Jackson v. State, 98-DR-00708-SCT.

Citation860 So.2d 653
Decision Date07 August 2003
Docket NumberNo. 98-DR-00708-SCT.,98-DR-00708-SCT.
PartiesHenry Curtis JACKSON, Jr. v. STATE of Mississippi.
CourtUnited States State Supreme Court of Mississippi

David P. Voisin, Robert Ryan, Jackson, attorney for petitioner.

Office Of The Attorney General by Marvin L. White, Jr., attorney for respondent. McRAE, Presiding Justice, for the Court:

¶ 1. Henry Curtis Jackson, Jr., was convicted in the Leflore County Circuit Court in 1991 of capital murder and sentenced to death for the stabbing deaths of four children, his nieces and nephews. This Court affirmed his conviction and sentence on direct appeal. Jackson v. State, 684 So.2d 1213 (Miss.1996), rehearing denied, 691 So.2d 1026 (Miss.1996), cert. denied, 520 U.S. 1215, 117 S.Ct. 1703, 137 L.Ed.2d 828 (1997).1 Jackson has filed a Petition for Post Conviction Relief in the Circuit Court of Leflore County and an application for leave to file motion to vacate conviction and/or death sentence which are presently before this Court. His petition and application are denied.

FACTS

¶ 2. Jackson murdered four children, two of his nieces and two of his nephews, in an attempt to steal money kept in his mother's safe in her home.2 On the evening of November 1, 1990, Jackson's mother, Martha, and four of her older grandchildren went to church. Martha's daughter, Regina Jackson, stayed home with her two daughters, five-year-old Dominique whom Jackson murdered that night, two-year-old Shunterica whom Jackson murdered, and four other of their nieces and nephews, three-year-old Antonio whom Jackson murdered and two-year-old Andrew whom Jackson murdered, and eleven-year-old Sarah and one-year-old Andrea who were severely injured during these murders but survived.

¶ 3. While Regina and the children were at the house watching television, Jackson parked his car two blocks away, walked to the house, and cut the outside telephone line. He then knocked on the door and was allowed inside. While inside, he picked up the phone and indicated it was not working. Regina headed to a neighbor's house to place a call to check the phone. Before going very far, Jackson told Sarah to call Regina back. Regina came back in and, followed by her daughter Shunterica, sought Jackson in the kitchen. Jackson told Regina to take Shunterica back into the television room. She did so and upon her return to the kitchen Jackson grabbed her from behind. With one hand around her neck and one around her waist, he walked her down the hall to the boys' room. He asked for her paycheck. Regina told him she had no money. Jackson then asked for the combination to his mother's safe. When Regina said she did not know it, he pulled out knives and shoved them into her throat and waist. Regina yelled for eleven-year old Sarah, who came running and jumped on Jackson's back. The three struggled, during which Jackson told him that he had to kill them. Sarah begged him to just get the safe and leave.

¶ 4. Meanwhile, the smaller children had followed Sarah down the hall, and Jackson called them into the room where they obediently remained. He then took Regina into an adjacent room and tried to open the footlocker where he believed the combination to the safe was kept. Jackson then began stabbing Sarah in the neck, then took Regina and Sarah into the boys' room where he tried to tie them up. Regina, who had already been stabbed several times, picked up some iron rods that Jackson had brought in from the bathroom, and started hitting him with them. Jackson then went and picked up the baby, one-year old Andrea, and used her as a shield. Regina relinquished the rods and let him tie her up with a belt. He stabbed her again in the neck. While Regina watched, Jackson picked up her daughter, two-year old Shunterica, by the hair, stabbed her, killed her, and laid her on a bed.

¶ 5. While Regina and Sarah were struggling to stay alive, Jackson started dragging the safe down the hall which awakened five-year old Dominique. Dominique came down the hall calling for her mother, at which time, as Regina testified, Jackson told Dominique that he loved her, but then stabbed her, killed her and threw her on the floor. After killing Dominique, Jackson walked over to Regina and again shoved a knife in her neck. Regina then pretended she was dead.

¶ 6. Sarah tried to comfort her baby sister, Andrea, and told three-year old Antonio to run for help. Jackson called Antonio back. Regina had fainted by this time and Jackson was trying to wake her up. He then grabbed Sarah again and began stabbing her in the neck. After the knife broke off in her neck, he ran to the kitchen, retrieved another knife, stabbed her again and threw her on a bed. Sarah, too, then pretended she was dead. She heard Antonio yelling for help and saw Jackson kneeling over him. While Sarah did not actually see Jackson stabbing him, she testified that "I saw his hand moving when he was over him. I didn't see but I knew he was doing something cause my little brother was hollering." She likewise did not witness the stabbing of two-year old Andrew, but when she saw him, "[h]e was on the bottom of the bed and his eyes were bulging and his mouth was wide open." Sarah was able to jump from the bed and escape out the front door. She hid behind a tree across the street and watched as Jackson came outside, looked around, and went back inside. ¶ 7. Upon Jackson's last view of the room, Regina and Andrea appeared dead, and the four children, five-year-old Dominique, three-year-old Antonio, two-year-old Shunterica and two-year-old Andrew, were all dead.

¶ 8. Shortly after the murders, Angelo Geens, Martha Jackson's cousin and neighbor, returned to his home at about 8:30 p.m. Sarah ran to him from where she had been hiding and told him that Regina and the others were in the house and that her uncle Jackson had killed them all. Geens carried her into his house and called the police and an ambulance. Deputy Sheriff J.B. Henry and Deputies Tindall, Berdin and Fondren arrived at the scene and discovered the bodies of the four children. Leflore County Coroner James R. Hankins pronounced the four children dead at the scene. From the house, the bodies of Shunterica, Dominique, Andrew, and Antonio were sent to the Deputy State Medical Examiner for forensic pathology examinations.

¶ 9. Meanwhile, Jackson had become the subject of an extensive manhunt. While still at the Jackson residence, Deputy Sheriff Tindall received a call from the Highway Patrol regarding a wrecked car in Eupora just fifty yards from the site where the Eupora Police Department had been conducting a routine license check. The car, a 1977 green Monte Carlo, bore a license tag registered to Martha Jackson's 1973 brown Ford station wagon. A wallet containing Jackson's identification was found on the front console, and his own license tag as well as a long, dark trench coat were found in the trunk. Jackson had abandoned the car when he saw the roadblock and took off a foot. Eluding police, Jackson jumped a train from Eupora to West Point.

¶ 10. On Monday morning, November 5, 1990, Jackson turned himself in to the West Point Police Department. Jackson gave a statement to Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks, who had been summoned to West Point. Jackson stated that, knowing his mother would be at church, he had gone to her house to get the safe because he needed more money to pay his bills. He had brought a kitchen knife with him that was in the car and when he heard someone in the house, went around the back to cut the telephone line. After stabbing Regina and the children, he tried to move the safe and to find a second safe she had mentioned. Noticing lights at the house across the street, he then climbed out the bathroom window and fled to his car.

¶ 11. Dr. Steven Hayne, who performed autopsies on the children, testified that Shunterica suffered three stab wounds to the neck and two shoulder abrasions. Her jugular vein was severed, leading Dr. Hayne to opine that she ultimately bled to death. Andrew sustained three stab wounds to the neck. The first cut through the carotid artery and the jugular vein. Another missed the trachea, but went into his backbone and severed the spinal cord. Dr. Hayne opined that such an injury "would require a considerable amount of strength" and noted the presence of a pinpoint hemorrhage caused by force on the child's neck. Dominique, too, died of multiple stab wounds to the neck. Three of the four stab wounds cut her jugular vein and trachea. Antonio suffered four stab wounds and two slash wounds which cut through his trachea. Dr. Hayne determined, however, that Antonio died from a stab wound that cut through his heart.

¶ 12. Sarah underwent surgery for five serious stab wounds to her abdomen, chest and neck, including a lacerated windpipe. Regina suffered five stab wounds to her neck. One-year-old Andrea suffered a single penetrating stab wound to her neck which caused a tracheal injury and severely damaged her spinal cord. As a result, she is unable to walk and has no fine motor control in her arms.

¶ 13. On March 12, 1991, Jackson was indicted on four counts of capital murder, two counts of aggravated assault and one count of armed robbery by a grand jury of the Leflore County Circuit Court. Under counts one through four, Jackson was charged with the deaths of two-year-old Shunterica, five-year-old Dominique, three-year-old Antonio and two-year-old Andrew. In each count, Jackson was charged with killing while engaged in the commission of the crime of felonious abuse and/or battery of a child in violation of Section 97-5-39(2), Mississippi Code Annotated of 1972, as amended, or in any attempt to commit such felony; in violation of Section 97-3-19(2), Mississippi Code Annotated of 1972, as amended. Counts five and six charged Jackson with the armed robbery of Regina Jackson and with "unlawfully, wilfully, feloniously and purposely caus[ing] bodily injury to Regina Jackson,...

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