The conviction of one of four men jailed in the March 2013 beating death of a Cowan, Tenn., man whose body was found in a Franklin County cornfield was upheld by the Tennessee Criminal Court of Appeals.
Gordon David Jenkins, 48 when he was convicted in May 2015, is the only one of the four defendants to take his first-degree murder case before a jury. The jury found Jenkins guilty after less than two hours of deliberation during a four-day trial in Winchester, Tenn., just a few miles from the site where 26-year-old victim Corey N. Matthews’ body was found.
This undated photo provided by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation shows David Gordon Jenkins. Authorities are looking for Jenkins, 46, one of 4 suspects in the April beating death of a 26-year-old volunteer firefighter trying to distance himself from a white-supremacist group. Three members of Aryan Nations are scheduled to be arraigned Wednesday, May 8, 2013 on murder charges, while Jenkins, affiliated with another white supremacist gang, is on the run. (AP Photo/Tennessee Bureau of Investigation)
Jenkins was sentenced to life in prison.
His co-defendants, John Corey Lanier, 26, Todd E. Dalton, 39, and Coty Keith Holmes, 25, each pleaded guilty in their cases.
Dalton pleaded guilty in March last year to facilitating first-degree murder on the day his trial was set to start in Franklin County Circuit Court. Dalton was sentenced to 25 years in prison on his plea.