Jury deliberating life or death for SC man who killed his 5 children in 2014
Jun 13, 2019
"...Solicitor Rick Hubbard told jurors Thursday to disregard those pleas as coming from people straining to believe an alternative reasoning for the crime’s horrors because they can’t accept Jones’ brutal jealousy and manipulation that continues even from prison....
Defense attorney Casey Secor countered a lifelong sentence will still severely punish Jones while showing mercy for a family suffering with unfathomable heartbreak. Sparing his life, Secor said, will send a message to Jones’ loved ones that his actions are not their fault. Secor spent much of his short closing arguments telling jurors to make an individual decision and not let others bully or pressure them into deciding death.
“Bestowing mercy on Tim, in this case, is bestowing mercy on the people who loved these children,” Secor said....
...During the guilt phase of the trial, jurors were shown images of Jones’ brain, described by defense experts as “broken.”
But Hubbard waved all of that away as excuses for Jones’ bad personal choices. Voluntary drug and alcohol abuse, compounded only by Jones’ brutal need to be the center of attention, are not excuses, he said.
“The suggestion is, by gosh, you mix all that together and of course he’s going to become a murderer,” Hubbard said, pointing out that Jones’ father and grandmother had much harder lives and never killed anyone. “He’s not the product of a bad DNA milkshake. This is a guy who had gifts and he had five beautiful treasures. He has chosen to be what he is today and that’s a murderer. He’d risen above the mire and that family was so proud of him. He chose to be what he is.” ..."
Jury deliberating life or death for SC man who killed his 5 children in 2014
