pinckn...degree-murder/
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Marcus Pinckney spared death sentence, will serve life in prison

    By Frank Fernandez
    The Daytona Beach News-Journal

    A jury spared convicted killer Marcus Pinckney from a possible death sentence and instead he will spend the rest of his life in prison.

    The jury convicted the 44-year-old Pinckney on Dec. 7 of first-degree murder with a firearm in the killing of Tracy Height, 57. The jury also found Pinckney guilty of two counts of attempted first-degree murder with a firearm in the shooting of Height’s son, 27-year-old Trevon Height, and a third man named Robert Singleton. Pinckney was also convicted of kidnapping with a firearm.

    In the penalty phase, jurors had to decide whether to recommend to Circuit Judge James Clayton that Pinckney be sentenced to death on the first-degree murder conviction. All 12 jurors must recommend death for a judge to have that option. If the vote is not unanimous, Pinckney must be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    Jurors returned a recommendation of life on Thursday afternoon. That meant that Clayton was obligated to sentence Pinckney to the mandatory life in prison without parole.

    Pinckney was a drug dealer who said the other three men were ripping him off. On the morning of July 19, 2018, Pinckney kidnapped his girlfriend, Christy Armstrong, of Daytona Beach, tied and gagged her and brought her along to a violent confrontation.

    A security video shown during the trial and again by prosecutors on Thursday showed a car driving up to the Sun Plaza Motel, 1011 S. Ridgewood Ave. A man approached the driver’s side door and there were muzzle flashes as Pinckney shot Tracy Height, and then walked away from the car and shot the two other men, Trevon Height and Singleton. As he walked back to the car, Pinckney fired again at Trevon Height and Singleton.

    Assistant State Attorney Jason Lewis during his closing argument in the death penalty case told jurors that PInckney had planned all day for the killing and then kidnapped his girlfriend, threatening to kill her and then killing one man and attempting to kill two other men.

    Lewis listed the aggravators for jurors. The first one was that Pinckney killed the man while engaged in another serious crime, the kidnapping of his girlfriend.

    Aggravators are used to attest to the severity of a crime.

    Lewis also said another aggravator was that the killing was done while Pinckney was engaged in contemporaneous crimes of trying to kill the other two men. And another factor to support the second aggravator was that Pinckey shot Ricky White in 2004. White testified earlier in the trial that he was hit by buckshot, blinding him in his right eye.

    Lewis said that he believed what pushed Pinckney's crime over the top into a death penalty case was that Pinckney had already shot a man, White, before shooting the other three. And Lewis said Pinckney used a similar ruse. Pinckney waited with a shotgun as he tried to lure White to him, just like he lured the three men to the car in the motel parking lot before opening fire.

    Lewis said a third aggravator was that the killing was cold, calculated and premeditated. He said Pinckney had been planning all day to kill the three men. He said Pinckney bought bullets at Walmart and later complained the ammunition was not the right type.

    He told his girlfriend he was going to kill them.

    Pinckney was defended by attorneys Lenamon, Jessica Manuele and Joyce Brenner, and the defense objected a number of times to Lewis' closing arguments, with the judge overruling most objections. Some objections resulted in a sidebar.

    In her closing, Manuele argued there was no evidence to support the heightened premeditation which is part of the cold calculated and premeditated aggravator. She recalled that Armstrong said Pinckney was acting erratic.
    She reminded jurors of a recorded phone call after Pinckney was arrested between him and Armstrong. She said Pinckney was crying on the phone.

    “He realizes he has done something so stupid and wrong," Manuele said. "That is not the kind of person that is not worthy of life. We cannot bring Tracy back but all life is valuable.”

    Manuele recalled Pinckney’s interview with police.

    “He tells the police that things got out of control,” she said.

    And she presented mitigators for jurors, including violence in the family home when Pinckney was a child, including his mother throwing a pot of boiling water on her husband. Another time, his mother beat his sister to the point that she was taken to a hospital, Manuele said.

    She said Pinckney’s mother had used drugs when he was a child.

    Manuele reminded jurors that Pinckney had been sent to the Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys, a notorious and now-closed state school in Marianna. She said Pinckney was traumatized at the school, where there was racism and daily fights.

    Later, Pinckney would go to prison. Once released he tried to turn his life around by attending college but it was too much of a challenge for a first-generation college student who also spent time in prison, the lawyer said.

    She added that Pinckney was using drugs on the day of the killing.

    Manuele asked jurors to allow Pinckney to continue to live so that he would be available from prison for his children. Pinckney would never be released, she said.

    “Nobody is justifying the murder of Tracy Height,” Manuele said. “(Pinkney) will be punished. He will spend the rest of his life in prison.”

    https://news.yahoo.com/marcus-pinckn...232650560.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

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    Of course they did. No surprise here
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

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    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    Sentenced to life on January 4, 2023

    http://www.dc.state.fl.us/offenderSe...&TypeSearch=AI
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

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