A man who was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1983 murder of a West Covina police officer has died, the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation said.
Michael A. Jackson — who was behind bars at California Institution for Men in Chino — was pronounced dead Saturday at an outside medical facility, officials said.
The San Bernardino County coroner will determine the 72-year-old inmate’s cause of death.
Jackson — formerly of Valinda — was initially convicted and sentenced to death in 1984 for the Aug. 31, 1983, slaying of Officer Kenneth Wrede.
A panel from the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals overturned his death sentence, citing an inadequate defense during the trial’s penalty phase.
The case’s penalty phase was retried at the Pomona courthouse in 2002, with the second jury also recommending the death penalty for Jackson.
He was formally sentenced a second time in September 2002 for the 26-year-old officer’s slaying, with then-Superior Court Judge Charles Horan saying it was “inexcusable for us in the system to have to look at cases that take 19 years to get resolved.”
Members of the slain officer’s family, including his parents and wife, said then that they felt victimized by a lengthy appellate process that overturned Jackson’s death sentence and sent the penalty portion of the case back for the retrial.
In 2009, the California Supreme Court upheld Jackson’s latest death sentence.
Wrede, a newly married, three-year police veteran, was killed after responding to a report of a man acting strangely on Francisquito Avenue and Glenview Road in West Covina.
Jackson — who was under the influence of PCP — fought with the officer, swung a wooden stake at him, ripped his badge from his uniform and broke his sunglasses, then-Associate Justice Carlos Moreno wrote on behalf of the panel.
Wrede ran to the driver’s side door of his patrol car, and Jackson ran to the opposite side and opened the passenger side door and grabbed a shotgun that was secured in a rack.
Jackson eventually laid the shotgun on top of the car and put his hands on the roof of the vehicle, appearing to give up, and then picked up the shotgun and shot Wrede in the head as the officer started to walk around the car.
After Wrede’s shooting, Jackson used the butt of the shotgun to strike a police dog, which bit him and caused him to fall to the ground and drop the shotgun, Moreno wrote on behalf of the seven-justice panel.
Jackson was eventually subdued by two other West Covina police officers, along with a Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy who had been approached by a passing motorist.
The justices rejected Jackson’s claim that he should get a third penalty phase trial at which jurors could have the opportunity to decide if he is mentally retarded.
A 2002 U.S. Supreme Court ruling found that a person could not be executed if he or she is mentally retarded — a claim Jackson could pursue in a subsequent appeal, Moreno noted on behalf of the high court.
The panel also rejected a number of Jackson’s other claims, including a judge’s denial of Jackson’s request to act as his own attorney.
“Defendant contends that his `death sentence must be reversed due to the cumulative effect of the numerous errors in this case.’ We discern no errors, considered either individual or cumulative, that warrant reversal of the judgment,” Moreno wrote in the 2009 ruling.