The 2007 torture slayings of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsomare among the most horrific crimes in Knoxville's history.
Here are five things to know about the case:
1. Details of the case were horrific
Christian, a 21-year-old University of Tennessee student, and her boyfriend, Newsom, 23, were heading out to a friend's birthday party on the night of Jan. 06, 2007 when they were ambushed and carjacked in the parking lot of aNorth Knoxvilleapartment complex off Washington Pike.
They were taken in Christian's Toyota 4-Runner to a rental house on Chipman Street in East Knoxville where the group's ringleader, Lemaricus Davidson, lived.
Both victims were beaten, raped and tortured. Newsom was executed within a few hours of the abduction and his body set on fire. Christian is believed to have been held captive in the small Chipman Street house for another 24 hours, during which she was repeatedly assaulted. Ultimately, she was wrapped in garbage bags, stuffed inside a trash can and left to die, slowly suffocating.
2. Five people were charged and convicted
Davidson, a known drug dealer who was on parole for carjacking at the time,is believed to have concocted the initial plan to carjack someone for money. He enlisted his brother, Letalvis Cobbins who was visiting from Kentucky;Cobbins' friend, George Thomas; and Davidson's partner-in-crime, Eric Boyd, in the plan.
Davidson, Cobbins and Thomas all were convicted in state court for the murders and rapes. Davidson was sentenced to death. Cobbins is serving life without parole. Thomas will not be eligible for parole for roughly 120 years.
Prosecutors have long said they did not have enough evidence to link Boyd to the slayings. He was convicted in federal court, however, of harboring Davidson afterwardand currently is serving an 18-year prison sentence.
► Related:Christian, Newsom families reflect 10 years after slayings
This week, authorities unsealed a 36-count presentmentcharging Boyd in the rapes and murders. Prosecutors have yet to detail the evidence against him.
Also convicted as an accessory was Cobbins' girlfriend, Vanessa Coleman. She is serving a 35-year prison term.
3. Judge's pill scandal led to retrials
Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner presided over the initial trials in 2009. In 2011, he resigned and pleaded guilty to official misconduct for buying pain pills from a felon on probation in his court.
After it was revealed Baumgartner had been snorting painkillers on the bench and holding court while high, defendants in several high-profile cases won new trials, including Thomas and Coleman.
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► Related:Richard Baumgartner, ex-judge, found dead at 70
Coleman and Thomas were retried separately and found guilty again in 2012 and 2013, respectively.
The convictions against Davidson and Cobbins ultimately were allowed to stand due to theforensic evidence against them.
4. The case was steeped in racial tension
The victims were white. The suspects were black.
Conservative commentators, white supremacists and others raised questions early on about whythe five suspects were not being charged with a hate crime. Mainstream news outlets, including the News Sentinel, were accused of racial bias in their coverage.
► Christian-Newsom murders:Coverage over the years
Prosecutors insisted that there was no indication that Christian and Newsom had been targeted because of their race.
The controversy prompted two downtown protests within a month of each other in 2007 by white supremacists groups.
In 2013, Christian's parents, Deena and Gary, and Newsom's parents, Hugh and Mary, appeared on right-wind pundit Glenn Beck's online show to revisit the story.
Beck argued the case should have been prosecuted as a hate crime - even though Tennessee law doesn't allow for that - and that national media outlets failed to cover the case due to bias against reporting on black-on-white crime.
"Who cares what color you are?" Deena Christian responded. "I care what they did to my child."
5. The case led to the passage of two new state laws
The Channon Christian and Chris Newsom acts were approved by the state Legislature in 2014 to help the families of future victims avoid some of the heartache suffered by the couple's loved ones.
The Channon Christian Act puts new restrictions on what criminal defendants and their attorneys can do in trying to portray a victim in a negative light before a jury.
The law is similar to the longstanding rulethat prevents prosecutors from bringing up a defendant's previous crimes in an effort to prejudice a jury.
During his trial, Davidson claimed the couple had come to his house to buy drugs. Conversely, jurors were not allowed to hear about his previous carjacking conviction.
The Chris Newsom Act revises the rules for a judge acting as a "13th juror" at the conclusion of a criminal trial.
Baumgartner's drug scandalremoved him from the bench before he could affirm the convictions in the initial Christian-Newsom trials, triggering a series of legal problems in upholding the convictions of the four defendants tried in his court.
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