Jordan Clemons sentenced to death
Jordan Clemons enters the courtroom for his sentencing.
Kathy Kunco Makowski hugs supporters after Jordan Clemons was sentenced to death for Makowski’s daughter Karissa Kunco.
Karissa Kunco’s aunt Donna Dipippa gives a hug and kiss to Karissa’s mother Kathy Kunco Makowski after Kunco’s killer was sentenced to death.
Karissa Kunco’s aunt Donna Dipippa celebrates with other supporters after Kunco’s killer was sentenced to death Thursday.
District Attorney Gene Vittone comments on the end of the Clemons’ case where Clemons was sentenced to death for the murder of Karissa Kunco in 2012.
Karissa’s mother Kathy Kunco Makowski, center, and stepfather, Donald Makowski, right, exit the Washington County Courthouse after the death sentence for Jordan Clemons.
Members of Karissa’s Army celebrate outside the courthouse after the death sentence for Karissa Kunco’s killer Jordan Clemons Thursday.
Karissa Kunco’s cousins Frederick Makowski of Castle Shannon and Erica McCormick of Whitehall celebrate after the sentencing Thursday.
When a death sentence was imposed on Jordan Clemons Thursday afternoon, it seemed everyone emotionally tied to the case reacted, but Clemons.
Purple-clad friends and family members of the victim, Karissa Kunco, wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the words “Karissa’s Army” and “Justice for Karissa” cheered, gasped and clapped their hands when the jury forewoman announced, “Death,” despite a caution from Judge Gary Gilman that he would tolerate no outbursts.
At the same time, members of Clemons’ family were weeping.
But Clemons, 26, stood impassively, his hands clasped in front of him.
It took three years for Jordan Clemons to be brought to trial, but Gilman ordered the defendant to return to Washington Count Court today for formal sentencing, just hours after jurors declared he should die for murdering his 21-year-old ex-girlfriend by slitting her throat in January 2012 and dumping her body in Mt. Pleasant Township.
In Pennsylvania, only a jury can choose a death sentence, and the panel, after hearing instructions from the judge, considered the case for nearly three hours before slipping a note under the door of the small courtroom where they deliberated.
Deputy Public Defender Brian Gorman said their question was, “If the jury wants to show mercy, how is that presented to court?”
The judge entered the third-floor courtroom with two members of his staff and a stenographer. Attorneys and the public at large were not present, so only this small group and the jurors heard Gilman address the question.
A few minutes later, the jurors announced, again through a note, that they reached a decision on sentencing. Escorted by three deputies, they entered a larger courtroom downstairs where about 80 people, with standing room only, gathered in suspense. The forewoman read a list of circumstances she and her follow jurors considered, such as Clemons’ past felonies and the protection-from-abuse order Kunco obtained from Allegheny County Court. They also took into account Clemons’ history of drug and alcohol abuse as a mitigating factor, but decided he was not substantially impaired when committing the killing.
Kunco’s aunt, Donna DiPippa, sobbed as she left the courtroom.
“I miss her so much every day,” she said. “We finally got justice for her. My daughters, my whole family, has been waiting for this day, and it came true. He deserves everything he’s got. He deserves to live nowhere else but not see the light of day. He’s ruined her family.”
Paul Kunco, the victim’s father said, “It’s bittersweet for us. Obviously, Karissa’s not here, but we got justice for her, in her name, in her spirit. My daughter was also, as everybody knows, a victim of domestic violence and what we tried to do since we lost her is try to spread awareness about domestic violence.”
Kunco said he knew Clemons but he did not want to talk about the defendant.
“When Karissa was here physically, she helped a lot of people, and now, her name is going to be synonymous with helping people. That’s Karissa, she wanted to help. She essentially gave up her life to help somebody else. She essentially loved the wrong person.”
Gov. Tom Wolf said he won’t sign any execution warrants, but District Attorney Gene Vittone said the governor’s stance “had no impact on this because the jury was charged with the law and they followed the law, and they made their determination based upon the law. Until the time that changes, the law of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania provides for capital punishment.”
Outside the courthouse, on West Cherry Avenue, G.L. Riley, 38, of Washington, who said he has ministered to Clemons, berated Gorman.
“You sold him out. You sold him out, man,” Riley yelled. “You got to live with that, not me. You sent him up the river, man. You should have put it all out there.”
Riley said Clemons confessed to him in 2009 that he abused crack cocaine, but Clemons, a former football standout, was able to perform ably clearing tables and serving food at a Waffle House restaurant.
Riley continued that “a young lady tragically lost her life, but that repeated text messages that Kunco had sent to Clemons after she obtained the protection order were not mentioned at the trial. He also said he wanted to be called as a witness on Clemons’ behalf.
Gorman later said of the death penalty, “I can’t see how that advances society or makes us any better as a society. It sickens me.” He called his client “still a kid” and expressed sympathy for Kunco and her family.
“What that girl went through and what her parents are going through is incomprehensible,” he said.
Had the jurors been unable to decide unanimously on the death penalty, Clemons would have been sentenced to life in prison. A death sentence results in an automatic review by the Pennsylvania Supreme Court that is triggered by the formal sentencing.
After finding Clemons guilty of first-degree murder Monday, the jury returned for two days of testimony in the penalty phase of the trial, which included aggravating and mitigating circumstances.
“Death row is reserved for the worst of the worst, the worst people among first-degree murders,” Gorman said in his closing argument today. “Is Jordan Clemons the worst of the worst?”
Kunco’s family and friends seemed to think so, as a chorus of “yes” could be heard from their portion of the courtroom. The attorneys completed their arguments in the penalty phase of the case Thursday morning, and the jury is now deliberating.
Although two doctors, both experts in their fields of neuropsychology, psychology and psychiatry, confirmed Clemons, formerly of Canonsburg, suffered from a brain injury, limited cognitive function, drug and alcohol problems, post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, and testified that they could not determined if these issues contributed to Kunco’s murder, Gorman disagreed.
“I respectively take issue with that because everything we do plays a part in every important decision we make,” he said.
Clemons’ attorneys argued head injuries he suffered both on and off the football field, plus years of drug abuse, diminished his mental capacity.
Gorman implored the jury to sentence Clemons to life in prison.
“Is he going to be the same man when he is 30, 40 or even 50? He will be a different person if he does what he should, if you give him life,” Gorman said. “If you give him death, then you are killing a different person. If I’m wrong, then he still dies in prison.”
He also asked the jury to take Clemons’ family and two young children into consideration.
“Good person after good person took the stand (and testified on Clemons’ behalf),” Gorman said. “They love him and he loves them. They still speak highly of him regardless of what he did. They haven’t abandoned him.”
First Assistant District Attorney Chad Schneider admitted the task at hand was not easy. He reminded the jury members they were selected because they were “capable of the task.”
“It’s time for you to decide what is justice, what is fair,” he said.
Schneider said Clemons lured and manipulated Kunco, of Baldwin, before killing her Jan. 11, 2012, and dumping her body along a wooded section of Sabo Road in Mt. Pleasant Township.
“He preyed on her,” he said.
The prosecution said a protection-from-abuse order Kunco had against Clemons from Allegheny County Court following a Dec. 18, 2011, assault and his prior criminal history warranted the death penalty.
“Not all killings are murder. Not all murders are subject to the death penalty, but this murder is subject to the death penalty,” he said in court.
The last person to receive a death sentence in Washington County Court was Michelle Tharp, who was convicted in 2000 in the starvation death of her daughter, Tausha Lanham, who, at age 7, weighed just 12 pounds.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court last year overturned the sentence, saying the defense failed to present mitigating evidence on Tharp’s limited mental state.
The appellate court sent the case back to Washington County Court for re-sentencing. One of the prosecution’s options would be to empanel a jury to hear evidence on the penalty.
Attorneys for both sides conferred last month, but how to handle the Tharp case is still in the preliminary stages.
Tharp, now 46, is imprisoned at the State Correctional Institution at Muncy, Lycoming County.
According to the Death Penalty Information Center, Pennsylvania has the fourth-largest death row in the country with 186 inmates, but the only people who have been executed in the past few decades were three who waived their rights to appeal.
The last execution in a fully-contested case was 47 years ago, and the last Washington County resident to die in the electric chair was Robert Dreamer, the killer of 17-year-old Thelma Young who died in 1927.
Since then, the method of execution changed from the electric chair at the Penitentiary at Rockford to lethal injection.
Twenty-one inmates on death row died of natural causes or suicide since 1983.