In a rambling opening statement, an accused murderer who is acting as his own attorney told jurors there are reasons he ended up shooting and killing an Athens police officer and another man man four years ago.
Jamie Hood is accused of 70 felonies, including murder, for which he could be sentenced to death if convicted. In his opening statement Thursday, he said, “There have been some unfortunate things to happen to me in my life that led me to face these charges.”
Police officers killed his brother and his friend, he said. He added he was certain they would kill him as well.
Hood said he was “illegally convicted of an armed robbery” he didn’t commit earlier in this life. “Destroyed my life and played a significant role in the charges I now have,” he said. “I couldn’t get a job so I started dealing drugs.”
Hood has pleaded not guilty to all the charges, even though he has admitted several times, including in court on Thursday while the jury was out of the room, that he killed Elmer “Buddy” Christian III on March 22, 2011. On that day, he also wounded Officer Tony Howard.
In addition to Christian’s death, Hood is also charged with killing Kenneth Omar Wray, a county Public Works Department employee. Hood allegedly killed Wray because he wouldn’t tell him where to find Kenyatta Campbell, a drug dealer now serving a life sentence.
District Attorney Ken Mauldin began his opening statement by repeating what Hood said as he was taken into custody in a televised arrest.
“‘Whatever I get, I deserve. I can’t blame nobody.’ Those are the words of the defendant Jamie Donnell Hood, spoke just hours after his surrender in March 2011,” Mauldin said.
But that has changed, the district attorney said.
“This trial will be about blaming everyone else except one person,” Mauldin said.
This is the first time in Georgia, and one of the few times in the nation, that a defendant in a death penalty case has represented himself. Hood fired two teams of appointed attorneys after they wanted to raise his mental competency as part of his defense. He agreed to let “stand by” counsel sit behind him and offer advice on legal procedure during the trial.
In court and in his legal filings, he has accused defense lawyers, prosecutors and the judge of working together, against him.
The crime spree that led to the fatal shooting of Christian allegedly began on March 22, 2011 when Hood asked Judan Brooks the whereabouts of Campbell. When he couldn’t answer, Hood and three armed men in masks bound Brooks’ hands and feet with plastic zip ties and then tossed him into the trunk of a Cadillac, Mauldin said.
Brooks soon escaped from the trunk and called the police and a lookout was issued for Hood.
Soon after, Howard pulled over an SUV Hood’s brother was driving. That’s when Hood bailed out of the passenger side and ran up to the patrol car, shooting Howard twice, Mauldin said. Christian pulled up seconds later and Hood shot him twice as well, killing him, according to authorities.
Law enforcement looked for Hood for four days. Hood said in his opening statement that he slept in the woods before going to the duplex of a friend, where he held hostage 10 people, including children. Two days later, Hood called the Georgia Bureau of Investigation to tell law enforcement where to find him. But he insisted that the arrest be covered on live television.
He said he was afraid he would be shot as his brother and friend were.
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