While most of Delaware slept, a bleak chapter in the lives of a Hockessin family was finally put to rest after nearly two decades.
Robert W. Jackson III, the man convicted in the 1992 ax murder of 47-year-old Elizabeth Girardi during a botched robbery, was executed by lethal injection at the James T. Vaughn Correctional Center north of Smyrna. He was pronounced dead at 12:12 a.m.
Jackson’s last meal consisted of steak, a baked potato, potato skins, corn and a soda. During his final days, he has been sleeping, eating, reading, writing letters, talking with staff, and visiting with family and his attorneys, according to the Department of Corrections.
Governor Jack Markell denied Jackson’s request for a reprieve, and two requests Wednesday by his lawyers to delay the execution went ungranted.
At 12:02 a.m. the execution began in the execution chamber. Witnesses watched Jackson, dressed in all white, strapped down to table with intravenous lines in each arm. James T. Vaughn Correctional Center Warden Perry Phelps asked Jackson if he had any last words.
Jackson at first directed his words to Christopher and Claudia – the victim’s surviving children.
“Are the Girardis in there? If you are in there, I've never faulted you for your anger. I would have been mad myself," he said. "[But] I didn’t take your mother from you.”
Jackson then hinted that his accomplice, Tony Lachette, was actually the guilty party in the case. Indeed, his lawyers argues that Lachette privately confessed to the killing to a number of people, but those claims were never corroborated by investigators.
6 comments:
An Eye for an Eye!
Its always someone else who did it huh? Worm food now LOL
i can't believe you commenters. I truly believe this man was innocent. Injustice. God knows.
Being there made him guilty. He could have chose to leave. He could have chose to stop the crime. He could have chose to not have put himself in the position to have committed a crime. State of DE chose to rid society of another threat. Too bad all states do not take greater advantage of this sentencing.
There's one thing terribly wrong with this story -- that the taxpayers had to feed, clothe, and house this piece of slime for 19 years before his sentence was carried out. So much for swift justice.
Were you there 1055? Cant answer that I bet!
Im against the death penality. I say that GOD should do that work, not the government. He was locked up not bothering anyone anymore.
Signed,
Conservative Christian
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