Man asks to plead guilty
A man charged with murdering a woman and stuffing her body in a Buick said he wanted to plead guilty to his crimes Friday in Hamilton County Criminal Court.
Joshua Mincy, 26, was supposed to be arraigned in the April 7 slaying of 47-year-old Tammy Hall, whose bullet-riddled body authorities discovered in the trunk of a green Buick. Arraignment is where defendants are officially informed of their criminal charges and asked to enter a guilty or not-guilty plea.
Most defendants say not guilty and fight the state’s evidence until they go to trial or enter a plea agreement.
Mincy simply asked if he could plead guilty to charges of first-degree murder and abuse of a corpse.
Because Mincy was making an unusual request, Judge Barry Steelman passed his case to Oct. 31. Was Mincy, who faces life in prison, trying to take responsibility for his charges or pulling a stunt?
Jonathan Turner, one of two attorneys who represented Mincy in an earlier hearing, declined to comment Friday. So did the Hamilton County District Attorney’s Office, which secured Mincy’s indictment last month.
Prosecutors say police found Hall’s body in the trunk after Mincy crashed the vehicle on Norcross Street and took off running. Authorities found him and a Bersa Thunder .380 handgun in a creek near the crash scene. They also recovered a bullet from Hall’s body and sent the evidence to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation. Prosecutors typically do that to find DNA and fingerprints, or to see if the bullets match any recovered weapons.
According to court testimony, Mincy said during questioning that he and Hall took drugs, and he alluded to an argument with a third person named Hector that led to gunshots in the car. But officers said they couldn’t find Hector.
Daryl Slaughter, a detective with the Chattanooga Police Department, said Mincy changed his story in the course of two interviews and admitted to the killing.
Mincy’s then-defense attorneys said that wasn’t true. Officers initially questioned Mincy while he was intoxicated, he never asked to speak to detectives a second time and he never admitted to the killing, they said.