Lawyers expect to select a jury Monday for the third time to sentence a Dothan man for the slaying of three people.
Attorney David Hogg said his client, 40-year-old Jerry Jerome Smith, had his first two sentences reversed.
Dothan police originally arrested Smith on Oct. 19, 1996, on capital murder charges.
A jury found Smith guilty of killing Willie James Flournoy, 40, of Dothan, Theresa Ann Helms, 26, of Wicksburg and David Lee Bennett, 29, of Midland City. The three people were killed at a Sturgeon Court residence on Oct. 19, 1996, which police had described as a crack house. All three people were shot to death in the home.
The state Supreme Court upheld Smith’s conviction, but reversed his sentence.
The jury will determine whether Smith receives the death penalty or life in prison without the opportunity for parole.
“The first time he was convicted and sentenced to death. Then it was reversed, and then that decision was reversed,” Hogg said. “He was sentenced to death a second time, and now it’s been sent back again.”
Hogg said he and attorney Aaron Gartlan will select jurors Monday as part of what’s called the penalty phase in the capital murder case against his client. Court records say Bryan Stevenson, the director of the Equal Justice Initiative, will also serve as defense counsel for Smith.
Houston County District Attorney Doug Valeska will prosecute the case in front of Circuit Court Judge Michael Conaway.
“The state has to prove aggravating circumstances and then the defendant is entitled to introduce mitigating circumstances,” Hogg said. “The jury has to determine whether the aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating circumstances, and if they don’t they have to return a verdict for life without parole.”
The death sentence was reversed because of comments made by some of the relatives of victims in the murders during the jury selection of the trial.
The state Supreme Court upheld the court’s ruling that Smith was not mentally retarded, which in the state of Alabama would have prevented him from facing the death penalty. The Supreme Court’s opinion said Smith’s actions of “systematically” killing three people and attempting to kill a fourth after his gun jammed were not the actions of a mentally retarded individual.
Valeska told the Eagle earlier that it was a death penalty case because two or more people were killed at the same time, and that they were killed during a burglary.
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