Jackson seeks mother’s estate
Wrangles with relatives for $1.5M
901-529-2545
A month after her release from prison, Noura Jackson is locked in another legal fight — a battle for her mother’s $1.5 million estate.
The woman prosecutors accused in a sensational trial of stabbing her mother to death now is wrangling in Shelby County Probate Court with an uncle and two aunts who say she should get nothing. The trio of relatives argues in court papers that Tennessee’s “Slayer Statute’’ disqualifies Jackson, an only child, from inheriting the money, which they contend should pass to them.
Yet Jackson maintains — as she has from the start in 2005 as an
18-year-old murder defendant — that she’s innocent. Her attorneys say this isn’t a fight over money as much Jackson’s hope to finally get the fair trial she was denied in Criminal Court.
“Our interest is restoring Noura’s reputation,’’ attorney Michael R. Working said of the case before Probate Court Judge Kathleen N. Gomes. Working says his client was wrongfully prosecuted for the killing of mother Jennifer S. Jackson and he aims to prove it.
“Somebody else’s blood, somebody else’s DNA, was on Jennifer Jackson’s body … The only way we’re going to know who that was is if the TBI (Tennessee Bureau of Investigation) decides to identify that person,’’ said Working, asserting he will subpoena such details if needed.
Legal papers filed since Jackson’s Aug. 7 release show both sides are gearing up for what essentially amounts to a civil retrial of the woman prosecutors say stabbed her mother more than 50 times in a rage after she was told to rein in her partying and finish high school.
“It is requested that Noura Grace Jackson admit the truth,’’ reads the start of a series of formal questions, called interrogatories, put to Jackson.
In a sworn answer filed Aug. 16 — nine days after her release from prison — Jackson admits buying wound-treatment products at Walgreen’s in the hours after her mother’s death but denies other assertions, including giving conflicting stories about a cut on her hand.
Asked to produce photographs and a video from that night, Jackson’s attorneys wrote, “All of her possessions fit in a small cardboard box about the size of a shoe box, and small trash bag as of one week ago. Photographs and video of June 5, 2005 were not among her possessions.’’
The probate case has been open for years pending criminal appeals by Jackson but it intensified last year after the Tennessee Supreme Court vacated Jackson’s 2009 conviction for seconddegree murder. The high court found prosecutors omitted evidence and that Dist. Atty. Amy Weirich made impermissible comments to the jury in closing arguments.
The decision led to Jackson’s May 2015 plea to voluntary manslaughter, a move that shaved seven years off her expected jail time.
A month after the plea, uncle Eric Sherwood and aunts Cynthia J. Eidson and Grace J. France filed a motion in Probate Court to foreclose Jackson’s interest and distribute the estate’s assets to them.
“As a result of pleading guilty to killing her mother, Noura Jackson forfeited her inheritance,’’ the siblings said in a pleading filed by attorneys Beth W. Bradley, Joe M. Duncan and Eric Plumley.
The siblings and their attorneys could not be immediately reached for comment Thursday.
Jennifer Jackson died without a will. Her siblings argue state law bars Noura Jackson from an inheritance and that the estate should pass to them.
But Jackson, 29, countered by saying she only pleaded guilty because it was in her best interest, not because she is in fact guilty. She argues in court papers she entered her socalled Alford plea after prosecutors telegraphed they would “indefinitely delay’’ a second trial, keeping her behind bars as they pursued appeals.
Judge Gomes denied the siblings’ motion last fall, finding that such a ruling couldn’t be made without a full hearing in which evidence from both sides is weighed.
A scheduling order entered by Gomes gives both parties until Oct. 31 to designate expert witnesses they intend to call at trial and until Nov. 15 to identify rebuttal witnesses. A tentative trial date is set for Jan. 23, 2017, though Working said that date is expected to be pushed back to July.