Daytona Beach, FL - An inmate already serving time in the Tomoka Correctional Institute for Second Degree Murder, 41-year-old Sheddrick Bentley, is found not guilty by reason of insanity in the strangulation death of a cellmate.
A six-person jury took about six hours to come back with the verdict at about 10:30 p.m. last night (June 12). The verdict does not mean Bentley is going anywhere. He's been serving a sentence handed down in 2007 for a second-degree murder charge, as well as other charges, for crimes committed in Collier County.
Because of the not guilty by reason of insanity verdict, a hearing will be scheduled to determine Bentley's therapeutic needs. If he wasn't already serving a sentence in prison, Bentley could have been sent directly to a state psychiatric hospital or released to receive outpatient treatment.
Bentley's cellmate, child rapist Hans Christian Anderson, was strangled during the noon headcount on February 17, 2016, while both were incarcerated at Tomoka Correctional Institute.
The jurors did not know the crimes committed by Bentley and Anderson but did know that both men were already serving prison sentences.
Anderson was serving a 25-year sentence for brutally beating and raping a 13-year-old girl in 1998 in a church basement in Pinellas County. He'd only been Bentley's cellmate for about a week before he was killed.
Bentley said he was asleep, then woke up to Anderson holding his genitals. He said he snapped and the next thing he knew was that Anderson was dead on the floor of the cell.
Bentley is serving time for a second-degree murder charge that happened in 2004.
