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Jackson was sentenced to five years in prison for aiding Paul Allen Gordon’s escape to California just one day after Gordon murdered Stacy Smith, her unborn child and Taylor Swanson in December 2004.
Jackson’s hearing was delayed for an hour and a half while his attorneys met with Winona County prosecutors and the judge to discuss issues with a pre-sentence investigation. Although the original document was rejected by the judge and she ordered a new one be drawn up, it did not change Jackson’s sentence.
Fearing yet another postponement in the nearly 4-year-old case, the victims’ family was nervous outside the courtroom but relieved when the hearing began. They watched with tears in their eyes.
Jackson was given credit for 597 days served since his arrest in October 2006 and will be eligible for parole in January 2010. After the details of the sentence were hashed out, Jackson stood smiling and shook his attorney’s hand.
A grand jury originally indicted Jackson on three counts of aiding and abetting first-degree murder, aiding an offender, being an accomplice after the fact, drug sales and racketeering. But despite a long investigation, prosecutors were never able to secure enough evidence to prove Jackson had either directed Gordon, 25, to murder his girlfriend and her daughter to protect their drug trade in Winona or had known about Gordon’s plans to kill them.
The result was a plea agreement in which Jackson admitted to driving Gordon to a bus station a day after the murders. Gordon planned to continue to California and eventually Mexico. When questioned by investigators, Jackson said he lied to them about his knowledge of the slayings.
The remaining counts were dismissed. Other pending charges of assault with a dangerous weapon and ineligible possession of a firearm were also dropped.
Gordon was convicted in July 2006 of first-degree murder, rape and arson. He admitted strangling Smith, then raping and strangling Swanson before he set fire to their apartment and fled to Detroit. He is currently serving a life sentence in a maximum security prison in Oak Park Heights, Minn. Gordon’s will be eligible for parole in November 2037, when he is 54 years old.
Leahy said the case was “very hard” and required “an immense amount of work” on both sides to come to an agreement amenable to all sides, including the victims’ family.
The family wrote a letter to the judge to underscore the impact of the crime. Victim Services Coordinator Cami O’Laughlin read it to the court before Leahy read Jackson’s sentence.
The letter said a “manipulative” Jackson trained Gordon to “be a soldier in his army of drug dealers and thugs.” They then compared Jackson’s impending “short sentence” to their own: Smith and Swanson were sentenced to death while their families were sentenced to life without them.
“Stacy and Taylor can’t be replaced,” O’Laughlin read. “They can only be mourned and remembered.”
Contact Kevin Behr at (507) 453-3524 or at kbehr@winonadailynews.com.
