Intent is a mental attitude with which an individual acts, and therefore it cannot ordinarily be directly proved but must be inferred from surrounding facts and circumstances. Intent refers only to the state of mind with which the act is done or omitted. It differs from motive, which is what prompts a person to act or to fail to act.
Derrick Todd Lee has been sentenced to death for the first degree murder of LSU grad student Charlotte Murray Pace. It took the jury that convicted Lee for Pace's murder 93 minutes to unanimously decide Lee's fate. Lee is now at Angola State Penitentiary.
In 1988 Lee met and married Jacqueline Denise Sims and the couple had two children, a boy named after his father Derrick Todd Lee, Jr. and in 1992 a girl, Dorris Lee. Soon after their marriage Lee pled guilty to unauthorized entry of an inhabited dwelling.