Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for a group of eight accused of brutally murdering a young mother.
The incident, seen in a motion filed Friday by Deputy District Attorney Charissa Henrich, is the latest surrounding the murder of Mahogany Jackson.
The 20-year-old from Birmingham was taken captive on the night of February 24 for several hours, during which time she was repeatedly assaulted and sodomized.
She was finally found shot in the back of the head on February 26, on the side of a road in a remote area of the Alabama city.
Hours earlier, she had managed to send a text message to her mother to tell her that she had been kidnapped and desperately ask for help.
Before that, she was stripped naked, handcuffed, beaten, spit on and forced to perform sexual acts, detectives said, adding that much of the ordeal had been recorded.
Over the course of many months, the eight believed culprits: Brandon Pope, 25, Francis ‘Ace’ Harris, 25, Jeremiah McDowell, 19, Blair Green, 26, Si’Niya McCall, 24, Teja Lewis, 26, Giovonnie Clapp, 24-year-old, and Airana Lashay Robinson, 23, were handcuffed.
The eight, four men and four women, are charged with capital murder, a crime that Henrich says should justify execution.
Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for a group of eight accused of brutally murdering 20-year-old Mahogany Jackson. The development, seen in a motion filed by Deputy Prosecutor Charissa Henrich on Friday, is the latest surrounding the February murder.
All suspects are charged with capital murder, after police said they took the local mother captive on the night of February 24 for several hours, before shooting her to death.
“The capital crime (in this case) was especially heinous, heinous or cruel compared to other capital crimes,” he wrote of the case.
The motion was intended to notify the presiding court of the district attorney’s office’s decision to seek death should the suspects be found guilty of the crime.
That said, a litany of other crimes are included in the file, including accusations of sodomy against 6 of the 8 suspects, two of them women.
Testimony indicated that Harris, who is also charged with capital murder during rape/sodomy, is the suspect believed to have fired the fatal shot, investigators and prosecutors said after piecing together what they believe happened.
Meanwhile, several of the suspects claimed in court that the saga began with a stolen gun and said the gun was taken from one of them earlier, although it is unclear exactly when.
The defendants said this paved the way for her gun and some money to be stolen from Jakson’s purse, leading her to allegedly show up at Pope’s house on the day of his death in an attempt to get back what she felt. that was his.
Prosecutors have claimed this is not the case, saying she was taken there against her will much earlier, before being subjected to a series of cruel and unrelenting torture.
Officers’ investigation into the incident began on Feb. 25, when Jackson’s family first received messages claiming she was being held against her will. He also sent his location, which was his friend Lewis’s apartment, not Pope’s.
During that time, police say he was repeatedly assaulted and sodomized, and six of the eight suspects, including the women, faced sodomy charges.
Officers’ investigation into the incident began on Feb. 25, when Jackson’s family first received messages claiming she was being held against her will. He also sent his location, which was his friend Lewis’s apartment, not Pope’s (far left), as the suspects had previously claimed.
The messages were sent around 4 a.m., but the family didn’t see them until four hours later, after which family members and police showed up in full force at Lewis’ apartment, as seen here.
Lewis is one of two not charged with sodomizing the deceased, but with assault and intentionally causing serious physical injury with a deadly weapon.
The messages were sent around 4 a.m., but the family didn’t see them until four hours later, after which family members and police showed up in full force at Lewis’ apartment.
The woman initially denied that Jackson had been there, before backtracking and claiming he left around 2 a.m.
A search ensued that led to the discovery of Jackson’s body the next morning on a street known as Dead Man’s Road, a known dumping ground for illegal trash.
Birmingham Police Det. Mark Green added in court how much evidence against the eight was obtained after a witness came forward early in the investigation, offering videos, other unspecified evidence and the location of Jackson’s body.
That witness, Det. Green said he came forward to clear his name after facing accusations on Facebook that he had also been involved in Jackson’s disappearance.
Green, in court, admitted that Jackson may have stolen a gun from someone, and then someone had stolen it from her and she was upset.
That, he said, likely led to his violent death and the actions that lasted hours before.
A search ensued that led to the discovery of Jackson’s body the next morning on a street known as Dead Man’s Road, a known illegal dumping site.
Over many months, the eight alleged culprits, some of whom were seen here in court in March, were handcuffed.
Some of the messages were sent to the victim’s mother, Gail Maddox Trotter (seen here), frantically pleading for help.
The detective also testified that he and other investigators discerned during their investigation that the victim was forced to perform oral sex on Green, before being stripped, punched, spit on, kicked, and dragged by her hair to a vehicle.
The attacks, he claimed, took place in two locations, the first at Pope’s home on McMillon Avenue and the second at Lewis’s in a nearby apartment complex.
After that, police said Harris, Pope and McDowell left Lewis’s with Jackson in tow, and Pope allegedly admitted to police that he had been driving Harris’ Chevrolet Malibu.
Cops said Jackson was told they were going to Dead Man’s Road to clean trash out of the suspect’s car before taking it home.
That was a ruse, investigators said: Harris walked up behind Jackson and fired the fatal shot as the victim helped Pope and McDowell remove the trash.
All suspects are being held without bond at the Jefferson County Jail.