In 2020 Oak Ridge Police were tipped off and executed a search warrant at the home of Sean Finnegan where they found the frozen body of Jennifer Paxton who had been missing for almost a year. Last year, Finnegan was tried and found guilty of eleven charges related to the rape, torture and murder of Paxton. In that trial, following a special sentencing hearing, the jury imposed the death penalty on Finnegan for a few of the most serious of the eleven convictions. Sentencing on the remaining crimes was left to the judge in a sentencing hearing that occurred this week.

The convictions that were before Judge Ash this week included: Criminally Negligent Homicide, Attempted Aggravated Rape, Aggravated Rape, Aggravated Kidnapping, Especially Aggravated Kidnapping, Conspiracy to Commit Aggravated Rape, Conspiracy to Commit Aggravated Kidnapping, Abuse of a Corpse and Tampering with Evidence. Following the hearing today in Clinton, Judge Ash added years of incarceration to Finnegan’s earlier death sentence. Each of the convictions earned more time in prison for Finnegan. When the Judge was finished, Finnegan’s additional sentence totaled forty-five years.

The original case was investigated by the Oak Ridge Police Department, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and the 7th Judicial Crime Task Force. Following the latest sentencing, District Attorney General Dave Clark remarked, “I am grateful for the hard work that Assistant District Attorneys Sarah Keith and Kevin Allen have put into this case to do justice. So many people and organizations have contributed to this long battle. I and our community are grateful to them all. Our continued thoughts are with the surviving family members of the victim.”

Finnegan remains in custody on death row in Tennessee’s Riverbend Maximum Security Institution in Nashville. He has additional pending charges scheduled for trial in Anderson County related to two alleged child rapes.