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By Fred Guarino

The Lowndes Signal
“The state is ready for trial.”
Those were the words of Lowndes County District Attorney Charlotte Tesmer Wednesday following a hearing in the case of triple-murder suspect Deandra Marquis Lee.
According to Tesmer, Wednesday’s hearing, attended by Lee, was a previously scheduled status hearing. She said the court was to hear any outstanding motions, but there were none.
Tesmer said Circuit Court Judge Terri Bozeman Lovell will issue an order setting the next hearing, but she reminded attorneys the case is set for trial in April.
While awaiting a pending trial on six counts of capital murder in Lowndes County, was convicted and sentenced in Montgomery County this year on a charge of destruction of state property.
Montgomery County Circuit Court Clerk Tiffany McCord confirmed that a Montgomery County jury found Lee guilty of destroying state property. She said it “appeared” that Lee (allegedly) “broke a sprinkler head” at the Montgomery Detention Facility.
She said Lee was sentenced to five years in prison, ordered to pay $300 in restitution and to pay the crime victims’ fund $50.
McCord said Montgomery County incident for which Lee was sentenced in Montgomery County Circuit Court, occurred on Sept. 5, 2015.
Lee faces six capital murder charges in connection with the 2012 deaths of 9-year-old twins, Jordan and Taylor Dejerinett, from Montgomery, and their 73-year-old caretaker, Jack Mac Girdner of Hope Hull.
On June 5, 2012 the bodies were discovered by the Lowndes County Sheriff’s Office and the Alabama Bureau of Investigation (ABI) on a dirt road off of Alabama Highway 21 near Hayneville, three miles south of U.S. Highway 80. The three had been reported missing on Monday, June 4, 2012.
The defendant, Lee, was 22 at the time of the crime.