Dexter Lee Vinson

Dexter Lee Vinson was an inmate at the Greensville Correctional Facility in Jarratt, Virginia who was executed by lethal injection on April 27, 2006. Vinson, 34 years old at the time, was found guilty of the 1997 murder of Angela Felton, age 25, and was sentenced to death on February 11, 1999.

On May 19, 1997, Felton and her three children resided with Nethie Pierce and her children in Portsmouth, Virginia. The family previously had lived with Vinson in Portsmouth for "about a year and a half," after which the unmarried couple lived apart for about three weeks. At approximately 9:00 a.m. local time on May 19, Felton borrowed Pierce's 1988 Chevrolet Beretta to take her children to school. In a hurry to get the kids to school, Felton wore only a shift-type robe and underwear. Pierce's 14-year-old daughter, Willisa Joyner, rode with Felton.

At about 6:30 a.m. on the same day, Faye Wilson was completing a weekend stay with Vinson in a Suffolk motel. Wilson owned a 1988 blue Mercury Tracer automobile that she let Vinson use that morning. After Felton delivered her children to school, she drove with Joyner to the home she had shared with Vinson in order to get the mail. Upon arrival Joyner got out of the car at which time Felton saw Vinson driving a blue automobile. Joyner reentered the red vehicle when Felton said, "Get back in the car." As Felton started driving Vinson twice rammed the rear of the Beretta with the front of the Tracer.

Felton stopped the Beretta and Vinson walked to the driver's side window where she was sitting. He then punched out the window. Vinson next grabbed Felton, hit her in the face and chest with his hand, and pulled her out of the car. Vinson held Felton by the arm and, in the presence of bystanders, pulled off her robe leaving her standing in her underwear, screaming and bleeding from her nose and mouth. Vinson next took Felton to the Tracer and made her get in the car. When the Tracer wouldn't start up, Vinson put her in the Beretta and they drove away.

Police officers arrived on the scene after Vinson had abducted Felton. There they obtained a description of Vinson and the Beretta. Shortly afterwards Vertley Hunter noticed from her home a red Beretta, wrecked in the back that was pulled off the street and parked behind a vacant house in her neighborhood. Boards were nailed over the windows of the house. Hunter observed a young white female and a young black male sitting in the vehicle with the female sitting in the driver's seat with her hand outside the window holding a cigarette.

According to Hunter the man "got out on the passenger side of the car and went to the back *** and got a piece of rope out" and "leaned back into the car" holding the rope. Hunter heard the woman tell the man "to leave her alone so she could go on with her life," and heard her "ask the Lord to spare her life because he was going to kill her." At that time the man was "choking her with the rope."

The man then "grabbed her by the hair from the back seat of the car and pulled her over the seat and he pulled the rope from around her neck at the same time." He "pulled her down in the floor" and "told her that he was going to kill her." While the woman was still inside the car, the man slammed the door on her head twice.

Hunter next saw the man kick dirt beside the car to cover blood that was on the ground. He pulled off a board covering a window of the house, raised the window, and climbed inside through the window. Hunter saw the man enter the house twice and wipe blood off himself with a towel. Hunter watched the events for a period of several hours until the man drove the Beretta into the woods behind the house and left the area around 11:00 a.m. Hunter later identified Vinson as the man she observed committing these acts.

Janice Green, who also lived near the vacant house, testified that during the morning of the 19th she observed a man "messing around" with a red Beretta in the yard behind the house. She saw the man pull boards off the house and enter the home twice. The second time the man took something heavy from the car and brought it into the house; she "thought it was a rug he was pulling." Green also identified Vinson as the man she observed at the vacant house.

On May 20, Portsmouth detective Jan Westerbeck went to the vacant house and discovered Felton's body inside what she described as a recently busted wall in one of the bedrooms. The body was nude and partially covered with a brown blanket and feces were found on and under her neck.

Forensic evidence connected Vinson with the crimes. His fingerprints were found on the abandoned Beretta, on the kitchen sink of the vacant house, and on a pane of glass from the house's kitchen window. Felton’s DNA was matched to a bloodstain found on a pair of blue shorts belonging to Vinson. According to Hunter, Vinson was wearing a sky blue short set when she observed him. An expert placed the odds of the DNA on Vinson's shorts being that of someone other than Felton at one in 5.5 billion.

An autopsy performed on Felton's body showed that she bled to death from deep cuts to both forearms, either of which would have been sufficient to cause death. The cut to the right forearm was two inches deep and severed two main arteries; the left forearm bore a similar wound that cut one artery. According to the medical examiner Felton did not die instantaneously—it "probably would have taken her a few minutes, several minutes to die" as Felton had sustained numerous other injuries including additional knife wounds on her shoulders, neck, and cheek, scratches on her buttocks, and cuts on her torso and on one of her legs, and a "blunt force trauma" to her head.

The medical examiner noted that Felton had sustained significant vaginal injuries inflicted while she was alive, including a laceration of her inner vaginal lip, massive bruising over her vulva area, and a "massive laceration," which tore the tissue separating the vagina from the anus and which tore around her anal opening. In the medical examiner's opinion, the vaginal injuries "would have been done by an object [not an erect penis] being penetrated in Miss Felton."

A Circuit Court, City of Portsmouth jury convicted Vinson of capital murder. During the eight-day trial, the prosecution presented evidence that, in 1987, Vinson had assaulted a police officer who was attempting to arrest him; in 1988, had assaulted a correctional officer who was attempting to move him to a cell; and, in 1997, had resisted arrest near a Suffolk convenience store so violently that it took eight police officers to subdue him.

Dr. Paul Mansheim expressed the opinion for the State "that there is at least a fifty percent chance" that Vinson would commit "another violent offense in the next five years." On April 27, 2006, the Supreme Court of the United States voted 7-2 against a stay of execution, and Governor Timothy M. Kaine rejected a plea for clemency. Vinson had no last words and requested that his last meal not be released to the public.

References

• Michelangelo Delfino and Mary E. Day, Death Penalty USA 2005 -2006, (2008), 251-255.
• Vinson v. Commonwealth (1999) 522 S.E.2d 170.
• Vinson v. Kelly (2006) 547 U.S. 1109.

See also

• Capital punishment in Virginia
• Capital punishment in the United States

Persondata
Name	Vinson, Dexter
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1963
Place of birth
Date of death	2006
Place of death