Shaniqua Monique Finley, 27, of North Little Rock, Arkansas was sentenced to life in prison for killing an Indian liquor store clerk in 2016 robbery attempt. What she got was a $25 bottle of whiskey.
A Pulaski County jury deliberated about 75 minutes before convicting Finley of capital murder and two counts of aggravated robbery, according to Northwest Arkansas Democrat Gazette. Finley did not testify.
While the eight women and four men concluded that Finley had robbed both clerks at Best Shot Liquor in August 2016, they acquitted her of shooting the second one, a 66-year-old woman who survived gunshots to the chest and arm at the store in North Little Rock.
Jurors also found that Finley did not use a gun during the crime. If the jurors had ruled she used a gun, Circuit Judge Leon Johnson could have added up to 15 years to her prison time.
Jurors did not give an explanation for the conflicting decisions.
But, given the capital-murder conviction, which carries a mandatory life term, the findings don't affect her sentence, according to the report
The robber shot the only workers in the store, Niranjana Modi, the mother of store owner Guarang Modi, and Guarang Modi's father-in-law, 65-year-old Dilipkumar Patel, before fleeing with a half-gallon bottle of Evan Williams 1783 whiskey. Patel died 11 days later.
The resulting police investigation traced a distinctively colored car -- green with a "mustard" top -- to Finley's front door days later, and detectives discovered the murder weapon, a .25-caliber Raven pistol, in Finley's closet, prosecutors Leigh Patterson and Grayson Hinojosa said.
Police also found an almost empty half-gallon bottle of Evan Williams 1783.
‘In her refrigerator in her apartment is this bottle. The gun ... is in her apartment where she is, where the bottle of liquor is that matches the brand taken from the liquor store,’ Hinojosa said.
Defense attorney Fernando Padilla derided the case against his client as ‘a whole bag of nothing’ that might have succeeded in discovering the gun used in the robbery but failed to show who used it.
‘What the state has done is convict a gun, if you believe the [state Crime Laboratory] expert,’ Padilla said. ‘If she [the firearm examiner] has made a mistake, her [Finley's] entire life is on the line.’
Prosecutors had no DNA or fingerprints to prove that Finley had ever been in the store, and most importantly, he told jurors in his closing remarks, the three people who saw the killer, including the surviving store clerk, could not identify Finley as the perpetrator. Each witness described the killer as taller and heavier than the 130-pound, 5-foot-2-inch Finley, he noted.
‘They got the wrong person. They cannot prove my client had anything to do with this.’
Niranjana Modi told jurors that the late-afternoon encounter with the female killer started out with some innocuous conversation between herself and the woman.
The woman put a bottle of Evan Williams on the counter, but pulled out a gun and opened fire when Modi asked to see her identification, Modi testified.
‘I said I no selling without ID,’ Modi said. ‘Immediately she shot. I remember it was two or three bullets.’
Modi, wounded in the chest and arm, dropped to the floor to hide under the counter while the wounded Patel, also hit in the chest, stumbled toward an office at the back of the store.
The robber fled, leaving behind the whiskey bottle she had carried to the counter. But she took with her a boxed bottle off the shelf and ran from the store.
Finley has told others that her girlfriend is responsible for the holdup.
