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Thread: Larry Leonardre Jenkins, Jr. - Georgia

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    Larry Leonardre Jenkins, Jr. - Georgia


    Larry Leonardre Jenkins, Jr.

    Jesup man to get new trial in Glynn County in shooting deaths 21 years later

    Larry Leonardre Jenkins Jr. spent 10 years on death row before sentence was set aside

    By Terry Dickson

    BRUNSWICK | A Jesup man convicted of murder in the 1993 execution-style shooting deaths of a woman and her son is set to get a new trial starting Sept. 22 before a Glynn County jury.

    But in an unusual turnabout, prosecutors have asked Superior Court Judge Stephen G. Scarlett to allow them to use evidence that the original judge ruled out, Larry L. Jenkins Jr.’s confession that he killed Terry Ralston, 37, and her son, Michael, 15.

    Jenkins was a 17-year-old student at Wayne County High School when the Ralstons were abducted from their coin-operated laundry in downtown Jesup. During a motions hearing Friday, he sat silently in a pumpkin-colored jail jump suit and with ankles shackled and his hands cuffed in front of him.

    Twelve hours after they were abducted as they cleaned the laundry and emptied the coin boxes, the victims’ bodies were discovered near railroad tracks in a swampy, wooded area off Cowboy Road. Terry Ralston was shot once in the head and her son was shot six times.

    Jenkins and three of his friends were caught the next day driving Terry Ralston’s Chevrolet Lumina van.

    There was evidence they had gone to a bank to pick up wrappers to roll coins. Investigators said about $645 in coins was stolen from the laundry.

    A Glynn County jury convicted Jenkins in 1995 of malice murder and gave him the death penalty. But the Georgia Supreme Court set aside the sentence 10 years later saying that Georgia couldn’t execute people for crimes committed when they were juveniles. A few years later, another judge ruled Jenkins’ defense lawyers were ineffective and ordered a new trial.

    Blynn Taylor Jr., the judge who presided over Jenkins’ original trial, is dead, as are the state pathologist who did the autopsies and the officer who conducted ballistics tests and linked a .22-caliber pistol with the Ralstons’ deaths.

    Prosecutor Andrew Ekonomou asked Scarlett to admit as evidence a 13-page statement that Jenkins made to Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents and signed.

    Ekonomou acknowledged that as Jenkins was being booked into the Wayne County jail on Jan. 9, 1993, he told the jailer he wouldn’t answer questions without a lawyer.

    But the next day, Jenkins spoke to GBI agents who advised him fully of his rights to remain silent and to have a lawyer present, Ekonomou argued.

    Jenkins waived his rights Jan. 10 and again on Jan. 11 when he spoke with the agents again, Ekonomou said.

    “Jenkins then led them to the victim’s purse,’’ and other items, Ekonomou said.

    Ekonomou said the Jan. 9 statement to the jailer could not be applied to all future interviews with officers.

    “You cannot invoke Miranda in anticipation of custodial questioning,’’ he said.

    He asserted Taylor erred in doing so and asked Scarlett to let prosecutors use Jenkins’ statement during his second trial.

    Public Defender Sophia Butler told Scarlett the statement should remain excluded from evidence.

    “The law is the same as when a 17-year-old invoked his right to counsel,’’ Butler said. “Clearly he was asserting his rights at the time when this case was hot and heavy and the press was all over it.”

    Public Defender Jonathan Lockwood also asked Scarlett to allow the defense to bring up the now decades old criminal records of possible defense witnesses in order to impeach their testimony before.

    Among them were the three young men who fled the Lumina with Jenkins when officers stopped them.

    One of them, Jeremiah Campbell, told police that Jenkins had said he had killed two white people. During the trial, however, Campbell didn’t testify to hearing Jenkins make such a statement.

    After a short recess, Scarlett told the lawyers he would rule on the motions next week but he needed time to study the law on Ekonomou’s motion to allow him to use Jenkins statements.

    In the meantime, Scarlett said, the lawyers should prepare as if he were going to let Taylor’s ruling stand.

    Ekonomou said that he will have to call a lot more witnesses if he is not allowed to introduce Jenkins’ statements.

    He also told the court that in the case of witnesses who have died, he may have to use transcripts or other evidence that was originally presented in 1995. He will also have to call new experts to present the autopsy and ballistic findings.

    http://members.jacksonville.com/news...21-years-later

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    Man convicted in retrial of 21-year-old double murder, kidnapping gets four life sentences

    A man convicted for a second time last month in the nearly 22-year-old murder, armed robbery and kidnapping of a Jesup woman and her teen son was sentenced Wednesday to four consecutive life terms in prison.

    A Glynn County jury found Larry Jenkins Jr. guilty Sept. 26 at the end of a week-long retrial of his vacated 1995 conviction, also by a Glynn County jury, in the shooting deaths of Terry Ralston, 37, and her son Michael, 15.

    After merging some of charges of theft and kidnapping with bodily injury with other charges, Superior Court Judge Stephen Scarlett stopped just short of the maximum sentence of four life terms served in succession followed by 10 years on a theft charge. Scarlett made all the life sentences consecutive, but made the 10-year sentence concurrent with the first life sentence.

    Jenkins’ lead lawyer, Public Defender Jonathan Lookwood, said given the fact that he has served 21 years and nine months in state prison or the Wayne County jail, Jenkins would become eligible for parole immediately.

    Before sentencing, Scarlett recessed court to read a stack of victim impact statements from the Ralstons’ family but a couple of defense witnesses testified in Jenkins’ behalf.

    His mother, Alma Jenkins, told Scarlett, “Larry is my second born child, raised here in Wayne County.”

    She said her son had undergone a spiritual conversion in prison where he had attended worship services and encouraged other inmates in the Christian faith.

    “God has changed his heart. God has changed him,’’ she said.

    She did not acknowledge, however, that her son had killed the Ralstons.

    “I hope one day in my heart they get the one who done this,’’ she said.

    Paralegal Al Lawler testified he began visiting Jenkins in March 1999 when he was still on death row after his first conviction.

    The death sentence was set aside by the Georgia Supreme Court which said the death penalty could not be given to anyone for crimes committed when they were younger than 18.

    “When he left death row in 2006, I made a habit of coming down to Jesup and visiting him here in the jail,’’ Lawler said.

    Lawler said that he has seen evidence of Jenkins’ Christian witness and his improved discipline over the years.

    After Scarlett pronounced the sentence, Jenkins was escorted back to jail. He raised hands that were manacled to a waist belt in a slight wave as he smiled to his mother, Lawler and other family members as he shambled back to his cell.

    The first jury had found Jenkins of malice murder and handed down the death sentence that was subsequently set aside. A Superior Court judge later ruled Jenkins’ counsel in his original trial had been ineffective and said he was entitled to a new trial.

    It took the second jury only a couple of hours to convict Jenkins. Unlike their predecessors on the case, the second jury heard a confession that the judge of the first trial, Superior Court Judge Blynn Taylor Jr., ruled could not be used in 1995.

    After a motions hearing, Scarlett ruled that Jenkins had freely and voluntarily confessed to Georgia Bureau of Investigation agents and allowed the Jan. 10, 1993, confession and other statements to be used at the second trial.

    In the confession, Jenkins said he was drunk when he walked down an alley beside the family’s coin laundry in downtown Jesup with a .22-caliber pistol he had stolen previously from an unlocked house. Jenkins told the agents he kidnapped the Ralstons at gunpoint, forced the son to drive his mother’s Chevrolet Lumina van to a remote area and shot them both to death beside railroad tracks.

    Jenkins said that he shot Michael Ralston when the teen swung at him and then shot Terry Ralston when she threw a stick at him. Terry Ralston was shot once, but her son was shot multiple times in the back.

    Jenkins told the agents he had intended to just steal the van, but he later found more than $600 in quarters that Terry Ralston had removed from the laundry and placed in the van.

    http://jacksonville.com/breaking-new...ping-gets-four
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