Meanwhile, Tucker's request for clemency is pending before the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, which will decide on Monday whether to recommend to Gov. George Bush that her sentence be commuted. Yusaf Hugans was a boarder in the home of Lauren Rose Relyea's parents. Hagans apparently lured the 5th-grader from the house, bashed her head in with a cement block, then stabbed her in the neck. There was evidence she was sodomized, but an autopsy showed the attack occurred after Lauren had died. Hagans was not charged with sexual assault.
Prosecutors plan to seek the death penalty.
Kareem Jackson went from being a national competitor in a Bible trivia contest to a convicted murderer, despite his parents and pastor saying they were available to help turn his life around. A Franklin County Common Pleas jury yesterday recommended that Jackson be sentenced to death for the execution-style slayings of 2 men during a drug robbery in March. Jackson will be the 9th person from Franklin County on Death Row. The last death penalty verdict came in October 1996, when Jerry Hessler was sentenced to die in the electric chair for the slayings of 4 people. There are 175 men and no women on Ohio's Death Row, said the state Department of Rehabilitation and Correction.