Virginia executes man for rape, murder

JARRATT, Va. (AP): A Virginia man who raped and suffocated an 88-year-old widow has become the state's first inmate executed using a revised, three-drug cocktail.

Jerry Terrell Jackson, 30, was pronounced dead at 9:14 p.m. Thursday at Greensville Correctional Center. Jackson was sentenced to death for the 2001 rape and murder of seamstress Ruth Phillips in her Williamsburg apartment.

Asked if he had any final words, Jackson shook his head and said "no" under his breath. As he waited for the drugs to be administered, he tapped his foot as he lay strapped to a stainless steel gurney. The execution team took about 15 minutes to insert two intravenous lines, one into each arm. Within four minutes of the lines being inserted, he was pronounced dead.

Like other states, Virginia recently replaced sodium thiopental with pentobarbital after a nationwide shortage of the sedative, which is administered before two other drugs that stop the inmate's breathing and heart. Attorneys in some states have contested the use of pentobarbital, but federal courts have ruled the change is not significant enough to stop executions.

Pentobarbital has been used in two dozen executions this year, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.

Richard Phillips, who found his mother dead on August 26, 2001, said the execution was long overdue. Neither Phillips nor other members of Phillips' family witnessed the execution.

Ruth Phillips, a widow for 30 years, followed her son to Virginia from New Hampshire in the late 1990s. She worked as a seamstress, making slip covers and draperies up until her death. Richard Phillips said he had wanted her to move close to him so that she would be safe.

Authorities say Jackson broke into her apartment. When she awoke and found him rummaging through her purse, she offered him anything if he would leave. Instead, he put a pillow over her face and raped her, according to authorities. They said Jackson then fled in her car and used the $60 he stole from her apartment to buy marijuana.

"I'm sorry Mrs Phillips lost her life due to something that I done," Jackson had said recently. "I'm sorry to Mr Philips that he hurt so much. I'm sorry that he lost his mother."

Jackson acknowledged killing Phillips. Although he said it wasn't an excuse for what he did, Jackson said he didn't think it would have happened if he could have escaped the abuse as a child.

"I don't think I would have ended up this way," he said. "I don't think I would be on death row."