Son draws 135 years for killings

A 35-year-old Little Rock man was sentenced to 135 years in prison Wednesday for killing his parents -- prosecutors called it "butchering" -- and abducting his 12-year-old sister because he didn't like the way the couple were raising the girl.

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Antonio Terrell Whitlow will have to serve about 95 years before qualifying for parole on charges of first-degree murder and kidnapping under the sentence imposed by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims.

But Whitlow avoided a life sentence when jurors reduced the original homicide charge from capital murder, which carried an automatic life sentence, to first-degree murder. Whitlow mounted an insanity defense, pointing to his years-long struggle with schizophrenia. But the seven men and five women rejected the opportunity to clear him of criminal wrongdoing on mental health grounds after about 90 minutes of deliberation.

Whitlow has admitted to the killings since a police manhunt caught up to him after the bodies of his 65-year-old parents, professional evangelists Bobby and Annette Whitlow, were found stabbed to death in the Zion Street home in July 2012 by a member of their congregation. Police tracked him through his cellphone to Memphis where authorities found him walking the streets with the girl, who was unharmed. She was not called as a witness in the two-day trial.

In closing arguments, prosecutors called on jurors to consider the horrific injuries inflicted on the couple: Bobby Whitlow was stabbed 18 times and Annette Whitlow was stabbed 11 times, with some wounds 8 to 13 inches deep on their faces and bodies. Their son didn't have to kill them, and he emerged from their life-or-death fight without any injury, chief deputy prosecutor John Johnson said in closing arguments.

"He carved them up," Johnson said. "He had the only weapon. All he had to do is quit and walk out the door."

Defense attorney Ron Davis told jurors that Antonio Whitlow's actions prove that he was not in his right mind when he killed his parents.

"A person who stabs his mother and father that many times, I suggest he cannot be operating as himself," Davis said in his closing statement.

Deputy prosecutor Jeanna Sherrill called on jurors to reject defense claims of insanity, pointing out that Whitlow knew enough to change his clothes, hide the murder weapon and keep his sister from seeing what he had done after the killings.

She reminded jurors that while the defense's only expert witness, a state psychologist who examined Whitlow at court order, did confirm Whitlow's mental illness, that same doctor also concluded that Whitlow knew what he was doing when he cut his parents up.

"Antonio Whitlow is somebody who's not going to be told what to do," Sherrill said. "You saw that part of him today and, unfortunately, the parents who loved him and raised him ... saw that part on July 28, 2012."

Whitlow told police then that he'd stabbed the couple in self-defense during an argument because he'd challenged his father about how his parents regularly locked the girl in her bedroom, supposedly as an expression of their Christian beliefs. Whitlow told police in an account he would repeat during the three years he waited to go to trial that both parents had knives and he'd had to act in self-defense.

But Wednesday, Whitlow offered a different story to jurors, saying he had knifed his parents in a delusional state brought on by his father gesturing with a knife while they talked about his sister. He said his mother had never been armed but that he repeatedly cut into her after finishing with his father while delusional.

"I was having flashbacks of seeing demons with a knife," Whitlow told jurors.

Whitlow also told jurors that he had misunderstood what was going on with his sister, realizing that she had locked herself in her room when he visited the home. Whitlow told jurors that police had put him up to saying he had knifed his parents in self-defense.

"I just told the detective what he wanted to hear," Whitlow testified. "They basically put it out there that if it was self-defense, they would send me home."

The defendant spent a tempestuous 55 minutes on the witness stand, where he occasionally clashed with his own lawyer by repeatedly straying off topic to complain about the proceedings. His attorney at one point asked the judge to order Whitlow to keep his answers to the lawyer's questions on topic.

"I don't have anything else to say if I can't tell it," Whitlow said. "I don't feel like I'm getting a fair trial."

The judge ordered him to return to his seat when he announced "I'm done" and refused to answer further prosecution questions.

The judge offered Whitlow a chance to resume testifying after an hour-long lunch break, but the defendant, through his attorney, declined.

"If he cannot testify to what he wants to, the answer is no," his attorney told the judge.

Whitlow still has more legal hurdles to cross. He's facing escape and assault charges that could add more than 20 years to his prison term over accusations that he threw urine on a jail deputy, Laron Smith, last year and for pulling off his handcuffs and running from deputies shortly after he was jailed on the charges in November 2012.

Metro on 04/02/2015

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