Donald Southworth released from a Kentucky prison 14 years after wife’s death
A man who was sentenced to 15 years in prison for the slaying of his wife in June 2010 is now free, and was released from the Eastern Kentucky Correctional Complex Monday.
Donald Southworth, 61, was released Monday morning, according to Joshua Powell, a capital trial investigator with the Department of Public Advocacy who worked on Southworth’s case. Kentucky prison records say Southworth was released because he reached his minimum sentence expiration date. He was sentenced for manslaughter involving the death of his wife, Umi Southworth, on June 9, 2010.
He’d been incarcerated since Feb. 24, 2012. For her brutal killing, Donald Southworth entered an Alford plea in Fayette Circuit Court in March 2016. An Alford plea is not an admission of guilt but an acknowledgment there is enough evidence to convict.
Umi Southworth, 44, was found naked and severely beaten beneath a box spring in a brushy area behind her home on Meadowthorpe Avenue.
A belt was wrapped around her neck. Officers who responded thought she was dead and did not call for medical treatment. After officials with the coroner’s office discovered three hours later she was alive, she was taken to University of Kentucky Chandler Hospital. She died the next day.
The case resulted in policy changes requiring police to call medical personnel to the scenes of apparent homicides.
Donald Southworth was originally convicted by a jury for murder and sentenced to life in prison after a two-week trial. The Kentucky Supreme Court, however, overturned that conviction in 2014 because a piece of evidence, a used condom, was inadmissible.
Former Fayette Commonwealth’s Attorney Ray Larson recommended a 15-year sentence at the time, including time served.
This story was originally published February 20, 2024 at 9:50 AM.
