Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell says he won't stop Jackson execution

Jerry Terrell Jackson

Virginia Gov. Bob McDonnell said Friday he will not stop Thursday's scheduled execution of a man who was convicted of raping and killing an elderly Williamsburg woman.

McDonnell's action leaves the U.S. Supreme Court as the only hope for Jerry Terrell Jackson, 30, who is scheduled to die by lethal injection at Greensville Correctional Center.

"After conferring with the appropriate parties, as well as thoroughly reviewing the clemency petition and the judicial opinions in this case, I find no compelling reason to set aside the sentence of the jury, imposed and affirmed by the courts," McDonnell said.

Jackson was convicted of the 2001 murder of 88-year-old Ruth Phillips.

His lawyers argue the jury in Jackson's trial was not given a complete picture of the abuse he suffered as a child. The have argued that evidence of abuse could have convinced jurors to spare Jackson's life.

Jackson's attorneys did not immediately offer a comment.

Unless the court blocks the execution, Jackson will be the 1st Virginia inmate to die using a new drug protocol that replaces the sedative sodium thiopental with pentobarbital in the 3-drug cocktail.

A nationwide shortage of sodium thiopental forced many states to substitute pentobarbital, but some have questioned its use. Courts have ruled that the change in drugs is not significant enough to postpone executions.

Jackson's attorneys have argued that his trial attorneys failed to present evidence of his extreme abuse as a child, which could have convinced jurors to spare his life. A federal judge agreed and ordered a new sentencing hearing for Jackson last year, but the 4th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals blocked that hearing on a technicality in April.

Jackson admitted to police that he broke into Ruth Phillips' apartment on Aug. 26, 2001, and that he put a pillow over her face to try to make her pass out once she awoke and caught him rummaging through her purse. He told police he left in Phillips' car and used the $60 to buy marijuana. He said he had not intended to kill Phillips.

At trial, Jackson said he lied to police and that an accomplice smothered Phillips. He denied raping Phillips, but prosecutors presented pubic hairs matching Jackson's DNA that were found around her body. He was convicted and sentenced to death in 2003.

Phillips, a widow for 30 years, worked as a seamstress making slip covers and draperies until her death.

Source: Daily Press, August 13, 2011

Virginia execution: Should severe childhood abuse spare a murderer the death penalty?

On an August night 10 years ago, 20-year-old Jerry Terrell Jackson broke into a James City County apartment.

By the time he fled and hopped into a Dodge sedan that didn't belong to him, $60 cash in hand, 88-year-old Ruth Phillips was lying dead inside, raped and smothered with a pillow. Her body was discovered hours later by her son, who had grown concerned when he couldn't reach her for Sunday supper.

At Jackson's trial in 2002, Williamsburg-James City County prosecutors painted a lurid picture of the crime scene for jurors: Phillips lying twisted and exposed on her bed, nightgown pushed up to her neck, blood vessels burst in her eyes and cheeks.

Closing arguments were capped with Deputy Commonwealth's Attorney Rich Rizk holding a pillow down on a table for several hushed, excruciating minutes, approximating the time it took for Phillips to asphyxiate.

It's an image some jurors still can't get out of their heads.

"The prosecutor, he illustrated exactly what this woman suffered at the hands of this man," jury foreman Lewis Samuels of Williamsburg said recently. "He did this thing with the pillowcase -- I mean, it was almost like slow motion that this woman suffered this horrendous … this death."

It took jurors less than 2 hours to convict Jackson and sentence him to die twice over: For murder while committing robbery, and murder while committing rape.

Jackson, now 31, is scheduled for execution Thursday night.

His team of attorneys scrambled to convince Gov. Bob McDonnell to commute his sentence to life in prison without parole. In a statement Friday, the governor refused, having found "no compelling reason to set aside the sentence." They're also appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court.

They argue that Jackson's original attorneys failed to paint their own grim picture for jurors -- a picture of a childhood saturated with abuse so sadistic and pervasive that, they say, it likely would have moved at least one juror to vote for life in prison. In Virginia, one reluctant juror is all it takes to avoid the death penalty.

In an unusual move, a federal judge ruled in 2010 that Jackson's first attorneys should have put his brother and sister on the stand to provide vivid, firsthand testimony that might have led the jury to spare him. She ordered a new sentencing hearing.

"The picture painted of Jackson by his own counsel," U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema wrote, "all but invited a death verdict."

Her ruling was reversed in April by the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, setting the stage for the execution. The Fourth Circuit upheld a Virginia Supreme Court ruling that said the siblings' testimony would be merely "cumulative" to other trial testimony, and that the law doesn't impose a "constitutional requirement that counsel uncover every scrap of evidence that could conceivably help their client."

A trial choice

Jackson's lawyer at the time did explore abuse in the trial's penalty phase, when jurors heard aggravating evidence for a stricter sentence, and mitigating evidence for a lesser one.

Norfolk defense attorney Andrew Protogyrou sat social workers, physicians, nurses and a police officer on the stand to read from various documents about bruises and broken bones, hospital visits, allegations of sexual assault, domestic violence, court-ordered family counseling.

Jackson's mother, father and stepfather testified about Jackson's bad behavior and their efforts -- which they acknowledged were sometimes extreme -- to correct it.

"I'm satisfied that every bit of abuse got before the jury," Protogyrou told the Daily Press recently. "We showed that his childhood was replete with abuse at an early age."

It was his strategic decision, he said, not to show jurors the contrast between the troubled Jackson and his brother, who had joined the Navy and had no criminal record.

"I can hear it now," Protogyrou said. "(The brother) made it out, why couldn't he?' So we decided not to give the visual success story. It was a trial choice we had to make."

Brinkema couldn't have disagreed more, blasting Jackson's trial counsel as "constitutionally ineffective." In 2008, she held a 2-day hearing where the siblings testified for the 1st time.

Their "vivid descriptions," she wrote, "would have painted a graphic picture of an unwarranted, continuous, sadistic course of conduct that terrorized and dehumanized Jackson throughout his childhood and left real scars on both of his siblings."

Here are some of those descriptions:

"Told me and my brother to strip our clothes off, and he just started beating me. … and then a lot of crying, really, really hurting, and then he started beating my brother, and just kept beating him and beating him and beating him and beating him…."

"When we came back, my brother was sitting in the middle of the floor with no clothes on, and he had welts and … a 2-by-4 sitting next to him on the floor. He was bleeding from the 2-by-4 marks that was left on his body.…"

"My stepfather telling me and my brother to pull down our pants and stand up and play with ourselves, and I don't even know what happened…."

[Jerry] didn't break down … whenever we'd get beat or something, he wouldn't like give in as easily as I would, and he would actually say, 'You shouldn't be doing this. You're not my dad.' … It was a battle between both of them, and then [Jerry] would eventually just get quiet and give in and just fall to the ground … crying."

Broken bones

At the age of 19 months, Jackson was brought to the hospital with a broken bone that was never explained. It wouldn't be the last. There were beatings, often daily, by their father and stepfather. Sometimes they were forced to strip naked first. Sometimes Jackson and his brother were ordered to masturbate.

The brothers were raped more than once, the siblings testified. In one incident, Jackson witnessed his brother being raped while he hid in the closet, fearing he would be next. When the stepfather tried to molest Jackson's sister, she began sleeping with a knife under her pillow.

A clinical psychologist enlisted by Jackson's appeals team testified that the abuse was among the worst he'd ever encountered. "The contrast between the terror in which [Jackson] was raised and the way in which his upbringing was presented to the jury could not have been more stark," Dr. Matthew Mendel said in an appeals affidavit.

His siblings weren't unscathed. Jackson's brother said he has attempted suicide repeatedly, the first time at age 12. He joined the Navy to escape, but still struggles with depression and a failed marriage. When he sent an email to friends saying he wished he was dead, they contacted Navy authorities, who then intervened.

Jackson's sister lives in Newport News but declined to comment for this story. The family has refused to give current contact information for Jackson's brother. Because they're identified as victims of sexual assault, the Daily Press is not naming them.

Jackson's mother, Amelia Jackson Knight, also declined to comment.

Ignoring the evidence?

The federal appeals court reversed Brinkema's decision -- not over the siblings' testimony, but whether she had the right to hold the evidentiary hearing in the first place. The decision was based on a U.S. Supreme Court ruling regarding federal court review of state judgments, a ruling handed down after Brinkema's hearing.

Under that new ruling, appellate judges found that Brinkema should have considered only the evidence that the Virginia Supreme Court had before it. Given "the breadth and depth of evidence of childhood abuse provided to the jury," the judges said, the state court's decision to deny a new sentencing was not "clearly unreasonable."

Jackson's legal team disputes that finding. "They held that Judge Brinkema wasn't legally permitted to hold that hearing, so they ignored that evidence," said Joshua Toll, with the Washington, D.C., office of King & Spalding.

Jackson's attorneys are petitioning the U.S. Supreme Court to review and clarify that interpretation, which would require a stay of execution. They also argue that Jackson received ineffective counsel, and that jurors weren't told to consider Jackson's age and background as mitigating factors at sentencing. 2 jurors had said they wouldn't consider them unless instructed.

The state attorney general's office won't comment on the case because it's ongoing, referring reporters instead to appeals briefs and decisions.

In those documents, the state has maintained -- successfully, save for Brinkema's ruling -- that the defense strategy was reasonable and even skillful.

"The district court specifically found that Jackson's trial counsel did investigate his childhood abuse," Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli argues. "Its criticism was that counsel were supposed to have gone about it differently."

"It's over"

3 of the original trial jurors located by reporters were briefed on the abuse described in the evidentiary hearing. All stand by their decision.

"[Jackson] is not the only child that's been brought up in a situation where there was abuse in the family," said jury foreman Samuels. "As you grow older, you never get over it, but you accept the fact that I gotta get on with my life."

"A jury has to consider whatever comes before them," said juror Alfonso A. LaFalce. "[But] I have no idea what would have happened or how the jury would have reacted to it.… It's done. I did my duty, and it's over."

A female juror who didn't want her name used recalls hearing some evidence of abuse, but said the verdict would have been the same even had Jackson's siblings taken the stand. Being abused, she said, "doesn't give you the right to rape and suffocate someone the way he did."

Jackson attorney Toll isn't surprised.

"Most jurors want to believe that they reached the right result," Toll said. "I think it's fair to say that the jury heard about the fact that Mr. Jackson was abused, but they did not get a picture of the severity of the abuse, the frequency of the abuse, the depravity and the sadistic nature of the abuse.… They did not get a picture. The picture is what you want, because it's that picture that may sway a juror."

Former prosecutor Rizk, a defense attorney today, stands by the court's judgment: "The ultimate penalty for the ultimate crime."

When told of the siblings' later testimony of extreme abuse, Rizk said he couldn't comment on evidence not presented at trial.

"These capital cases aren't easy on anyone, from judge to attorneys to juries," Rizk said. "No one gets any peace…. Because there are no winners. It's not like the death penalty … brings back Ruth Phillips."

Source: Daily Press, August 13, 2011

Prison interview: Jackson faces death, but hopes to live

Death row inmate Jerry Terrell Jackson hopes that somehow, some way, he won't die as scheduled in 4 days.

But he's also trying to prepare for the worst -- in case the U.S. Supreme Court doesn't intervene to stay his execution. The high court is his last hope after Gov. Bob McDonnell declined late Friday to intervene to commute his sentence.

"I'm not ready, but I'm trying to get myself there," Jackson said in a phone interview from Greensville Correctional Center Thursday afternoon. "I'm talking to my lawyers, I'm talking to whoever I can. My spiritual adviser, Christine, I'm talking to her a lot to feel ready. I have some great friends that are there with me, too, that are there to help me."

His mother, he said, "is trying to keep me strong. My sister and brother are the same."

Unlike at his trial, the 31-year-old Jackson doesn't deny that he raped and killed 88-year-old Ruth Phillips in 2001. On Thursday he sent a message to her family: "I'm sorry that, due to my actions, it hurt Mrs. Phillips, and she lost her life. I apologize to the Phillips family. I'm sorry."

He wouldn't discuss the crime, saying only he didn't intend to harm anyone the night he burglarized her apartment. "I would not have went into that lady's home if I'd known she was home."

"I'm sorry that they suffered the loss of their family member, their mother, their grandmother," said Jackson. "I wish it hadn't happened. I can't take it back."

The day before McDonnell denied his clemency, Jackson said he wished the governor would learn more about him first. "I just wish he would get to know me," Jackson said. "Well, not to get to know me, but I wish he knew who I was before he makes a decision on my life."

Growing up in James City County, Jackson had a close relationship with his grandmother, his brother and sister. Court records show he once walked 10 miles to visit his sick grandmother in a hospital, and at her funeral broke down crying as he tried to lead the congregation in her favorite hymn.

"She was one of the most beautiful people that I've ever known," Jackson said. "She gave everyone a chance."

The abuse he suffered as a boy at the hands of his father and stepfather was brutal, he said -- near-daily beatings, bloodied once by a 2-by-4, a Pepsi bottle thrown at his head to get him to move. He confirmed his siblings' court testimony about his being sexually abused by a family friend.

"My dad, he wasn't the father that you could be proud of," Jackson said. "He was an alcoholic.? He was violent.? He was mean. It wasn't spanking. He would raise his hands high and hit us."

Asked if such abuse caused him to commit the crimes he's set to die for, Jackson said it "played a big part."

"When everybody found out, when the police found out, if somebody would have stepped in at the time, I think my life would've been different," he said. "If my mother would have let me live with my godmother, things would have been different. I wouldn't have been as angry. I wouldn't have thought that there was nobody out there that really cared."

In 2006, Jackson came within days of execution when it was stayed pending an appeal. Last year, a federal judge ruled he should get a new sentencing hearing, but that ruling was reversed by a federal appeals court in April. "It was very debilitating," Jackson said. "It crushed me."

Over the past 10 years in prison, he said, "I've learned that I didn't have to worry about people always trying to hurt me, either physically or mentally or emotionally. I could trust people. And I learned that there are people in the world that really do care."

For now, he said, "I feel like I'm on a path. It finishes itself out. My execution date is real.

"I have faith in my lawyers, but I don't have faith in the system."

Source: Daily Press, August 13, 2011

Son of victim says Jackson's execution is justified

For 9 years, Dick Phillips has been waiting for his mother's killer to die.

Thursday night at the Greensville Correctional Center, his wait may come to an end.

Jerry Terrell Jackson, 31, is scheduled to die by lethal injection for the robbery, rape and murder of 88-year-old Ruth Phillips in 2001.

"I am relieved to see that it's going to come to a conclusion," Dick Phillips said. "I want the sentence to be carried out.? The law is that there's a capital punishment, and the jury felt it was appropriate. I don't disagree."

It was Phillips who found his mother's body hours after she'd been smothered with a pillow. Earlier this year, he voiced frustration at the slow pace of the legal proceedings surrounding Jackson's execution. In fact, he said he wanted the case over -- even if it meant a life sentence without parole rather than death.

"It's time to bring this to a close," Phillips said at the time.

Now that execution is imminent, however, Phillips wants it carried out. He disagreed with a federal judge's ruling in 2010 granting Jackson a new sentencing hearing based on the severe abuse Jackson suffered as a boy.

Phillips said evidence of abuse was introduced at Jackson's trial. "Maybe it wasn't played out as dramatically as it could have been to satisfy the judge," he said. "But nothing was hidden."

Such abuse, Phillips said, should not lessen Jackson's responsibility for what he did.

Phillips also contends that if the federal judge was going to hold a hearing, he and his family should have been included, too. "If she's going to hear sob stories from his brother and sister, then she should know something about (our family) and my mother," he said.

The judge's ruling was overturned earlier this year by the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Ruth Wilma Evans Phillips was a native of Haverhill, Mass.

The youngest of three daughters, she was born into a family that traces its New England roots to the 1630s. A longtime widow, she lived on her own for many years in New Hampshire before moving to Williamsburg in 1997 to be closer to her family.

Dick Phillips found her an apartment at Rolling Meadows, off Longhill Road near the Williamsburg-James City recreation center. It was within walking distance of her son's home. "We picked it for her because it was secure, it was clean, it was new," he said in 2001.

Dick Phillips and his mother spoke virtually every day, and he visited several times a week. She introduced herself at a local fabric store, and soon was making slipcovers for people all over town. She always kept ice cream and cake on hand, often offering it to her 13-year-old grandson.

A chocolate cake recipe was found on her kitchen counter the day she died.

On Aug. 26, 2001, a Sunday, Phillips went to check on his mother when she didn't answer the phone after several calls to invite her to dinner. He first assumed she had gone to church, but his concern grew as the time passed.

Hours later, he went by his mother's apartment and found her dead.

He said he won't attend Thursday's execution. "I'm not looking for revenge," he said. "I get no satisfaction out of seeing somebody die."

But 10 years after his mother was slain, he said, it's about time the case is finally ending.

Source: Daily Press, August 13, 2011