Killer Is Executed but Doubts Remain as to Who Fired Shot

A man convicted of killing a woman with a single shot was executed early Wednesday, even though prosecutors put his sister in prison for firing the same bullet.

In his final statement before a lethal injection was administered, Jesse DeWayne Jacobs, 44, said: “I have news for you. There is not going to be an execution. This is premeditated murder. I hope, in my death, I’m that little bitty snowball that starts to bury the death penalty.”

Jacobs originally confessed in the 1986 abduction and murder of Etta Ann Urdiales. But at his trial, he said his sister killed the 25-year-old paramedic.

The sister was later convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Prosecutors claimed at her trial that she fired the fatal bullet, and they had Jacobs testify against her. The argument contradicted prosecutors’ contention at Jacobs’ trial that he was the triggerman.

“The state can’t be right in both cases,” said George Kendall, assistant counsel with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund in New York. “Either Mr. Jacobs was the primary mover or he wasn’t.”

“He was convicted because the state argued he was the one who pulled the trigger,” said Jacobs’ lawyer, Robert McDuff. “The jury believed it. The problem is, the state has not gone back and undone this mistake.” But the state defended the execution, saying that, even if Jacobs didn’t pull the trigger, he could be put to death as an accomplice under Texas law.

The U.S. Supreme Court twice voted, 6 to 3, against a stay.

“It would be fundamentally unfair to execute a person on the basis of a factual determination that the state has formally disavowed,” Justice John Paul Stevens wrote in dissent.

In a recent jailhouse interview, Jacobs said he lied about being the triggerman to protect his sister, Bobbie Jean Hogan.

Hogan was sentenced to only 10 years in prison. She is eligible for parole this year.