Defense: Ellington killed wife after she killed twins

A lawyer for Clayton Jerrod Ellington conceded to jurors in his death penalty trial Monday that Ellington killed his wife, but he claimed Ellington was enraged because his wife had killed their twin 2-year-old sons.

Defense lawyer Darryl Queen said Berna Ellington was distraught and afraid that her husband would leave her and take their children.

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Joey Ivansco/jivansco@ajc.com

Clayton Jerrod Ellington is accused of killing his wife and twin sons in their Lithonia home.

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“She snapped, and then he snapped on her,” Queen said in his opening statement to jurors in DeKalb County Superior Court.

Assistant district attorney Tunde Akinyele said Jerrod Ellington, 31, murdered all three victims by beating them with a hammer. He accused Ellington of planning the crime to fit false alibis, including telling his mistress he had to drive to Augusta to pick up a friend.

Akinyele described the blood-soaked scene police found at the family home near Lithonia on May 17, 2006. A trail of blood from Berna Ellington’s body led upstairs, where officers first found the clothes she had laid out for herself and her boys to wear the next day, he said.

But in the boys’ bedroom, police found “two identical, beautiful, handsome baby boys in their cribs, wearing identical red pajamas — dead, with almost identical injuries.”

Christian and Cameron Ellington both suffered blows to the head, and Christian “was face up with his eyes open as if he saw … the person who savagely murdered him,” Akinyele said.

Queen said Berna Ellington, 31, had a history of emotional outbursts and had told a witness the night of her death, “I hate my life.”

He claimed Jerrod Ellington found her with a hammer after hearing noises in the boys’ bedroom. He said Ellington took the hammer and killed her “in a fit of rage” — a description that could fit the lesser charge of manslaughter.

If the jurors finds Ellington guilty of murder, they will consider the prosecution’s request for the death penalty in a second phase of the trial. The last death sentence in DeKalb County was 19 years ago.