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Thread: Andre L. Jackson - Ohio

  1. #1
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    Andre L. Jackson - Ohio




    Summary of Offense:

    On June 25, 1987, Jackson murdered 75-year-old Emily Zak in a laundromat in Euclid. Ms. Zak worked in the laundromat. Jackson kicked, punched and stomped Ms. Zak to death and then pushed her head in a toilet. Jackson also stole the cash register and the register keys.

  2. #2
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On May 9, 2001, Jackson's habeas petition was denied in Federal District Court.

    https://www.casetext.com/case/jackson-v-anderson-3/

  3. #3
    Senior Member CnCP Addict johncocacola's Avatar
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    According to capital crimes annual report, Jackson has an Atkins claim pending in the trial court.

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    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mastro Titta's Avatar
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    In today's United States Supreme Court orders, Jackson's petition for a writ of certiorari was DENIED.

    Lower Ct: Court of Appeals of Ohio, Cuyahoga County
    Case Numbers: (105530)
    Decision Date: January 25, 2018
    Discretionary Court Decision Date: June 6, 2018

    https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/...18zor_19m2.pdf

  5. #5
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Judge in Cuyahoga County rules man on death row for 30 years is mentally disabled, tosses death sentence

    By Cory Shaffer
    cleveland.com

    CLEVELAND, Ohio -- A county judge has thrown out the death sentence of a man whose been on death row since his 1988 conviction in a brutal beating death of a 74-year-old woman at a Euclid laundromat.

    Common Pleas Court Judge Cassandra Collier-Williams found Andre Jackson is intellectually disabled now and likely was at the time he murdered Emily Zak, and that allowing his execution would violate the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment.

    The judge issued the 11-page opinion Friday, more than two years after she presided over a hearing that featured testimony from psychologists who found that Jackson’s scores were equivalent to that of a 9-year-old child.

    “Every professional that evaluated [Jackson] noted that his intellectual functioning was at a lower level than expected for someone in his age range,” Collier-Williams wrote.

    Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley’s office has vowed to appeal Collier-Williams’s opinion.

    “The facts of this case are some of the most disturbing we have ever had," O’Malley said Tuesday.

    Jackson is being represented by the Ohio Public Defender’s Office. They could not be immediately reached for comment.

    The crime

    Jackson was convicted of beating to death 74-year-old Emily Zak, who worked the counter at a coin laundry on Euclid Avenue. Jackson, then 20, lived in an apartment building across the street from the laundromat and went there to steal the cash register on June 25, 1987.

    He forced Zak into the bathroom, where he beat her and shoved her head into the toilet, court records say. He killed the woman by stomping her neck against the rim of the toilet bowl, prosecutors said. Jackson then stole the register and ran out of the shop.

    Police arrested Jackson on an unrelated theft charge a few weeks after the killing. When he heard in jail that police had found the cash register in an abandoned field, Jackson went to detectives and told them he could find out information about the killing if they agreed to ask a judge to lower his bond, records say.

    The state agreed and Jackson was released from jail. He was identified as a suspect and arrested after fingerprints that investigators found on the register and on the inside of the toilet lid matched his.

    Jurors convicted him at trial and recommended his execution. A judge imposed a death sentence in April 1988.

    Landmark ruling

    Jackson unsuccessfully filed a number of appeals in the 1990s. Then in 2002, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling in Atkins v. Virginia in which the court’s justices held that executing an inmate who is intellectually disabled amounts to cruel and unusual punishment and is a violation of the U.S. Constitution’s Eighth Amendment.

    That ruling kicked off a new set of appeals for Jackson, whose lawyers argued IQ tests dating back to when he was 12 showed that he was intellectually disabled and functioned at a level much lower than the average person his age.

    His case crawled along in the Common Pleas Court’s docket over the next 13 years, until Collier-Williams in 2016 allowed lawyers for Jackson and O’Malley’s office to hire psychologists to test Jackson on his IQ and his intellectual ability. A two-day hearing was held to present their findings.

    The tests

    The average adult’s IQ is about 100, according to court records. Courts have generally accepted the benchmark IQ to determine if a person can face the death penalty at 70, but they have held that an IQ score alone is not enough evidence for a judge to determine whether a defendant is intellectually disabled. They have to find a defendant has subaverage intellectual functioning, significant limitations in everyday skills and that the symptoms began as a child.

    Jackson had his IQ measured five times in his life, including two tests in 2016.

    He scored a 68 on a test when he was 12, which is generally considered intellectually disabled. He took another test in 1992, when he was 26 years old and had been in prison for four years. He scored a 72 on that test. He scored an IQ of 76 on a 2003.

    In two tests in 2016, he scored 80 on one test and 67 on the other.

    Assistant Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Christopher Schroeder wrote in court filings that Jackson’s highest score was likely the most reliable. They cited testimony from their expert, Carla Dreyer, who gave him the test that measured his IQ at 67. She said she felt Jackson scored low because he didn’t try very hard, which deflated his score. She said that it is nearly impossible for someone to artificially inflate their IQ score.

    “I’m not trying to be inappropriate with the court but you can’t fake smart,” Dreyer testified, according to court records. "You can fake dumb.”

    Using that score would put Jackson out of the range of even being considered borderline intellectually disabled, Schroeder wrote.

    Functioning like a nine-year-old

    Collier-Williams said that, because Jackson’s scores fluctuated so greatly, she relied on the doctor’s reports and testimony about Jackson’s behavior.

    David Smith, who gave Jackson the test on which he scored an 80, found Jackson had the mental functioning equal to that of a child who is about 9 years and 9 months old, Collier-Williams noted in her opinion.

    Jackson told Smith at the beginning of the exam that he was afraid other inmates would tease him if Smith found him to be intellectually disabled, court records say.

    Collier-Williams wrote in a footnote in her opinion that the comment was disturbing and that it demonstrated Jackson’s “subaverage intellectual functioning” because he was more worried about immediate ramifications in his prison environment than the potential of having his death sentence overturned.

    She also cited testimony from his mother and brother that Jackson struggled with basic, everyday tasks like managing money, and that as a child he had undiagnosed attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder, and burned himself frequently on hot water.

    Schroeder argued that Dreyer found Jackson did not struggle with the skills required to perform everyday tasks. He also said Jackson’s ability to “trick” police into releasing him from jail following his theft arrest showed he had the ability to plan and think ahead to evade capture.

    https://www.cleveland.com/court-just...-sentence.html
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
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    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  6. #6
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    Jackson is listed as back on death row according to the 2022 death row roster.

    https://www.naacpldf.org/wp-content/...Winter2022.pdf
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

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  7. #7
    Moderator Bobsicles's Avatar
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    Commuted to Life with parole eligibility after 20 years. Parole hearing scheduled for April 2023

    https://appgateway.drc.ohio.gov/Offe...etails/A203859
    Thank you for the adventure - Axol

    Tried so hard and got so far, but in the end it doesn’t even matter - Linkin Park

    Hear me, my chiefs! I am tired. My heart is sick and sad. From where the sun now stands, I will fight no more forever. - Hin-mah-too-yah-lat-kekt

    I’m going to the ghost McDonalds - Garcello

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