After 20 years on death row, convicted killer of Rock Hill parents seeks new trial
After serving 20 years on South Carolina’s death row after he was convicted of killing his parents for $2 million in inheritance, Jimmy Robertson will be back in a York County courtroom Tuesday claiming he deserves a new trial.
Again.
Prosecutors plan to fight James “Jimmy” Robertson’s claim that his trial lawyers were ineffective during the 1999 trial.
Again.
The last time Robertson appealed in 2016, the S.C. Supreme Court ruled his court-appointed lawyer did not have the legal training required under South Carolina law, despite having 35 years of death penalty trial experience.
Now, Robertson’s new lawyers will argue Tuesday that he deserves a new trial because the 1999 trial lawyers failed to do an adequate job. They want an expert on parricide, the crime of killing one’s parents, to be the focal point of a new trial.
Robertson, now 45, was sentenced by a York County jury to death for the 1997 murder of his parents, Earl and Terry Robertson. Robertson was convicted of stabbing his mother to death, then crushing his father’s skull with a hammer and baseball bat after he blinded his father with bathroom cleaner.
Robertson, then 24, tried to make the killings look like a break-in and fled toward Philadelphia, where his brother was in college. Robertson left a trail of evidence along the way, including a bat and bloody clothes. Robertson was arrested by police waiting for him in Philadelphia. He was sentenced to death in 1999 and has been on death row at Lieber Correctional Facility in Columbia.
“The overwhelming evidence of Mr. Robertson’s guilt was littered up and down the East Coast,” said 16th Circuit Solicitor Kevin Brackett, who was part of the 1999 trial team that prosecuted Robertson. “The testimony and physical evidence left no doubt whatsoever that he brutally murdered his mother and father to expedite his inheritance. He is a remorseless killer and the sentence of death imposed by the jury was well deserved.”
S.C. Rep. Tommy Pope, R-York, formerly 16th Circuit solicitor who was lead prosecutor in 1999, said Robertson is guilty and received a fair trial.
“Jimmy Robertson sealed his own fate when he bragged in great detail of how he brutally murdered his parents,” Pope said. “A jury of York County citizens heard every detail and found Jimmy guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and sentenced him to death. His attorneys at trial did everything legally possible to protect his rights. Mr. Robertson should look in the mirror, not blame his attorneys, when he finds himself facing the death penalty for the death of his parents.”
Rock Hill defense lawyers Jim Boyd and Bill Hancock represented him in the 1999 trial. Hancock has since died.
Filing appeals
Days before Robertson was set to be executed in 2005, he filed appeals court documents blaming his lawyers.
His execution was again scheduled in 2010 before Robertson filed a federal lawsuit claiming he was wrongly convicted.
Roberton’s claims blaming his trial lawyers, called post-conviction relief, were denied in 2011 after a civil trial. However, the S.C. Supreme Court ruled in 2016 that the post-conviction relief case was improper because the PCR lawyer did not have a handful of hours of continued course credit.
So now, Robertson’s new lawyers say mistakes made during the 1999 warrant a new trial. The claims include the 1999 trial lawyers did not introduce mental health histories of both Robertson and Robertson’s mother. His lawyers said he was bi-polar and abused Ritalin.
Robertson’s lawyers, Keir Wyble of Cornell Law School in New York and Emily Paavola of Columbia, have experts in bi-polar disorder and parricide who have been interviewing him on death row, documents show.
The lawyers said in court documents that Robertson had “long-standing, severe, improperly treated mental health issues.”
Robertson and his lawyers also say prosecutors improperly inflamed the 1999 trial jury.
Prosecutors said in 1999 court documents that Robertson was tested for mental competency several times and knew right from wrong.
“The prosecution showed how Robertson brutally and maliciously murdered his parents, and that the murders were motivated by greed to obtain the money from their estates or life insurance policies,” S.C. Attorney General Alan Wilson wrote in court documents.
Robertson’s defense lawyers in 1999 focused on trying to get a sentence of life without parole, attorney general prosecutors said. They testified previously in post-conviction appeal hearings that the defense team developed a mental health defense for Robertson.
Judge Keith Kelly of Gaffney has been appointed by the S.C. Supreme Court to hear Tuesday’s case.
Kelly could decide Tuesday whether to grant Robertson a new post-conviction relief civil trial. Either side could then appeal that ruling up to the S.C. Supreme Court or the U.S. Supreme Court, legal experts said.
The federal lawsuit Robertson filed is on hold until the state appeal is finished.
This story was originally published March 28, 2019 at 7:39 AM.
