Flint man gets 10 to 20 years
Sometimes things break around the house, and need to get fixed, but not everyone is a skilled plumber, drywall finisher, or tile setter. This, of course, means you’ll need to hire a handyman, which can be costly. However, one man’s solution to this was to pay his handyman in crack cocaine which, as you can imagine, led to a rather disastrous end.
According to court records, 33-year-old Joseph Dante Lee was just sentenced to prison for 10 to 20 years after jurors decided he was guilty of assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder. And what caused the jury to decide this about Mr. Lee? Well, it’s an interesting story…..
Apparently Lee hired someone to do some electrical work for him and, in return, offered to pay him in crack cocaine. But as is often the case when people with faulty work ethics are paid before the job is done and left unsupervised, not everything works out for the best.
Lee then left the property for an undisclosed period of time, leaving the man in his home to complete the job. But upon his return he discovered that instead of finishing the wiring work he had been hired to do, the handyman had instead helped himself to some additional crack.
Angry about this rather unsurprising turn of events, Lee then chose to solve the problem by shooting the handyman in the chest. According to testimony provided in court, the bullet travelled down the length of the victim’s torso and lodged in his groin. As it turns out, doctors were unable to later extract the bullet.
In an effort to provide a possibly less self-incriminating version of events, Lee dragged the man out onto his porch and then called 911. He used a false name to identify himself to police and claimed that the man had been shot by a stranger during a robbery gone wrong.
This story was later changed to a completely different version, in which Lee was attacked by the handyman and was forced to shoot him in an act of self-defense. This significant change in the version of events, along with a number of other inconsistencies in the timeline, was a major factor in Lee being found guilty by the jury.
His attorney, John Tosto, requested that the judge show mercy on Lee during the sentencing. However, Genesee Circuit Judge Archie Hayman dismissed this request, saying that Lee had already received sufficient mercy in the form of a less severe conviction. Lee was originally charged with assault with intent to murder, which is punishable by a possible life sentence. Fortunately for Lee, he was found guilty by the jury of assault with intent to do great bodily harm less than murder, which carries a lesser penalty.