A former Mississippi officer is expected to accept a plea deal on Friday in the 2019 death of a Black woman who was shot and killed in her home, the Daily Journal reported.
Former Oxford officer Matthew Kinne, 40, was charged with capital murder days after 32-year-old Dominique Clayton was found dead in her home. Tony Farese, Kinne’s attorney, described his client as “remorseful,” adding, “This was a situation where he literally got to the point where he broke.”
Kinne and Clayton were in a relationship at the time of her death, although he was married. Kinne is accused of shooting Clayton to death while she slept in her home on May 19, 2019.
As a part of Kinne’s guilty plea, expected to be made on July 30 at the Union County Courthouse in New Albany, the state will take the death penalty off the table and recommend Kinne be sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Clayton was discovered by one of her four children on May 19, 2019, at her home on Suncrest Drive, and Lafayette County Coroner Rocky Kennedy later confirmed she had succumbed to a gunshot wound to her head. After officers discovered then-officer Kinne was in a relationship with Clayton, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation was called to investigate the case. Shortly after Kinne was arrested, he was fired from the force.
According to Kinne, Clayton had threatened to tell his wife about the affair. According to Clayton’s family, she was trying to end the relationship before Kinne killed her. Clayton also allegedly told family members before her death that she feared Kinne might harm her because she’d told him she thought she might be pregnant, the family attorney’s says.
Kinne entered a not guilty plea in September 2019 and the case has been on hold for about two years, as there was a delay in receiving final autopsy results, according to Farese.
In August 2019, Kinne was transferred from the Panola County Jail to the Union County Jail after an image surfaced showing him eating a meal at the guard desk unsupervised and unrestrained.
Clayton’s family has filed a $5 million wrongful death suit against the city of Oxford and the Oxford Police Department, a claim that includes the contention that early in the investigation officers suggested to the family that Clayton had killed herself despite the fact that no gun was found at the scene.
