Jurors convicted Lawrence Goodine of felony murder after hearing surveillance, medical and physical evidence surrounding Kara Akins’ 2023 death.

CHATTANOOGA, Tenn. — A former Chattanooga police officer was sentenced to life in prison after a Hamilton County jury convicted him of felony murder in the 2023 death of his former girlfriend, ending a five-day trial built around surveillance footage, medical findings and allegations that he altered the scene before police arrived.

Lawrence Goodine, 46, was convicted Aug. 21 of first-degree felony murder committed during an aggravated kidnapping in the death of Kara Akins, 48. Jurors also found him guilty of aggravated kidnapping, aggravated criminal trespass, tampering with evidence and violating a no-contact order. On two additional first-degree murder counts, jurors instead returned second-degree murder convictions. Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Barry Steelman imposed a life sentence on the felony-murder count and scheduled an Oct. 22 status hearing concerning sentencing on the remaining convictions.

The mixed verdicts followed about six to seven hours of deliberations and reflected the different legal theories prosecutors presented during the trial. The felony-murder conviction did not require jurors to reach the same conclusion on every murder count. They found Goodine responsible for Akins’ death while she was being subjected to an aggravated kidnapping, but they chose second-degree murder rather than first-degree murder on the two other homicide charges. Defense attorney Neal Pinkston said after the verdict that questions remained about the evidence and that a possible appeal would be discussed with Goodine.

Prosecutors placed a neighbor’s motion-activated camera near the center of their case. They said it recorded Goodine running across a dark Chattanooga street on the night of Nov. 28, 2023, grabbing Akins and pulling her back toward her Carr Street home. Prosecutor Roger Layne told jurors that Akins could be heard resisting and asking Goodine why he was doing it. About six hours after the recorded confrontation, Goodine called 911 at 3:16 a.m. on Nov. 29. Police who responded to the residence found Akins unresponsive in the living room.

The state argued that events after Akins was brought back toward the home were established through a combination of physical evidence, witness testimony, photographs and Goodine’s own statements. Prosecutors said Goodine washed blood from Akins’ face, moved her across the living room, changed the position of her arms and photographed her before calling authorities. They characterized those actions as an attempt to make the scene appear consistent with an accidental or drug-related death rather than a homicide. Jurors convicted him of tampering with evidence, indicating that they accepted the state’s allegation that evidence connected to the death had been altered.

Goodine’s statements to responding officers also became important. Prosecutors said that after police entered the home, he repeatedly told them Akins had taken something. During closing arguments, Layne said Goodine made versions of that statement numerous times within minutes. Prosecutors argued that he was attempting to establish an overdose narrative before officers had examined all of the evidence. The defense disputed the state’s interpretation and emphasized that toxicology evidence included alcohol and an initial screening result that it said pointed to cocaine use.

The medical examiner’s findings provided prosecutors with a sharply different account of Akins’ death. The county medical examiner determined that she died from manual strangulation and blunt-force injury to the head and classified her death as a homicide. Trial reporting described fractures and bruising in her neck as well as a head injury involving bleeding around the brain. Prosecutors said those injuries could not be reconciled with the overdose explanation Goodine had offered. They also told jurors that the preliminary cocaine result cited by the defense was not confirmed by follow-up testing.

Pinkston attacked the reliability and completeness of the investigation rather than simply accepting the state’s chronology. He noted that police did not initially treat the house as an obvious homicide scene and said investigators first left after reporting that they had found no evidence of value. Officers returned days later with a search warrant and collected additional items. Pinkston argued that the delay raised questions about what may have been moved, discarded or otherwise lost before investigators decided that Akins’ death required a more extensive criminal investigation.

The defense drew particular attention to a large rug on which Akins had been found. Pinkston said the rug was discarded and never tested, depriving the defense and the jury of evidence that might have helped establish what happened in the room. He also raised DNA evidence indicating mixtures from multiple individuals and said investigators had not identified one or possibly two contributors. The defense maintained that those unresolved issues mattered because prosecutors were asking jurors to make definitive findings about events that took place during hours when no continuous video recording existed.

The motion-activated nature of the neighbor’s camera became another point of disagreement. Pinkston said the surviving recordings did not show the entire sequence of events and argued that testimony suggested other footage had once existed. Prosecutors did not claim that the camera captured every moment. Instead, they asked jurors to consider the footage alongside the autopsy, Goodine’s 911 call, his statements, the condition of the residence and testimony about Akins during the hours before police arrived. The verdict showed that jurors found the combined evidence sufficient to convict despite the gaps emphasized by the defense.

The encounter also occurred while Goodine and Akins were subject to no-contact orders involving each other following arrests connected to an earlier domestic violence incident. That restriction became a separate part of the criminal case because prosecutors said Goodine was with Akins at her home despite the court order. The jury found him guilty of violating the order. The restriction also provided legal context for the aggravated kidnapping charge that became critical to the felony-murder verdict, although the prosecution still had to prove the elements of each offense beyond a reasonable doubt.

Goodine’s former employment with the Chattanooga Police Department drew attention during the case but was separate from the evidence concerning Akins’ death. He worked for the department for about two years before being fired in 2007 following an internal affairs investigation that accused him of stealing money while on duty, filing false reports and violating department procedures. Goodine later faced criminal charges arising from the earlier allegations and was acquitted in 2008. His termination from the police department remained in place after he challenged it through legal proceedings.

Akins’ relatives attended the trial as testimony focused on the circumstances of her death. Her family previously said she had lived in Chattanooga since she was 15. She was a mother of seven and founded WOW Kids, an outreach program serving children in Chattanooga’s Emma Wheeler Homes community. Those details stood apart from the courtroom evidence that dominated public coverage of the case and offered a broader account of Akins’ life before her death became the subject of a lengthy criminal prosecution.

Goodine’s felony-murder conviction has already resulted in a life sentence. The Oct. 22 hearing is scheduled to address sentencing matters involving his other convictions, including the two second-degree murder verdicts, aggravated kidnapping, aggravated criminal trespass, evidence tampering and violation of the no-contact order. Pinkston has said the defense will consider an appeal, but no later ruling overturning the jury’s verdict or Goodine’s life sentence had been identified as of Sept. 29.

Author note: Last updated September 29, 2026.