Jury Again Urges Death for Killer of Officer

For the second time, a jury has recommended that Michael Anthony Jackson be sentenced to death for the murder of a West Covina police officer.

Jackson, 48, was sent to death row in 1984 for the fatal shooting of Officer Kenneth Wrede. But a federal appeals court overturned his death sentence two years ago on the grounds that his lawyer had failed to provide an adequate defense during the penalty phase of the trail.

After a retrial of the penalty phase that began July 1, another Los Angeles Superior Court jury decided Monday that Jackson should be executed. Formal sentencing is set for Sept. 23.

“It’s nice to see that justice is served,” West Covina Police Chief Frank Wills said Monday. “We hope that this will bring some closure for the Wrede family and the department.”

According to a summation of evidence by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, Jackson had been smoking PCP cigarettes before he ran into the street on Aug. 31, 1983, and threw himself onto the pavement. When Wrede, 26, drove up and got out of his patrol car, Jackson refused to cooperate and attacked the officer.

Police said Wrede ran back to his patrol car and radioed for help. At the same time, Jackson pulled a shotgun from the officer’s car and opened fire, fatally wounding the officer, detectives said.

A Superior Court jury convicted Jackson of murder and recommended a death sentence that subsequently was imposed by the trial judge. In 1989, the state Supreme Court upheld both the conviction and the sentence.

However, on May 9, 2000, with Jackson’s scheduled execution date fast approaching, the federal appeals court upheld Jackson’s murder conviction but concluded that if all available evidence had been presented during the penalty phase of the trial, there was a reasonable chance that he might have received a sentence of life imprisonment.

The judges criticized former Los Angeles County public defender William Klump for failing to present possibly mitigating evidence that Jackson had been choked by his mother as a boy, that he had once been diagnosed as schizophrenic and that use of PCP might have rendered him incapable of knowing he was killing Wrede.