He brutally beat UM football player to death in 1996. Will he return to Death Row?
The man convicted of brutally beating to death a University of Miami linebacker and the killer’s ex-girlfriend almost 30 years ago could be sent back to Death Row in the coming weeks.
The resentencing of Dennis Labrant, convicted of fatally bludgeoning Timwanika Lumpkins and Canes football player Marlin Barnes on April 13, 1996, is set to begin with jury selection on Monday. The killings, prosecutors say, were motivated by jealousy, with Dennis bursting into Barnes’ apartment on UM’s Coral Gables campus, catching him by surprise and beating his face with the butt of a shotgun to the point that his features were “obliterated.”
Dennis then continued his rampage, bashing the back of Lumpkins’ head, according to stories in the Herald’s archives. Dennis and Lumpkins had separated about a week earlier and shared a 3-year-old daughter, Antonesha. Lumpkins was a high-school friend of Barnes.
Lumpkins and Barnes were both 22 when they were killed.
Barnes was found slumped against the door but clinging to life inside the apartment by his roommate, childhood best friend and UM teammate Earl Little, who played in the NFL from 1997 to 2005. The slayings rocked the UM community and Canes team. Dennis was also known because he had once reached national prominence through The Dogs, a Miami rap group that had two albums on Billboard’s Top 100 chart.
Dennis, now 52, is back in court in Miami after Florida’s death penalty law was embroiled in controversy.
Courts strike down Florida’s death-penalty law
In 2016, a U.S. Supreme Court opinion found Florida’s death-penalty sentencing system unconstitutional, as it called for a judge to determine whether a death penalty should be imposed, which violated the Sixth Amendment right to trial by jury.
Florida lawmakers, with support of then-Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi, rewrote the state law to allow only 10 of 12 jurors to recommend a death penalty. But the Florida Supreme Court in 2017 ruled the new law was unconstitutional, saying jury verdicts needed to be unanimous.
That was the catalyst that granted about 100 Death Row inmates, including Dennis, the opportunity for a new sentencing. Dennis, following his two first-degree murder convictions, had been sentenced to death in 1999.
In 2023, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis signed a new law that allows juries to recommend a death sentence with an 8-4 vote instead of unanimously. DeSantis pushed for the change after the Parkland school shooter, who killed 17 students and faculty in a shooting spree at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High on Feb. 14, 2018, was spared from the death penalty in 2022.
Under current state law, a jury considering a death-penalty sentence must unanimously find that prosecutors proved at least one aggravating factor beyond a reasonable doubt. They must also determine whether that outweighs mitigating circumstances for the defendant.
Dennis is among six former Death Row inmates from Miami-Dade still in legal limbo as they await their fate: lethal injection or a lifetime behind bars.
Jealousy leads to murder
Barnes and Lumpkins had spent the hours before the murders at Salvation, a South Beach nightclub where a party was held for the Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins. When the pair left the club, two of the tires of the Ford Explorer that Barnes drove had been slashed, according to the Herald’s archives.
Also in attendance was Dennis, who, police say, may have crossed paths with Barnes and Lumpkins at the celebration. Barnes had helped Lumpkins pack up boxes and lugged them to her grandmother’s home after her break-up with Dennis, according to the Herald’s archives. She and Barnes had been friends since their days attending North Miami High School.
Shortly after the night out, Dennis pushed his way inside Barnes’ apartment, beat the duo to death and fled without being seen, prosecutors say. Blood spatter evidence indicated that Barnes was likely attacked immediately after opening the door, according to the Herald’s archives.
Dennis was suspected of the murders from the start because of his volatile relationship with Lumpkins. But he was not arrested until May 1996, about a month after the murders. When questioned by police, Dennis claimed that he was hanging out with friends at the time the murders occurred. (Dennis even attended Lumpkins’ funeral with their then-3-year-old daughter.)
Detectives traced Dennis back to the crime after a friend of Dennis’ told investigators he had let the suspected killer borrow a shotgun, according to the Herald’s archives. He also led police to the shotgun, which was tucked away in a sewer off Interstate 95 and Northwest 151st Street.
Splinters from the shotgun and metal shards from its trigger guard were found inside Barnes’ apartment — and linked back to the shotgun used in the murders, according to testimony at trial.
Police also connected a bloodied gym bag, which was in the possession of Dennis’ friend, to the crime. At one point, the bag contained the shotgun, the knife Dennis used to slash the tires of the Ford Explorer and clothes Dennis was believed to have worn while spying on the couple.
Already among Florida’s notorious killers
Dennis was found guilty of the murders more than two years after the bloody killings. A month later, 11 of the 12 jurors voted for Dennis to die by the electric chair.
“Labrant Deshawn Dennis had a cold, calculated and premeditated plan to kill both victims without any pretense of moral or legal justification,” then-Miami-Dade Circuit Court Judge Manuel Crespo said during Dennis’ sentencing. “By his actions, the defendant has forfeited his right to live.”
He was sentenced to death on Feb. 26, 1999.
Minutes before Dennis was formally sentenced — and during emotionally grueling testimony by Barnes’ and Lumpkins’ loved ones — Dennis erupted in rage, pounding on a table and screaming, “This is bull!”
“You are a coward, liar, murderer and thief. You killed my baby,” Barnes’ mother Charlie Postell said, addressing Dennis during the sentencing. “You are a selfish, evil person and you remind me of a serpent slithering about. Marlin is more of a man than you will ever be, even in his death.”
Dennis sat on Florida’s Death Row from 1999 to 2017, until he was granted a resentencing.
