Jessie Dotson gets death penalty for Lester Street murders

By Lawrence Buser - CommercialAppeal.com

October 12, 2010

As a state prosecutor finished his impassioned plea for the jury to return the death penalty Tuesday against convicted mass murderer Jessie Dotson, the defendant clapped his hands softly in mock applause.

His attorneys said Dotson was not surprised when the Criminal Court jury later sentenced him to death six times, once for each of the 2008 murders on Lester Street. Their guilty verdict in 90 minutes the previous day sent a clear message, the attorneys said.

“He was disappointed, but not surprised,” said lead defense attorney Gerald Skahan. “When the jury came back with the quick guilty verdict, he knew (the death penalty) was probably a foregone conclusion.”

Judge James Beasley Jr. set Dotson’s execution date for March 2, 2012, four years to the day when the six men, women and children were shot and stabbed to death.

“May God have mercy on your soul,” the judge said as Dotson was led away by officers.

The nine women and three men of the jury — chosen in Nashville and sequestered in Memphis — deliberated less than two hours before agreeing on the sentences. Defense attorneys had asked for life in prison without parole.

Automatic appeals will continue for years, however, making the execution date mostly a legal formality.

Dotson, 35, was convicted in the worst mass-murder case in the city’s history.

“He’s a convicted killer out of prison just five months and he kills six people, including two children,” state prosecutor Ray Lepone told jurors in asking for the death penalty. “If not this case, what case? If not that defendant, what defendant gets the death penalty?

“The children were chased down and carved up with kitchen knives. ... You know those (two) women were begging for their lives. And now Jessie’s begging for his?”

Across the courtroom, Dotson shook his head no and moments later mockingly applauded as Lepone took a seat. For the afternoon part of the sentencing hearing, Dotson changed from street clothes back to jail clothes that revealed forearms heavily tattooed with playing cards, dice and other designs.

Earlier in the hearing, two jurors wiped tears from their eyes as they viewed photos of the young children who had been beaten and stabbed to death at the house.

Dotson, 35, was convicted of killing his brother and another man, two women and two children on March 2, 2008, at 722 Lester. He told police and his mother that he killed his brother during an argument and then began eliminating witnesses.

He also was convicted of three counts of attempted first-degree murder for beating and stabbing three other children, including two who told jurors that he — their Uncle Junior — was the lone attacker.

Jurors returned the death penalties after finding aggravating circumstances — aspects that increase the enormity of a crime — for each victim. At least one such circumstance is required in each case when prosecutors seek the death penalty:

Cecil Dotson, 30: Jessie Dotson had a prior second-degree murder conviction and he posed a great risk of death to two or more others when he killed Cecil.

Marissa Williams, 27: Same as above. Also, the murder was committed to eliminate her as a witness, and the defendant committed mass murder of three or more people within a 48-month period.

Hollis Seals, 33: Same as above.

Shindri Roberson, 22: Same as above.

Cecil Dotson II, 2: Same as above. Also, the victim was less than 13 years old and the murder was heinous, atrocious and cruel, and involved abuse well beyond that necessary to cause death.

Cemario Dotson, 4: Same as above.

The children were repeatedly stabbed and beaten with boards.

Prosecutors Reginald Henderson and Damon Griffin noted that Dotson’s calm courtroom demeanor during most of the 14-day trial dissolved into anger when he testified on cross-examination Saturday.

“I think we saw the real Jessie on Saturday,” said Griffin. “You saw some anger and some rage. That was the real Jessie. He couldn’t hold it in.”

For the defense, mitigation expert Glori Shettles told jurors that Dotson came from a broken family that moved frequently, was a disciplinary problem at home and at school, was an eighth-grade dropout and was 19 when he went to prison for 14 years for killing a man.

“There was a lot of movement, a lot of instability,” said Shettles, who works for Inquisitor Inc. “He repeated the fourth grade twice, not because his grades were bad, but because he missed so much school. ... There was an absence of a stable home life. That was very important.”

She said that during his 14 years in prison, he had one family visit and a few phone calls.

Beasley set a Nov. 12 sentencing date for Dotson’s three attempted first-degree murder convictions involving the children — ages 9 years, 5 years and 2 months at the time of the crimes — who survived their stabbings.

Dotson will be the 88th inmate on Tennessee’s death row and the 34th from Shelby County, which has by far more than any other county in the state.

Jessie Dotson Found Guilty of Memphis Mass Murder, Could Get Death Sentence

By Naimah Jabali-Nash - CBSNews.com

October 12, 2010

MEMPHIS, Tenn. (CBS/AP) After listening to more than two weeks of emotionally grueling testimony, it was the personal account of an 11-year-old victim that helped prosecutors convince a Tennessee jury that his uncle was guilty of six murders in one of  Memphis' worst mass slayings, a prosecutor in the case said.

Jessie Dotson shot his brother in the head during a 2008 argument and, attempting to eliminate all witnesses, killed five other people including two of his young nephews. He then stabbed three more boys who survived after waiting in agony for some 40 hours until help arrived, prosecutors said.

Two years later, two of the boys who survived the bloody Memphis rampage pointed to their "Uncle Junior" as the man who fatally shot their father and mercilessly left them for dead.

One of the survivors, 11-year-old Cecil Dotson Jr., known as CJ, was found in a bathtub wit a 4 1/2 -inch knife blade lodged in his skull.

"CJ solved it," said prosecutor Ray Lepone. "He had the courage to come in here and point out his uncle."

The boy, his 8-year-old brother Cedric Dotson and Jessie Dotson's mother were key prosecution witnesses.

In less than two hours, jurors convicted 35-year-old Dotson.

The penalty phase of the trial begins Tuesday when the same jury who convicted the mass murderer will decide whether he should be sentenced to death by injection.

In his testimony Jessie Dotson claimed gang members were responsible for the horrid attack, but jurors concluded that it was in fact Dotson who committed the crimes. Authorities say that after a day of drinking, Jessie Dotson shot and killed his brother Cecil Dotson in the early morning hours of March 2, 2008. He then went after everyone else in the house with two guns, boards and several knives.

Cecil Dotson's girlfriend, Marissa Williams, 4-year-old Cemario Dotson, 2-year-old Cecil Dotson II, and friends Hollis Seals and Shindri Roberson were also killed.

The young boy, who was 9 years old when the attack occurred, told jurors in his testimony that he went to call for police and tried to fight off his uncle before ending up in the bathtub with a kitchen knife embedded in his head. Paramedics testified they thought he was dead until he started to twitch.

According to authorities, Dotson, who was released from prison about seven months before the killings for a previous murder conviction, fled from the house by riding off on a child's bicycle.

The jury was selected in Nashville because of intense local coverage of the case.

Jessie Dotson Murder Trial Opens: Memphis Mass Killing Motivated by Fear of Jail, Says Prosecution