Inmate’s death sentence commuted

Killer convicted decades ago gets life term; parole possible.

Almost 30 years after he beat a 77-year-old woman to death with a clothes iron, a North Georgia man was resentenced on Friday for the crime.

The original death sentence against Jonathen Jarrells was overturned in 1991 because, a court found, he was not mentally competent to be executed. He remained in custody, but without a sentence, for 25 years. On Friday, Jarrells, 59, was resentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole.

The issue of Jarrells’ mental fitness was raised in 1991 because he was sentenced to die just months before a new Georgia law took effect banning the execution of the intellectually disabled, a prohibition that now stands nationwide.

At a hearing in Butts County, where Death Row is located, a judge ordered him evaluated after an expert wrote that Jarrells’ IQ was 69 and that he functioned at the level of a 9-year-old.

“It ( Jarrells’ resentencing) sat there for years and years,” said defense attorney Jerry Word, head of the Georgia Capital Defender Office.

Word said the case was assigned to a new judge about three years ago, and this judge wanted the matter resolved.

Jarrells’ lawyers had to secure decades-old school records from West Virginia, where Jarrells was from. Then he was evaluated by experts secured by both his lawyers and by the prosecution, Word said.

All the experts agreed that Jarrells was intellectually disabled and ineligible for a death sentence.

Jarrells was convicted of stabbing to death Gertie Elrod and brutally attacking her 75-year-old sister, Lorraine Elrod. Jarrells was visiting his brother in Chattoogaville near LaFayette when, on Aug. 27, 1987, he knocked on the Elrod sisters’ front door and asked to use their telephone because he had been locked out of the house.

Once inside, Jarrells tied both women’s hands and feet with electrical cords, stabbed them

with scissors, and beat them with an iron. The younger sister survived the attack though she suffered grievous injuries, including losing the sight in one eye and the hearing in one ear.

Jarrells was caught the next afternoon in Hazard, Ky., with items that belonged to the elderly sisters — two wristwatches, a purse and a $160 check.

Now he is eligible for parole consideration.

“Once we receive the new sentencing information and it’s confirmed he’s eligible for parole, the case will be considered,” said Steve Hayes, a spokesman for the State Board of Pardons and Paroles.

Jarrells’ death sentence was one of three capital cases in the four-county Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit in which an appeals court had ordered resentencing years ago.

In one of them, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in 1998 ordered a new sentencing for Wilburn Wiley Dobbs for the 1974 murder of Chickamauga grocer Lee Sizemore Jr. The court cited the performance of Dobbs’ trial attorney during the penalty phase of the original trial. Dobbs, now 66, has prostate cancer and has not been well enough to attend court.

The other is the case of Jamie Ray Ward, who was sentenced to die for the 1989 rape and murder of a 23-year-old woman in Walker County. A federal appeals court reversed his death sentence in 2010 because a bailiff answered jurors’ questions about whether Ward, now 60, could get life without parole for killing Nikia Kay Gilbreath. His case was put on hold when he was diagnosed with colon cancer.