Josh Jacobs faces death penalty: Attorney to use insanity defense

Josh Jacobs is accused of raping and murdering his 89-year-old neighbor.

The defendant, Joshua Jacobs, 21, is set to go to trial June 5 on first-degree murder and rape charges. He is charged with breaking into the Centertown home of Ruby Thurman last July in an attempt to steal the keys to her car.

Investigators say Jacobs then raped and killed his elderly neighbor, leaving her body in her bathtub. He was caught a short time later, partly due to a blood trail he allegedly left behind while fleeing to his nearby home.

Jacobs reportedly confessed but at one point claimed he had an accomplice. Lawmen have yet to see proof there was a second killer.

Given the evidence and heinous nature of the crime, prosecutors have opted to seek the death penalty. Jacobs is being represented by veteran death penalty attorney Larry Warner who has handled two other local death penalty cases.

It was Warner who raised the insanity defense in a motion he made before the court earlier this month. In the motion, Warner placed the state on notice saying Jacobs intends to rely on the defense that he was insane at the time of the crime. Those close to Jacobs maintain the youth suffered mental issues from head injuries he sustained in a car crash a couple of years before, the same crash which claimed the life of one of his friends.

In light of the insanity declaration, both the state and defense are expected to begin mental evaluations on the defendant who is being held pending trial. The sides will also likely call in mental health experts to prove their side to the jury.

Should an insanity defense not fly with the jury and the trial end in a guilty verdict, the question of sanity could again come into play during the separate sentencing phase in which jurors get to decide if the 21-year-old would serve life in prison or die by lethal injection.

Along with the insanity defense, Warner filed numerous other motions including one to prevent prosecutors from quoting or referring to passages in the Bible in asking for the death penalty. Warner pointed out that in another Tennessee death penalty case, the death sentence was overturned on appeal because the jury foreman read from the Bible during deliberations and urged other jurors to impose the death penalty.