A 44-year-old Smithville man, who was paroled in March 2015 after serving more than 12 years in a 2002 DeKalb County murder case, is back in prison after getting into trouble with the law in Putnam County in February.
Melvin Eugene Turnbill was sent back to the Bledsoe Correctional Complex at Pikeville earlier this year, according to Neysa Taylor, Director of Communications at the Tennessee Department of Correction who spoke with WJLE Tuesday.
Turnbill was released from prison on March 9, 2015 after serving over 12 years of a 25 year sentence for facilitation of first degree murder in the September 2002 fatal shooting of Joshua Murphy in DeKalb County.
Eleven months after getting out of prison, Turnbill committed two offenses that resulted in him returning to prison for violation of his conditions for parole. Turnbill was arrested for a DUI on Saturday, February 6 followed by a burglary charge two days later on Monday, February 8. Both offenses occurred in Cookeville. According to the Putnam County Circuit Court Clerk’s Office, Turnbill later entered a plea to the DUI charge and was fined and sentenced to supervised probation. He made another court appearance on the burglary charge where he entered a plea to the lesser offense of aggravated criminal trespass and again was fined and sentenced to supervised probation to run concurrently with the DUI case and his state parole.
Turnbill’s next scheduled parole hearing in the murder case is set for February, 2018. His sentence is due to expire on January 7, 2022.
A co-defendant in the killing, Christopher Nicholas Orlando was denied parole in March. He is serving a 35 year prison sentence for facilitation of first degree murder in the death of Murphy. He is incarcerated at the Northeast Correctional Complex in Mountain City, Tennessee. His next parole hearing is in March, 2018.
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