Tears for slain officer's wife, pleas to spare admitted killer's life

Shonna McNeil offered the jurors her best reason why they should spare the life of admitted murderer Rasheed Scrugs, her estranged husband and the father of her two boys, ages 5 and 6.

"I think every child deserves to have a father and know who that father is," she told the eight women and four men. "The only ones who are really hurt in the end are the children. . . . I want my kids to know who their father is, that he is not a bad person and has a good heart."

For Kimmy Pawlowski, it must have seemed the final insult.

She was married to Philadelphia Police Officer John Pawlowski just four months when he was shot to death Feb. 13, 2009, leaving her pregnant with a son and namesake he would never see.

On the stand earlier Wednesday, she had moved the packed Common Pleas courtroom to tears - including her husband's killer and the Scrugs family - with her statement about her loss and that of her 17-month-old son. Now, hearing McNeil's words, she stifled a sob and bolted from the courtroom, followed by several relatives.

For both families, it was a day of ultimate conflict of interests, a flashpoint of anger and grief.

Before lunch, city prosecutors Edward McCann and Jacqueline Juliano Coelho completed their fifth and final day of evidence to convince the jury that Scrugs, 35, deserved death by lethal injection, not life in prison without parole, for killing Pawlowski, 25.

After lunch, defense attorneys David Rudenstein and Lee Mandell began making their case to the jury that the life of Scrugs, a paroled West Philadelphia robber, was worth sparing.

Scrugs pleaded guilty to first-degree murder last Thursday on what was to have been the first day of his trial. By doing so, he left the jury with only the question of his sentence to decide. The state has not actually executed a prisoner since 1999.

The prosecutors' final two witnesses were Pawlowski's widow and his brother Robert, 37, a police corporal. Their victim-impact statements left an audience, including District Attorney Seth Williams and Police Commissioner Charles H. Ramsey, in tears and milling about the courtroom as if at a viewing.

"Johnny always wore his vest," Kimmy Pawlowski, 25, told the jury. "Even if he was shot, he would make it. He had to make it."

But her husband, an officer for five years and the son of a retired police lieutenant, did not make it. His body armor stopped one of Scrugs' shots during the standoff at Broad Street and Olney Avenue. But a second shot passed through the vest's armhole, pierced both lungs and his heart, and exited the other armhole.

Kimmy Pawlowski spoke about 10 minutes, a lamentation about a lost life together: no first Valentine's Day - her husband's cards to her, one funny and one serious, were in the glove box of his car - no Thanksgiving, no Christmas, no first wedding anniversary.

Instead, she spent their first anniversary at his grave, talking to him about life and their son, John III, who was born June 11, 2009.

"I know that I had it all, or at least what I thought was everything," she said.

Afterward, the Pawlowski family and Kimmy's parents, Edward and Sharon Leigh, sought some privacy in an alcove off the hallway, where they doted on the slain officer's towheaded son.

The afternoon's testimony was a sharp contrast: the story of Scrugs as a boy who did not know his own father and had a checkered history with two stepfathers. He had a deteriorating school record that ended in 11th grade when he was arrested at Benjamin Franklin High School with a pellet-gun replica of a 9mm semiautomatic pistol and 27 plastic bags of cocaine.

"One life has already been taken, that of Officer Pawlowski," said Scrugs' younger sister Bayyenah Abdul Azziz. "There's no way in my mind that we should take another life."

The jury will not return to the city's Criminal Justice Center until Friday. On Thursday, Judge Renee Cardwell Hughes and the lawyers will have a hearing on several motions involving how much additional evidence the defense may present.

Hughes told the jurors they would likely begin deliberations next week on the question of whether Scrugs should be sentenced to life or death.