Avery Jenkins wins a new trial and leaves death row

Avery Jenkins wins a new trial and leaves death row after a post-conviction hearing brought forward the history of serious mental illness and failed foster care that his trial lawyers had never investigated. The proceeding changed how the case could be understood: Jenkins’s illness did not erase the violence of the killing, but it mattered to his culpability and sentence, and the court’s eventual relief moved him from death row toward treatment.

Background and Basis for Relief

At ten, Jenkins had been abused by foster parents who locked him in a closet, withheld food, and beat him. His foster mother later tied him to a tree in the woods and left him there; hunters found him three days later in very poor health. His difficulties continued through adolescence: he began using drugs and alcohol, suffered seizures and psychotic episodes, and was eventually left homeless. At twenty, during a psychotic episode, he entered a stranger’s house believing demons were attacking him and stabbed a man to death. His lawyers had made no investigation of his history before he was convicted and sentenced to death.

The post-conviction claim argued that counsel had failed to provide effective assistance by not uncovering Jenkins’s background or presenting his disabilities as relevant to criminal responsibility and punishment. The omitted history was not a minor addition to the trial record: it connected his conduct to a life of severe illness, abuse, and institutional failure that the original proceedings had not examined.

Three Days of Testimony

The hearing took place in a court about a three-hour drive from the prison. Before it began, Stevenson visited Jenkins in a basement holding cell and tried to prepare him for the testimony, including the possibility that seeing former foster parents would upset him. Jenkins remained pleasant and agreeable, but during the hearing Stevenson saw him become distressed when some of those former foster parents came into the courtroom.

Over three days, experts described organic brain damage, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder, and explained how these conditions could combine to cause severe impairment. They testified that Jenkins’s psychosis and other serious mental-health problems could produce dangerous behavior, while distinguishing the effects of illness from a judgment about his character. The defense also presented evidence about the foster-care system that had failed him: several foster parents who had cared for Jenkins were later convicted of sexual abuse or criminal mismanagement of foster children. Others acknowledged that they had been frustrated by him and were not equipped to address his serious mental-health needs.

Stevenson argued that ignoring mental disability in judging conduct and deciding punishment was as unfair as demanding that someone who had lost their legs climb stairs without assistance, or requiring a blind person to cross a busy highway unaided. He did not argue that a brutal killing should go without accountability or that public safety did not matter. His point was that disability had to be considered in determining the degree of culpability and the appropriate sentence.

The Visit Before Judgment

Stevenson left the hearing encouraged by the evidence, but tempered that hope with the reality that state post-conviction hearings rarely produced favorable rulings; he thought relief was more likely on appeal. About a month later, before the judge had ruled, he returned to the prison because he wanted to check on Jenkins after the hearing. Jenkins had seemed composed for much of the proceeding, but the appearance of former foster parents had visibly upset him.

Their visits had acquired a small ritual around a chocolate milkshake. The prison would not allow Stevenson to bring one, yet Jenkins asked at the start of each visit whether he had brought it. Stevenson kept promising to try, partly to redirect Jenkins’s attention. On this return visit, the correctional officer who had treated Stevenson badly during their first encounter greeted him earnestly and politely. Stevenson remained skeptical, but the changed greeting marked a contrast with the earlier hostility.

When Stevenson began the familiar explanation that he had tried to bring a milkshake, Jenkins interrupted him: he had received one and was all right now. The exchange displaced the ritual rather than repeating it. Jenkins grinned as they began discussing the hearing, and they talked for an hour before Stevenson had to see another client. Jenkins never asked him for a chocolate milkshake again.

New Trial and Departure from Death Row

Jenkins won a new trial and was ultimately removed from death row and placed in a facility where he could receive mental-health treatment. The outcome was not an acquittal; the evidence establishes a new trial and a transfer to treatment, not the result of any later trial. It nevertheless changed the terms of his confinement and returned his documented illness and disability to the assessment of his case.

The hearing’s movement from expert testimony about severe impairment to the modest prison visit gives the legal victory a personal measure. The milkshake had been a repeated request Stevenson could not fulfill; after Jenkins received one himself, he could turn from that routine and talk about what had happened in court. Relief came through a legal challenge to the failures at trial, while the final visit showed a small but distinct change in their familiar pattern.