A former police officer in Lafayette County, Mississippi will plead guilty to the 2019 murder of his reported former lover.
Matthew Kinne, who was married at the time, was involved in an affair with Dominique Clayton, according to family members. The former police officer, who is white, allegedly killed his ex-girlfriend, who is Black, by shooting her in the back of the head as she slept after she told him she may be pregnant with his child, according to the Oxford Eagle.
Kinne accepted life in prison without the possibility of parole in a plea agreement to avoid the death sentence. He is expected to sentenced on Friday at the Union County Courthouse in New Albany, the Oxford Eagle reported.
The former officer was arrested the day after Clayton was found shot dead in her home on May 19, 2019, by her 8-year-old son. He was fired from the Oxford Police Department shortly after the shooting. Two other officers also resigned in connection with the case.
In August of 2019, after his arrest, Kenne was photographed inside the Lafayette County jail eating near a guard desk, unguarded and unrestrained. He was later moved to another jail in another county.
The case was on hold for years amid the coronavirus pandemic and delays from the Mississippi crime lab.
Kinne’s attorneys tried to claim that he was mentally unfit to stand trial, however a psychological examination confirmed that he was healthy.
“He’s remorseful,” said Tony Farese, Kinne’s attorney to WREG. “This was a situation where he literally got to the point where he broke. This has been a law-abiding citizen, a law enforcement officer, he had no prior history and he literally got pushed to the brink of breaking and he committed a crime of passion.”
In June 2019, Clayton’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the City of Oxford and the Oxford Police Department for $5 million. There hasn’t been a finding in the civil case.
According to the attorney, her family claims that the police department caused “undue stress” by reporting that Clayton may have killed herself when the case first began, despite the fact that no gun was found at the scene.
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