Man Guilty In 2007 Murder Of Ft. Campbell Veteran

NASHVILLE, TN — Ten years after 26-year-old Army veteran Herbert Ray Clayton Jr. was robbed and murdered at a Murfreesboro Pike ATM, his killer was found guilty Thursday.

It took a Davidson County jury less than four hours to convict Christopher Davis, 30, guilty of first-degree murder and aggravated attempted robbery. Davis waived his sentencing hearing on the murder charge and was therefore sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. He will be sentenced on the robbery conviction in November.

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Davis is already serving a 49-year sentence for an ATM robbery with a similar modus operandi the day before Clayton was killed in Antioch. The victim in that case was able to escape and identified Davis and three other men as his assailants. Two of those men testified against Davis in the most recent trial.

Initially, prosecutors intended to seek the death penalty in the Clayton murder, but in 2011, Judge Monte Watkins ruled that he was "intellectually disabled" under the standard set by Tennessee after a 2002 United States Supreme Court decision that "mentally retarded" people could not be executed.

Image via Metro Nashville Police