13 August 2018 :

Roger Gillett, 44, White, is resentenced to life without parole. Gillett and his then-girlfriend Lisa Jo Chamberlin were convicted of 2 counts each of capital murder for the deaths of Vernon Hulett, 34, and Linda Heintzelman, 37, at Hulett's Hattiesburg home, then putting their dismembered bodies in a freezer and taking them to an abandoned farm in Kansas. Each was sentenced to death. Gillett appealed his 2007 conviction. On June 12, 2014 (see) the Mississippi Supreme Court affirmed his convictions but overturned his death sentence because Gillett's jury was allowed to consider inadmissible evidence that it otherwise would not have. That "inadmissable" evidence was Gillett's attempted escape from the Kansas jail where he was held after his arrest. It was deemed irrelevant since it did not relate to the actual killings. On Sept. 18, 2014, the court denied the state's motion for a rehearing, sending the case back to Forrest County Circuit Court. Four years later, Gillett was resentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Before Gillett was resentenced, court documents show the victims' families were consulted by the district attorney, who "has carefully considered all matters pertinent to this case and that she will not seek the death penalty." Chamberlin's convictions were vacated in March 2017 by a 3-judge panel in the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals only to be reviewed 6 months later by the full court, which decided in March the convictions would stand. Chamberlin, convicted in 2006, is listed as an inmate at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Rankin County. She is the only female inmate on Mississippi's death row.