After over 11 years, Ducker out of prison

As the nation?s attention was focused on Selmer last week, the woman who first brought CNN cameras and the media spotlight to the front lawn of Warren County Courthouse nearly 12 years ago was released from prison without herald.

Jennie Bain Ducker, 32, was released last week after serving over 11 years in prison for aggravated child abuse for the hyperthermia deaths of her toddler children, Devin and Dustin Ducker, who she left inside her parked car on the evening and morning of June 6, 1995.

According to Jack Elder of the Tennessee Department of Pardons and Paroles, Ducker is under the supervision of the Memphis parole office, meaning she will be residing in the Memphis area until she completes her parole. She will be released from parole next September.

Ducker was released after filing a living and work plan with the prison system. She was granted parole earlier this year on her third try. Her terms of parole will be like most parolees where she will be required to report to her parole officer regularly, not leave the area without permission, avoid any brushes with the law, and maintain employment. Provided she completes her parole, she will be free from supervision in a year and a half, although she will forever, barring court restoration of rights, be listed as a convicted felon.

It was during the fall of 1995 that national attention focused on McMinnville as Ducker went on trial for first-degree murder. Prosecutors tried her under the Scotty Trexler murder law which made death by child abuse a form of murder. She was convicted of the lesser charge of aggravated child abuse and sentenced to 18 years in prison.

For the first time, a Warren County courtroom was seen on CNN and other national media outlets. Much of the trial was covered nationally on a tape delay as it was competing head-to-head with the O.J. Simpson murder trial.

The Ducker crime itself happened on the heels of the Susan Smith murder case in South Carolina where a mother had intentionally drowned her children by running her car in a lake, forever tying the two cases together even though prosecutors never suspected the Ducker deaths were anything but accidental.

Verdict in the Ducker case came the same day O.J. Simpson was acquitted for the murders of his ex-wife and Ron Goldman, with jurors hearing the O.J. verdict while they were dining at a local restaurant despite being expressly forbidden by the judge to be told the outcome of the Simpson case since they were in deliberation.