Tracy Lee Jenkins Jr. on Tuesday (Oct. 8) was sentenced to 40 years imprisonment for the 2018 shooting death of his girlfriend.
Jenkins, 27, of Tillatoba, stood alongside his attorney and showed no visible display of emotion when Circuit Judge Smith Murphey handed down the sentence shortly after 1:30 p.m.
The gallery, packed with family members and friends of both Jenkins and the victim, 25-year-old Brandi Hunt of Crowder, remained quiet following the ruling, having been cautioned by Murphey against any outbursts.
Due to threats and altercations between some of the family, including a street fracas at the same venue after a Sept. 18 hearing in which Jenkins pleaded not guilty, there was heightened security for Tuesday’s proceedings at the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Charleston.
Tallahatchie County Sheriff's Office personnel were joined by eight heavily armed members of the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Department SWAT team.
Three-and-a-half hours earlier, at 10 a.m., Jenkins entered a plea of guilty to second-degree murder as part of a plea bargain deal for a reduced charge that was consummated on the very morning of jury selection in his scheduled first-degree murder trial.
Under terms of the plea arrangement, Jenkins’ guilty plea was to be met with a sentence of not less than 30 years imprisonment, nor more than 40, at Murphey’s discretion.
The sentencing phase — the proceeding during which the evidence and arguments of a case are presented before a judge to help him decide upon appropriate punishment — began at 11 a.m. Tuesday, and the prosecution called five witnesses.
One of the state's witnesses was Hunt’s aunt, Linda Hunt, who testified about the rocky 1½- to 2-year-long relationship Jenkins had with her niece and said that he was “real possessive and jealous-like” and sometimes would stalk her.
The prosecutor, Assistant District Attorney Steven Jubera, played a Facebook Live video post from March 2018 in which Jenkins filmed himself verbally threatening to kill Brandi Hunt.
“He made the statement and he carried out what he was saying,” said Linda Hunt, after watching the video on a large screen set up in front of the defendant's table.
Jeris Davis, an investigator with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, later took the stand to discuss the murder case in which he assisted.
Jubera played an audio recording of law enforcement’s initial interrogation of Jenkins after he turned himself in on the day following the April 20 shooting.
Jenkins originally told investigators that Brandi Hunt had pulled a pistol on him during a heated discussion between the two outside of the Marshall Road Apartments complex north of Charleston, where the shooting occurred. Jenkins said the two tussled over the firearm and “the gun went off,” striking Hunt once in the head.
Tracy Jenkins
“It wasn’t my intention to try to hurt her,” Jenkins could be heard telling investigators on the recording.
After some inconsistencies were pointed out to him, Jenkins recanted and admitted to interrogators that he had the gun involved in the shooting when he and a friend drove to the apartments that night. He said he dialed up Hunt on the phone and asked her to come out of an apartment, where prosecutors said Jenkins suspected she was spending time with another man.
Jenkins said he held the Smith & Wesson 9mm weapon in his hand when he exited the vehicle and approached Hunt. However, still maintaining that the shooting was accidental, he said she grabbed for the pistol and, after a brief scuffle, the weapon discharged.
After ending the audio recording, and in an effort to show a repeated pattern of violent tendencies, Jubera had Davis read selected excerpts from a 32-page summary of text messages dumped from Jenkins’ phone, many of which threatened physical violence against Hunt and some, her death.
Davis read a March 2018 text sent from Jenkins’ phone to Hunt’s which stated, “Well, you think you’re just going to leave me? I’ll kill your a--.”
An April 10, 2018, text messages sent to a 901 area code number from Jenkins’ phone said, “I’m going to kill her" and "That bitch gotta die."
Defense attorney Tara Lang, who later attempted to soften the impact of those threatening text messages by saying that when Jenkins is angry he sometimes says and writes things he doesn't mean, also had Davis to read some text messages in which Jenkins professed his love for Hunt.
An April 16, 2018, text from Jenkins’ phone to Hunt’s noted, “Say, Brandi Hunt. I love you with all my heart. I swear I do.” Another sent that day said, “I want us to grow old together.”
In an April 18, 2018, message sent just two days before the fatal shooting, Jenkins wrote to Hunt, “I want you to be my wife.”
The defense did not call any witnesses Tuesday. Given the opportunity to make a statement to the court, Jenkins declined to speak.
In his summation, Jubera told the court, “The text messages make clear Mr. Jenkins was obsessed with Brandi ... hoarded her to keep her away from others. I think it’s appropriate to say that the wrath, anger, lust, greed that Tracy Jenkins had for Brandi ultimately led to a bullet in her head. ... Mr. Jenkins, for his evil act, for his depraved heart, has earned 40 years in the penitentiary.”
In her closing remarks, Lang said, “This is a classic example of a love story gone bad,” painting Jenkins as someone who while obsessed with Hunt, wanted her to be his wife. She added that he made a “reckless” decision to carry a handgun on that fateful night he confronted her for the final time.
“On April 20, he did not go there with the intent to kill her. ... He’s not a cold-blooded killer,” Lang added, asking Murphey for the minimum 30-year sentence “so that when [Jenkins] gets out he will be able to see his kids and, possibly, his grandkids.”
Under Mississippi law, there is no parole for murder.
After taking a break of 14 minutes to leave the courtroom and review some of the physical exhibits presented Tuesday, Murphey returned to offer his ruling, prefacing it with a few remarks.
“Domestic violence is just typically a vicious, escalating matter, which is exactly what played out here,” he began. “It could have been avoided. Even though there may have been anger involved, pride involved, jealousy, it could have been avoided.”
Addressing Jenkins, he said, “You chose not to avoid it. ... You lied about it and tried to cover it up.”
“You took that gun to the situation, you went to the situation, you called her to the situation and you killed her,” Murphey added.
After handing down the sentence, the judge added, “It’s what I feel is right. ... Mr. Jenkins, you brought this all on yourself.”
Hunt was shot on April 20, 2018, but lingered in critical condition at a Memphis hospital, where she died on May 2, 2018. Among her survivors were two young sons.
