PASCAGOULA, Miss. (AP) - A Moss Point woman has been sentenced to serve 27 years in prison for the 2011 fatal shooting of a local junkyard owner.
Donna Marie Freeman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder Thursday before Jackson County Circuit Judge Robert Krebs. In exchange for her guilty plea, prosecutors dropped a capital murder charge.
Freeman was sentenced to 20 years for second-degree murder and seven years to serve on an unrelated burglary charge.
Freeman is the second person sentenced in the death of 86-year-old Charlie Mason Jr., owner of Mason’s Junkyard on Hog Island in east Jackson County.
Prosecutors say the 36-year-old Freeman had broken ties with Mason and was in a relationship with 34-year-old Jeffrey Grey Allen. Freeman told the judge she shot Mason in the back at his home at the junkyard. Then Allen came in and shot Mason a second time.
Prosecutors say the couple took thousands of dollars and a cellphone from Mason’s home.
A jury found Allen guilty of capital murder in October and Krebs sentenced him to life in prison without parole. Prosecutors did not seek the death penalty for Allen.
“Ms. Freeman lived a pretty good life until she met the co-defendant in this case,” which was about two months prior to Mason’s death, said defense attorney Arthur Carlisle said.
District Attorney Tony Lawrence said Freeman’s sentence was fair and means she is “being held accountable for taking the life of another human being.”
“If there was anybody ever under the spell of someone, Donna was under the spell of Jeffrey Allen,” he said. “There’s no doubt in my mind … what she did that night, she did because I think he absolutely told her to and made her do it.”
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