Jesse Jacobs was executed by the State of Texas for the murder of Etta Ann Urdiales
According to court documents Jesse Jacobs was paid by his sister Bobbie Jean Hogan to murder Etta Ann Urdiales who was the ex wife of Hogan’s boyfriend. Etta Ann Urdiales would be fatally shot
Jesse Jacobs would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
Jesse Jacobs would be executed by lethal injection on January 4 1995
There is strong evidence that Jacobs did not pull the trigger that killed Etta Ann Urdiales and more than likely it was Bobbie Jean Hogan who committed the murder
Jesse Jacobs Photos
Jesse Jacobs Case
Jesse DeWayne Jacobs did not go quietly to his death early this morning, for a murder that prosecutors conceded his sister had committed. “I have news for all of you — there is not going to be an execution. This is premeditated murder by the state of Texas.” Jacobs declared in a strong, clear voice, moments before he died of a lethal injection at 12:12 a.m. in the death chamber in Huntsville.
“I hope in my death,” he concluded, “I’m that little bitty snowball that starts to bury the death penalty.”
The execution of Jesse Jacobs, 44, a lifelong criminal with a prior murder conviction, drew outrage from as far away as Washington and the Vatican. But here in Texas, the first execution of the new year — and the 86th since the death penalty was reinstated in 1976 — was carried out with a minimum of protest. Only a handful of demonstrators stood at the edge of the prison compound as Jacobs was put to death
To death penalty opponents, the case underscored the inherent potential for injustice in the nation’s system for dealing with people convicted of capital crimes — and reinforced Texas’s reputation as the leading execution state with a particularly high number of controversial cases. Although Jacobs was convicted in 1987 for slaying Etta Urdiales, a 25-year-old mother of two, the same prosecutor later gained conviction of Jacobs’s sister, Bobbie Jean Hogan, saying he had come to believe Hogan, not Jacobs, had pulled the trigger.
Jesse Jacobs said he initially took the blame for the murder “for the love of a sister.” Hogan, who was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, is serving a 10-year prison term and will soon be eligible for parole.
Authorities say because Jesse Jacobs was an admitted accomplice, it does not matter that he did not pull the trigger. “I’m open to the suggestion that possibly he wasn’t the triggerman,” said Peter Speers, who prosecuted Jacobs. “The circumstances, nonetheless, would make him guilty of capital murder.” The case, which had quietly worked its way through the lower courts, burst into national prominence Monday when the U.S. Supreme Court refused, by a 6 to 3 vote, to hear Jesse Jacobs’s appeal, with dissenting Justice John Paul Stevens urging that “at a minimum” the execution should be stayed. Today, an editorial in the Vatican newspaper, L’Osservatore Romano, condemned Jacobs’s execution as “monstrous and absurd,” and compared the Supreme Court’s ruling to that of Pontius Pilate, the Roman leader who allowed Christ to be crucified. The court “preferred the way of Pilate,” the editorial said, “by just washing its hands of the matter.”
By contrast, most Texans hardly seemed to notice that another execution had occurred. Death penalty opponents here say they have come to expect such attitudes in a region where being tough on crime often seems gauged by the number of state-ordered executions. In 1994 Texas accounted for nearly half — 14 of 31 — of those performed in the United States. Arkansas, which ranked second on the 1994 list, put five people to death.
It is a telling point that if Harris County, the home of Houston, were a state, it would rank second in the nation in executions, with 35 men sent to death by Harris County juries since 1976. Florida, the state that ranks second on the all-time list, has performed 33 executions since 1976, including one last year. Death penalty opponents here speak darkly of the state’s tendency toward “frontier justice.” Unlike other states, Texas does not provide public defenders for death-row inmates past the initial appeals process, and a defendant can introduce new evidence only within 30 days of conviction.
“I think it is very difficult to psychoanalyze a state, but all this comes in part from the inability of people to concentrate on the death penalty as an issue,” said Jay Jacobson, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas. “It has only been in the last couple of months that some groups have joined together for the first time in Texas to abolish the death penalty — there’s been no uniform effort before. The other thing is, the politicians misread the public. It has become, unfortunately, the standard for which politicians are judged to be tough on crime, even though a poll a couple of years ago by Texas A&M indicated, while in the raw, most people accept the death penalty, when you start asking, ‘Do you support the execution of the mentally retarded?’ they say no. ‘Do you support the execution of juveniles?’ No. ‘Would you prefer life without parole and restitution to victims?’ Yes.
Richard Dieter, director of the Death Penalty Information Center in Washington, said the courts, particularly the Supreme Court, have made it more difficult for condemned inmates to receive a hearing.
“It does represent a trend,” he said, “to say we don’t care about the merits of the case, whether you are guilty or innocent, or deserving of the death penalty. You had your trial. You even had an appeal, and now it’s over. The danger is, sometimes there is evidence someone was innocent.”
Today, following Jacobs’s death, there remain 398 inmates on Texas’s death row. The next scheduled execution is Caruthers Alexander, 46, convicted of the 1981 rape and murder of a nightclub waitress in San Antonio. His date is Friday
