Nicholas Lindsey was a sixteen year old living in Florida when he would murder St. Petersburg Police Officer David Crawford
According to court documents Officer David Crawford was called to a scene regarding a suspicious person in the area. A backup Officer would arrive soon after and would hear gunshots. The backup Officer would find the body of Officer David Crawford beside his patrol car, he had been shot at close range multiple times.
Nicholas Lindsey would be found and arrested the next day following a large manhunt
Nicholas Lindsey would be convicted of the murder and sentenced to life without parole. At a resentencing hearing years later a judge ruled that the original sentence should stand
Where Is Nicholas Lindsey Today
Nicholas Lindsey is currently incarcerated at the South Bay Correctional Facility
Nicholas Lindsey Current Information
| DC Number: | C06556 |
|---|---|
| Name: | LINDSEY, NICHOLAS L JR |
| Race: | BLACK |
| Sex: | MALE |
| Birth Date: | 02/13/1995 |
| Initial Receipt Date: | 03/29/2012 |
| Current Facility: | SOUTH BAY C.F. |
| Current Custody: | CLOSE |
| Current Release Date: | SENTENCED TO LIFE |
Nicholas Lindsey Case
Nicholas Lindsey has twice been sentenced to life in prison for gunning down St. Petersburg police Officer David Crawford in 2011.
His sentence has once again become the object of courtroom debate.
On Friday, Lindsey’s attorneys made a pitch to have his sentence reduced to 40 years, arguing that new sentencing guidelines for juveniles force the hand of Pinellas-Pasco Circuit Judge Thane Covert.
Covert denied the motion, disagreeing that the law requires him to do so. He could, however, still reduce the sentence at a hearing next week.
The defense offered a promising picture of Lindsey’s potential rehabilitation, while the state slowly retraced the night of Crawford’s death to underscore a continuing threat to society.
Crawford’s daughter, Amanda, who was 24 when her father was killed, asked the judge to impose the maximum sentence allowable today: life in prison with a review after 25 years.
“I cry when I see a father and daughter dance at a wedding because I know he will never see me dance at mine,” she said in the quiet courtroom. “I feel the best way to pay the debt of a precious life taken is a killer’s life served.”
Lindsey, now 21, was 16 years old when he fired five bullets into Crawford, who had interrupted him breaking into a car. A jury convicted him of first-degree murder in 2012, and Judge Covert sentenced him to life. Prosecutors had not sought the death penalty, and life was the only alternative allowed by state law.
But then the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that mandatory life sentences for juvenile offenders violated Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. Instead, it said a court must hold a sentencing hearing to consider mitigating factors before imposing that penalty.
In 2013, Lindsey got such a hearing, and then Covert, a former prosecutor, again sentenced him to life without possibility of parole.
But the following year the Legislature passed a new law in response to the Supreme Court decision. The law called for a minimum sentence of 40 years for first-degree murder.
The motion filed by Lindsey’s attorney, Stacey Schroeder, argued that because there’s now an alternative to life without parole, and his jury did not get to consider that in a sentencing hearing, a judge now had no choice but to reduce Lindsey’s sentence to 40 years. Covert disagreed.
Schroeder then made a case for reducing the sentence anyway, based on Lindsey’s youth.
Imposing a sentence less than life, she said, “does not denigrate the position held by Officer Crawford. It does not denigrate his memory.”
The shooting occurred just after 10:30 p.m. on Feb. 21, 2011, near Eighth Street and Third Avenue S. Crawford, 46, a 25-year veteran known for his intimidating size and gunfighter’s mustache, was found lying on the ground next to his cruiser.
Lindsey, caught after the largest manhunt in city history, confessed to the crime at the encouragement of his parents, who told him to do what was right.
“I just started shooting,” Lindsey said, sobbing, in a videotaped confession later played for the jury. “Mom, Daddy, I’m sorry.”
Authorities said he bought the semiautomatic gun on the street just a week earlier for $140.
“He chose to kill Dave in the hopes of not being held responsible for what he was doing,” George Lofton, president of the Suncoast Police Benevolent Association, told the Tampa Bay Times on Friday. “He calculated that. He had the means to carry that out on him. I don’t think anything needs to be changed.”
Crawford’s killing came one month after two St. Petersburg police officers, Sgt. Tom Baitinger and Officer Jeffrey Yaslowitz, were also fatally shot in the line of duty — the first police officers killed in the city in 31 years.
Crawford was a veteran of the midnight shift, a gruff but amiable fixture of the tight-knit, “Black Sheep” squad.
He often worked security inside Tropicana Field and collected every bit of Tampa Bay Rays memorabilia he could find.
“I have never heard a sincere apology,” Amanda Crawford said in court Friday. “One shot could be an accident, two perhaps, but three, four and five showed intent.”
Nicholas Lindsey, sentenced to life for killing copy, loses bid for shorter sentence
