One more group of a circle of relatives members asked a jury Wednesday to spare the lifestyles of a South Carolina father convicted of murdering his five kids, announcing they were thru enough ache already.
The identical jury convicted Timothy Jones Jr. Of killing his five children in their Lexington home in August 2014 is set to consider his fate Thursday morning. If they do not conform to the death penalty unanimously, Jones, 37, can be sentenced to prison without parole.
One character the jury will not pay attention to in person is Jones himself. He declined to testify before he turned into observed responsible and once more Wednesday at the quit of his sentencing segment. South Carolina regulation would have allowed Jones to make a brief announcement in Thursday’s ultimate arguments to the jury. However, Jones told Circuit Judge Eugene Griffith he wouldn’t try this both.
They have heard from Jones thru numerous confessions with the government and interviews with psychologists.
According to Jones ‘ confession, Jones killed his 6-yr-old son Nahtahn with the aid of workout the boy to death as a punishment after he refused to admit he broke an electrical outlet.
Jones failed to call 911 while he found his son dead. Instead, he watched a prison rape scene from a movie on his cellphone, then determined to kill the alternative kids, in line with his confession and cellphone data.
Jones instructed police he strangled 8-12 months-antique Merah and 7-yr-vintage Elias together with his palms and used a belt to choke 2-year-vintage Gabriel and 1-year-old Abigail.
On Wednesday, the insufficient information of the killings retook a seat as Jones’ two 1/2 brothers, his half-sister, and his stepmother all testified. Earlier inside the week, Jones’ father requested jurors to spare his lifestyle, and the mom of the five slain children stated she became in opposition to the demise penalty personally but became OK with it regardless of the jury decision.
They remembered a young guy who acted as a mentor while Jones’ 3 oldest kids were little.
The own family contributors said Jones has lots more to provide via being allowed to live out his lifestyle in jail than die on the top of a needle or inside the electric chair. They testified he ought to train different inmates as he guided them through complicated subjects at school.
And all of them asked to spare Jones’ life because after all the ache they suffered while the kids were killed five years ago, they did not want any greater.
“Don’t take one extra from us. Our own family cannot take it,” 1/2 brother Tyler Jones said.
Jones Jr. Wiped away tears several instances, inclusive of while his attorneys confirmed information pictures of a memorial provider his own family put on for the kids, whose ashes sit down in urns at their grandfather’s residence alongside the Mickey Mouse ears they wore. At the same time, their father took them to Disney World months earlier than killing them.
Prosecutors asked few questions of the family individuals. But earlier Wednesday, they finished cross-examining social worker Deborah Grey, who spent 500 hours unraveling Jones’s existence from his grandmother’s upbringing to the kid’s deaths.
She testified at period approximately rapes, molestation, arguments, gunfire, and drug use for the defense Tuesday. But prosecutor Rick Hubbard pointed out Jones excelled in faculty, overcame a drug conviction inside the early 2000s, and even with a wife and youngsters made it thru university and into an $eighty,000-a-12 months computer engineer activity.
While the defense is arguing that undiagnosed intellectual illness drove Jones to kill his youngsters — a claim the jury has proven a few skepticisms about by deciding no longer to find him guilty however mentally sick or now not guilty using the motive of madness — Hubbard and prosecutors stated he become an evil, selfish man who made terrible choice after awful choice.
Hubbard stated Jones started out doing pills while his marriage broke up and selected to kill his youngsters after locating one son lifeless so his ex-wife could not have complete custody.
“He chose to ignore pleas for mercy from his children as he became strangling them,” Hubbard stated.
None of the four family participants who testified had tons to mention about the final yr of the kids’ lives. Jones stopped speaking to them after a combat together with his father over religion. They all regretted how he regarded to deteriorate in isolation.
“The guy who did this isn’t always the man who’s sitting right here right now. I’m sorry, Tim. I sit down here and study you and tell you which you aren’t all there any greater, brother. I’m sorry you have to go through this too,” stated 1/2 brother Travis Jones.
