Jerry Jackson was executed by the State of Virginia for the murder of 88 year old Ruth Phillips
According to court documents Jerry Jackson would break into the home of Ruth Phillips. When the woman confronted him she would be sexually assaulted and murdered by having a pillow smother her
Jerry Jackson would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Jerry Jackson would be executed by lethal injection on August 18 2011
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When Was Jerry Jackson Executed
Jerry Jackson was executed on August 18 2011
Jerry Jackson Case
A Virginia man who raped and suffocated an 88-year-old widow has become the state’s first inmate executed using a new drug cocktail.
Thirty-year-old Jerry Terrell Jackson was executed by lethal injection at 9:14 p.m. Thursday at Greensville Correctional Center in Jarratt. Jackson was sentenced to death for the August 2001 rape and murder of Ruth Phillips in her Williamsburg apartment.
Asked if he had any final words, Jackson shook his head and said ‘no’ under his breath
Virginia replaced the sedative sodium thiopental with pentobarbital in the three-drug cocktail after a nationwide shortage of the drug, like other states. While attorneys in some states have contested that drug’s use, federal courts have ruled that the change is not significant enough to stop executions. There have been about 20 executions using pentobarbital.
According to Larry Traylor, the director of communications for the Virginia Department of Corrections, Jackson met with family members Thursday. He did make a request for his final meal, but no details were released.
Jackson’s attorneys had asked the U.S. Supreme Court to block the execution, arguing that jurors didn’t get to hear graphic details of childhood abuse that one federal judge said ‘would have helped create a more accurate picture of a young, badly damaged young man whose life should be spared.’
That argument was not enough to sway Gov. Bob McDonnell, who denied a request to commute Jackson’s sentence to life in prison last week.
In a telephone interview with the AP, Jackson talked about the abuse, which began with a broken arm when he was 19 months old and continued with sexual abuse and beatings with a fist, belt and once a two-by-four for more than a decade.
Jackson admited killing Phillips. Even though he said it was not an excuse for what he did, Jackson said he didn’t think it would have happened if he could have escaped the abuse as a child.
‘I don’t think I would have ended up this way,’ he said. ‘I don’t think I would be on death row.’
Richard Phillips, who found his mother dead on Aug. 26, 2001, after she missed church, said the execution was long overdue. Phillips said he and others in his family would not witness the execution.
Ruth Phillips, a widow for 30 years, followed her son to Virginia from New Hampshire in the late 1990s. She worked as a seamstress making slip covers and draperies until her death. Richard Phillips said he moved her in close to him so that she would be safe.
Jackson broke into her apartment to rob it. When she woke up and found him rummaging through her purse, she offered him anything if he would leave. Instead, he put a pillow over her face and raped her.
‘I’m sorry Mrs. Phillips lost her life due to something that I done,’ Jackson said. ‘I’m sorry to Mr. Philips that he hurt so much. I’m sorry that he lost his mother.’
Jackson nearly got a reprieve last year when U.S. District Judge Leonie Brinkema allowed a two-day evidentiary hearing in which Jackson’s brother and sister testified about the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father and stepfather while growing up.
Brinkema ordered that Jackson get a new sentencing hearing, saying the testimony ‘painted a graphic picture of an unwarranted, continuous, sadistic course of conduct that terrorized and dehumanized Jackson throughout his childhood.’ But earlier this year, a federal appeals court overturned that ruling on a technicality — a ruling in a recent case meant the evidentiary hearing was improper.
