Judge Hears Jacks Trial Summations
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/27/AR2009072702785.html
By Keith L. Alexander
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
The attorney for Banita Jacks told a D.C. Superior Court judge Monday that his client was guilty of child neglect and that living with the decomposing bodies of her four daughters was odd but that such behavior does not equate to murder.
In his nearly 90-minute closing argument, Peter Krauthamer, a member the District’s Public Defender Service, said the government had failed to prove that Jacks killed her children.
“The behavior in that house defied logic, common sense and even that of a demented or delusional being. But it proves nothing,” Krauthamer said. “There was neglect in this case. But there wasn’t child abuse or cruelty.”
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michelle Jackson argued that Jacks “systematically” isolated herself and her girls from relatives, schools, neighbors and friends as part of a plan to weaken them through starvation and then kill them. Jacks had hoped that the bodies would never be found, the prosecutor said.
“This is no mystery novel. You don’t have to think it could be the butler or maid who did it,” Jackson said. “She was present in that home during each of their deaths. She was the one who committed these crimes.”
Jackson said the girls’ deaths came after mistreatment and atrocities. “The murders were the climax, the final finale,” she said.
On Jan. 9, 2008, federal marshals went to Jacks’s rented two-story home in the 4200 block of Sixth Street SE to carry out an eviction. When they got inside, they found religious scribbling on the walls and the bodies of her four daughters — Brittany Jacks, 16, Tatianna Jacks, 11, N’Kiah Fogle, 6, and Aja Fogle, 5 — in two upstairs bedrooms. Jacks said the girls had died in their sleep, one by one.
Prosecutors said that the girls had been dead at least seven months, that Brittany had been fatally stabbed and that the other three had been strangled.
Jacks, 35, is charged with 12 counts, including premeditated first-degree murder and cruelty to children. Because of the ages of the victims, Jacks faces life in prison without parole.
Judge Frederick H. Weisberg said he could announce his verdict as early as Wednesday unless he needs more time to review the evidence. Jacks waived her right to a jury trial, and she declined to pursue an insanity defense.
Krauthamer spent most of his closing arguments Monday attacking the government’s evidence. He mentioned the four District medical examiners who, because of the condition of the bodies, could only speculate on the causes of death. He discussed the forensic specialist and the anthropologist who disagreed on the timing of the deaths. And he reminded Weisberg that Sgt. James Lafranchise, a 21-year D.C. police veteran, recanted during the trial his report of seeing Brittany alive and well when he visited the house in April 2007.
“All you had was a battle of experts,” Krauthamer said.
Krauthamer also recalled that Jacks’s neighbors testified to hearing the children running up and down the steps and even an argument and thumping noises during a fight between Jacks and Brittany. But none of the witnesses testified to hearing the girls scream or cry out for help.
Although a knife was found next to Brittany’s body and a medical examiner determined that there appeared to be three puncture wounds in the teen’s body, no DNA evidence linked Jacks to the knife, Krauthamer said.
During much of the nine-day trial, prosecutors used witnesses to try to highlight inconsistencies in the comments Jacks made during a nearly eight-hour interrogation by detectives shortly after her arrest.
In the interview, Jacks told detectives that Brittany was 6-foot-1, but medical examiners said she was about 5-foot-5. Jacks said Brittany had failing grades, but her last transcript from Booker T. Washington Public Charter School before Jacks pulled her out of school showed that Brittany had a 3.1 grade-point average. She told detectives that the city had cut off her food stamps and that she couldn’t feed her children. But a representative of the District’s public assistance program testified that Jacks was receiving government benefits at least a month after medical examiners estimate that all the girls were dead.
At times during her hour-long closing argument, Jackson’s voice wavered when she compared the Sixth Street rowhouse to Abu Ghraib, the Iraqi prison where Iraqis were mistreated and abused by members of the U.S. military.
“These four children had their own prison of torture. And the jailer, the one who had keys to this prison, who signed and sealed their deaths, was their own mother,” she said.
During Jackson’s arguments, Jacks sat at the defense table writing in her notebook. She did not look at the prosecutor, who stood only a few feet away.
When Jacks finally did look up, she locked eyes with Jackson, who was wrapping up her closing argument.
“These children didn’t have to live this way, and they certainly didn’t have to die this way,” Jackson said. “They’re speaking now, not with their voices but with their bodies.”
