Grace Packer’s killer challenging death row sentence
Jurors deciding Jacob Sullivan’s fate for the rape and murder of 14-year-old Grace Packer appeared to struggle with their decision, telling Bucks County Judge Diane Gibbons that they were unable to agree before eventually making the unanimous decision to send Sullivan to death row in March.
Sullivan, 45, is now using the panel’s hesitation to challenge his death sentence, claiming in post-trial motions that Gibbons “forced” jurors to keep deliberating, sending the message “that a verdict of life was unacceptable.”
Following a hearing in Doylestown on Wednesday, Bucks County District Attorney Matt Weintraub said Sullivan’s claim won’t sway an appellate court because Gibbons followed the law.
“We’re on good legal ground here,” Weintraub said.
Sullivan pleaded guilty in February to first-degree murder, rape, abuse of a corpse and other charges, then a jury was seated to decide his sentence. Gibbons gave Sullivan an additional 44 to 88 years behind bars, a term that will only be relevant if his capital appeal is successful.
Sullivan was back in court Wednesday asking Gibbons to change his death sentence to life. His attorney, Jack Fagan, also argued that the additional years Gibbons tacked on were “excessive.”
Gibbons, who called Sullivan a “monster” when imposing the sentence, agreed to read transcripts of the March hearing before ruling on the defense motion, but stated that she would not grant Sullivan’s request.
“I do not intend to modify this sentence,” the judge said. “Based on the defendant’s behavior and character, the sentence was appropriate, and it needs to be in place to protect the community should the (state) Supreme Court decide to nullify his death sentence.”
Jurors deliberated for more than 12 hours over three days before sentencing Sullivan to death by lethal injection, a decision the jury foreman said he hoped gave Grace a voice.
As part of his guilty plea, Sullivan admitted he and Sara Packer, Grace’s adoptive mother, dismembered Grace’s body and dumped the remains in Luzerne County, where they were found by hunters on Halloween 2016.
In a chilling confession that was taped and played in court for the jury, Sullivan told detectives that he and Packer plotted Grace’s rape and murder for months and carried it out on July 8, 2016, in a Richland Township home they had rented. During the rape, Sullivan said, Grace looked to her mother for help.
Packer, a former Northampton County adoption supervisor who lived in Allentown before moving in with Sullivan, reached a plea deal with prosecutors and was sentenced to life behind bars. She has not filed any post-trial motions.
In their response to Sullivan’s claim that Gibbons forced the jury to sentence him to death, prosecutors noted that jurors never uttered the words “hopelessly deadlocked,” but only told the judge’s staff that they were “unable to reach a unanimous verdict.”
Sullivan’s attorneys argued in their motion that the lack of a unanimous decision should have guaranteed Sullivan a life sentence. Weintraub countered that Gibbons followed the law by reading jurors a legal instruction crafted specifically for juries that indicate that they are struggling, and allowed them to go home to rest before resuming talks.
On the third day of deliberations, jurors were at the courthouse for less than an hour before announcing they’d reached a verdict of death.
“The jurors were consistently made aware of their obligation to listen to the views of the other jurors, but to examine their own conscience and to make a decision for themselves as to whether, under the evidence and the law, a death sentence was warranted,” Weintraub wrote.
Sullivan did not testify Wednesday. Lawyers will now submit briefs and await Gibbons final ruling before his case heads to the appellate courts in the fall. Death sentences are automatically appealed to the state Supreme Court.