Thursday, December 09, 1999
Girlfriend's killer gets 16 to life
BY STEVE KEMME
The Cincinnati Enquirer
HAMILTON — A Butler County jury rejected Christopher Hubbard's contention that he didn't mean to strangle his girlfriend after she told him she wanted to stop dating him.
Mr. Hubbard, who admitted he became angry and wrapped his hands around Jill Sexton's throat, was convicted Wednesday of murder and gross abuse of a corpse.
Common Pleas Judge H.J. Bressler immediately gave him the maximum sentence: 16 years to life in prison. Mr. Hubbard, 20, of Hamilton, can be considered for parole after 16 years.
About 20 relatives and friends of Ms. Sexton cried and hugged each in the courtroom after the trial ended.
Ms. Sexton's teary-eyed mother, Connie Isaacs of Fairfield, clutched a photo of her pretty, blond-haired daughter, who was a senior at Hamilton High School when she was killed on March 22 in the Hamilton apartment of Mr. Hubbard's mother.
“She was my only child,” she said. “He took everything. If he gets out of prison when he's 35, that's not enough. My daughter will never walk free again.”
“I'm pleased with the verdict, but it won't bring her back,” said Ms. Sexton's aunt, Laura Sherrow of Hamilton. “She was taken from us, and she shouldn't have been.”
Mr. Hubbard admitted on the witness stand during the three-day trial that he killed Ms. Sexton, tried to commit suicide by slicing his neck and wrists with a razor and then drove the body to Decatur, Tenn., where he went to an aunt's trailer.
His aunt took him to a hospital for treatment, and suspicious hospital personnel contacted police. He was arrested at the hospital after Hamilton police went to Decatur and found Ms. Sexton's body under a comforter and a suitcase in the back seat.
Mr. Hubbard's attorney, Greg Howard, tried to convince the jury to convict him of the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter.
“He didn't mean to kill her,” he said in his closing argument. “If you take your hands and place them around someone's throat — I don't care if it's for 10 seconds or four minutes — you run the risk of killing them.”
Butler County Coroner Dr. Richard Burkhardt had testified that it takes four to six minutes of constant pressure on the throat to strangle someone.
But Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Rick Hyde told the jury that the killing was no accident.
“This was a murder, plain and simple,” he said. “He was of the mind-set that "If I can't have you, no one else will.' He treated her like property and killed her on purpose.”
Two of Ms. Sexton's friends, Jessica Gill and Amber Willoughby, said the verdict doesn't ease the pain of losing Ms. Sexton.
“All we have left of her,” Ms. Gill said, “are memories.”
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