Maintaining innocence, handyman gets life for rape-murder of Drexel grad student
James Harris said no one could understand the relationship he had with Jasmine Wright.
He was a 56-year-old West Philadelphia handyman, a high school dropout with a long criminal record and a fondness for smoking weed.
She was 27, beautiful, and smart, with a newly minted master's degree in public health from Drexel University and plans to get a law degree.
One of the skeptics was Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge Sandy L.V. Byrd, who on Wednesday rejected Harris' tale of a consensual sexual relationship with Wright and found him guilty of first-degree murder, rape, and other charges in the sexual assault and strangling of Wright in 2015.
The first-degree-murder verdict, after 2½ days of a nonjury trial, carried a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole, but Byrd added consecutive sentences totaling 30 to 60 years for the charges of rape, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, and burglary.
Harris testified that his DNA was found inside Wright because they had a consensual sexual relationship and that she was alive when he left her third-floor apartment at 226 N. 50th St. at 6 p.m. on July 15, 2015.
He maintained his innocence to the moment of sentencing.
"I miss Jasmine as my friend as much as I miss my mother, who died 43 days before I lost Jasmine," Harris told Byrd.
"I know how they feel and I know they want justice," Harris said, referring to Wright's family, "but it's not me."
Wright's aunts, Rosemary Todd and Dawn Babiker, gave victim-impact statements calling their 27-year-old niece's killing a loss to the world.
Todd broke down while describing how Wright had just earned a master's degree in public health and was planning to study law next to advocate for public health services.
Already politically active, Todd said, Wright spent the previous year studying health care in Africa as a way of preparing for a career in U.S. public health. "She always tried to look for the good in people and was a good influence on the world itself."
During Harris' testimony Tuesday and Wednesday, Wright's family sat stunned in the gallery, their faces expressing a mixture of anger and disbelief at this tale of a relationship with Wright.
Assistant District Attorney Gail Fairman called Harris a predator and said his "fictional sexual affair between them" was just an "additional wound against Jasmine Wright."
Defense attorney Geoffrey Kilroy, who defended Harris with Thurgood M. Matthews and Stephanie Fennell, asked Byrd to run the sentences for the three lesser crimes concurrent to the life sentence as a "measure of mercy" for Harris.
Kilroy said Harris sustained multiple traumatic injuries including twice being shot in the head and shot in the left eye with an arrow when he was a child.
He said Harris' years of beatings by his father, James Washington, and watching his father abuse his mother, led to his killing his father in 1982. Harris served about five years in prison for voluntary manslaughter.
Harris agreed to waive his right to a jury trial in exchange for the District Attorney's Office not pursuing a death sentence.
Harris also rejected a last-minute offer by prosecutors to plead guilty to third-degree murder in exchange for a sentence of 50 to 100 years in prison.
After Wright's slaying, her parents filed suit in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court against property manager Realty World, property owner Harold Murray, and Harris, contending no one did a background check before hiring Harris. The suit is pending.