The Supreme Court of Georgia has upheld the murder conviction for a Fulton County man found guilty of stabbing his sister to death 11 years ago.
In 2010, Willie Jackson was sentenced to life imprisonment for killing his sister, Willie Mae Jackson, in 2006.
According to the Monday opinion: Jackson lived at his sister's apartment, and he believed she'd taken his social security check. One day he told her, "Willie Mae, I'ma kill you tonight." About an hour later, she was stabbed 31 times.
Jackson filed an appeal to his guilty verdict after his 2010 motion for a new trial was denied in May 2016. He maintains the trial court erred by denying his request to instruct the jury regarding both voluntary manslaughter and insanity.
Voluntary manslaughter speaks to Jackson’s testimony that his sister threw a machete at him after he entered her bedroom with a knife, and he stabbed her in self-defense. But while his testimony “might support some level of provocation, it does not provide even slight evidence that Jackson stabbed his sister due to a sudden, irresistible passion,” the opinion states.
Regarding the insanity defense, Jackson argued that he suffered from schizophrenia and manic depression, and he acted strangely after the stabbing. Officers saw Jackson swinging the machete while repeating, “I killed her, I killed her,” and a SWAT team later arrived to find him leaning out of the apartment window with his head wrapped in duct tape.
But, the opinion says, the evidence showed that Jackson “knowingly intended to confront his sister because he believed that she had taken his social security check.”
Jackson is 69 years old, according to the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office.
The Supreme Court decided the charges of voluntary manslaughter and insanity were not appropriate in this case.
In the news:
About the Author
