Suspected serial killer handed death sentence

Published: Dec. 1, 2005 at 5:20 PM EST|Updated: Dec. 4, 2005 at 9:16 PM EST
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(Mobile, AL-AP) December 1, 2005 - A judge in Mobile, Alabama, sentenced serial killer Jeremy Bryan Jones to death for the rape and murder of a woman. It was a homicide that led authorities to charge him with three other killings and link him to several more.

Circuit Judge Charles Graddick called Jones "a danger to civilized society" as he ordered him to die by lethal injection.

Before the sentence was read, Jones told the court, "God will have the final say."

A jury voted in October to recommend the death penalty for Jones. Jurors convicted him of capital murder in the 2004 rape and shooting death of 44-year-old Lisa Marine Nichols on September 17th, 2004.

The judge was not bound by the jury's recommendations.

In calling for the death sentence, Alabama Attorney General Troy King urged the judge to consider the "blood-chilling crime."

Defense attorney Greg Hughes urged Graddick to impose life without parole, not death, saying Jones suffered "extreme mental and emotional problems," including long-term drug addiction that should be a mitigating factor.

Investigators say the 32-year-old Jones of Miami, Oklahoma, may be linked to ten other killings.

In Georgia, Jones is charged with murder in the death of 16-year-old Amanda Greenwell in Douglasville. Authorities say he is considered a suspect in the disappearance of a Forsyth County hairdresser, Patrice Endres.

Posted 12:19pm by Bryce Mursch