The prosecution in Marcelle Jerrill Waldon’s death-penalty case will be allowed an expert to counter defense claims that Waldon suffers an intellectual disability and is therefore ineligible for a death sentence.
By an 11-1 margin, a jury recommended Waldon die for the brutal stabbing deaths of former City Commissioner Edie Yates Henderson and her husband, David Henderson, in their Lake Morton home in November 2020.,
Since then, Waldon’s defense has asked Circuit Judge J. Kevin Abdoney to consider his intellectual disabilities before imposing a sentence of either life in prison without parole or the jury’s recommendation: death by lethal injection.
On Jan. 31, the same jury convicted Waldon , 39, of two counts of first-degree murder for killing the Hendersons, a crime that sent shock waves across Lakeland. The prominent Lakeland couple had been stabbed 23 times with a large kitchen knife missing from a butcher block in their home.
Waldon also was convicted of burglary of a dwelling with assault, assault and battery while armed with a firearm, two counts of kidnapping, robbery with a firearm, attempted arson, arson, grand theft of a motor vehicle and tampering with physical evidence.