A South Carolina man has been sentenced to death in the 2014 murder of his five children.
Despite pleading not guilty by reason of insanity, a jury has recommended the death penalty for Timothy Jones Jr. A week earlier, the same jury had handed down five separate guilty verdicts after two days of deliberation.
A 37-year-old single parent and computer engineer, Jones admits to killing all five of his children on August 28, 2014. The first of the children to be killed was six-year-old Nahtahn following an angry confrontation after the child damaged an electrical outlet in their rural trailer. Though Jones denied intending to kill Nahthan, it was this death that apparently motivated him to strangle his other four children, ranging in age from one to eight. As he would later tell police, he began hearing voices after Nahthan's death telling him to kill the other children. He had apparently been afraid that the children would go to his ex-wife and that they would be better off in Heaven.
Following his arrest, Jones told police and forensic psychiatrists that he weighed what to do for several hours after discovering that Nahthan's had died. He then claimed that he had killed all of his children so that they could "enter Heaven together." After the murders, he wrapped the bodies in their own bedsheets and placed them in his Cadillac Escalade in a bizarre attempt to escape arrest.
During the course of the nine days spent on the road, Jones also wrote a series of bizarre notes outlining different strategies for disposing of the bodies, as well as escaping across the Mexican border. He also researched which countries didn't have extradition treaties with the United States and purchased synthetic marijuana to keep himself going. Finally, he dumped the decomposing bodies in separate plastic bags along an Alabama logging road.
During the course of the trial, prosecutors and Jones' defense attorney both argued over his mental state at the time of the killings and whether he knew right from wrong. Prosecutor Rick Hubbard insisted that Jones was mental competent and acted deliberately. "The worst of the worst know killing your babies is obscene, outrageous and absolutely morally unacceptable," Hubbard said in court. "Jones did that in a matter of seconds." As for his defense counsel, they insisted that Jones had mental problems brought on by his chronic synthetic marijuana use as well as his wife's infidelity which had resulted in her leaving him to raise the children alone. Psychiatrists for both sides provided contradictory opinions.
Though there are 37 people currently on death row in South Carolina, there have been no executions in that state since 2011. Given the likelihood of an appeal in the case, Timothy Jones Jr.'s ultimate fate remains in doubt at this point.
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