Punishment phase starts for murderer
Prosecution says man is‘pure evil’; defense looks to soften sentence
A Livingston man fatally stabbed his girlfriend 50 times in a fit of rage in November 2016, leaving her rotting corpse in a Texas City field, after she threatened to frame him for the murders of her sister and mother in Baytown, defense lawyers told a Galveston County jury on Tuesday.
Jesse Dobbs, 23, who pleaded guilty to the murder of Kirstin Fritch, 16, on Sept. 11, was described by his defense attorney as a troubled, homeless youth, who lived a hard life and committed a crime of sudden passion. Dobbs is hoping that argument will sway a jury in the punishment trial against handing down a life sentence for the grisly killing, despite also being a primary suspect in the slayings of Fritch’s mother, 37-year-old Cynthia Morris, and her sister, 13-year-old Breanna Pavilicek, in Baytown.
Tuesday was the first day of testimony in Dobbs’ trial, with opening statements from both sides and accounts from Fritch’s grandmother and close friend, as well as a medical examiner and two crime scene investigators. The jury was also shown an autopsy photograph of Fritch’s many stab wounds, an unsettling moment that visibly disturbed her family members sitting in the courtroom.
The opening statements to the jury from the defense and prosecution were strikingly different in their characterization of Dobbs.
Galveston County prosecutor Matthew Shawhan painted Dobbs as a young man who has “done more damage to our communities than you can probably ever imagine.” Shawhan described Dobbs as a habitual smoker of methamphetamine with a predatory streak who trolled for sex on social media. Dobbs met Fritch on Facebook in September 2016, while he was 21 and corrupted her, Shawhan said, turning a previously good girl into someone who showed up at school “methed out.”
Shawhan added that the defense would make “a big issue” over the fact that Dobbs has not been charged in the murder of Fritch’s mother and sister, but that his actions in killing Fritch — which included 38 stab wounds from the neck up — are more than enough to put him away for life, with or without a motive.
“I anticipate one of the biggest questions during this entire trial is, why? And I anticipate that you’re going to come up with the same conclusion as me: pure evil,” Shawhan said.
Dobbs’ co-counsel Lynette Briggs’ opening statement was significantly shorter — less than three minutes, compared to a roughly 10minute prosecution statement. Briggs implored the jury to hear all of the evidence, and cast Fritch as a conniving girlfriend out to frame Dobbs for two murders he didn’t commit.
“Listen to all the evidence; listen to everybody,” Briggs said. “We ask you for a reasonable amount (of years) to punish this man. Nothing is going on in Baytown. Two years have gone by; they haven’t charged anyone.”
The re-framing of Fritch as an instigator in her own murder continued during the trial, with Dobbs’ other attorney, Jyll Rekoff, doing the lion’s share of the questioning.
During cross-examination, Rekoff asked the first two witnesses, Courtney Barker, 19, a close friend of Fritch’s since seventh grade, and Fritch’s grandmother, Barbara DeRamus, if they were aware that Fritch had a knife collection or that for six months she had dated a 20-year old man.
Rekoff also peppered DeRamus with questions about whether Fritch had once became pregnant by a much older man while she was 13 or 14.
Rekoff told the Chronicle at the conclusion of Tuesday’s proceedings that her strategy in asking these questions was deliberate: to push back against the state’s contention that Fritch was a previously innocent young girl before Dobbs entered her life.
“I’m not saying anybody deserves to die, but the state was drawing a picture that (Fritch) was a virginal 16year old girl that would never do anything wrong,” Rekoff said. “My client, Mr. Dobbs was this monster that came in and just tore her life apart. That’s not what happened. Unfortunately, she’s lived a very troubled life.”
Rekoff added that she planned to introduce evidence during the trial that showed that Fritch had a “fascination” with death.
Judge Lonnie Cox is presiding over the punishment trial in the 56th District Court in Galveston, which is expected to last seven days. While Dobbs could face five to 99 years or life on the firstdegree murder charge, if the jury agrees to a sudden passion finding, the prison term would be capped at 20 years.