Death Penalty

Virginia Man Executed

Using new drug cocktail.

A Virginia man who was convicted of raping and suffocating an 88-year-old woman was executed Thursday in the state’s first use of a new drug cocktail. Jerry Terrell Jackson, 30, was executed by a lethal dose of a three-drug cocktail that used pentobarbital rather than the sedative sodium thiopental because of a shortage of the drug. While attorneys in some states have contested the use of pentobarbital, federal courts have ruled that the change is not significant enough to stop executions. Jackson was sentenced to death for the 2001 rape and murder of Ruth Phillips in her Williamsburg apartment. Jackson said “no” softly when asked if he had any final words.