Stabbing defendant gets 30 to life for killing ex-girlfriend
By Jim Phillips
Athens NEWS Senior Writer
May 15, 2008
After deliberating for more than eight hours Monday, a jury found former Hocking College student Ronald Hendrickson II guilty of aggravated murder in the stabbing death of his ex-girlfriend.
Though prosecutors asked Athens County Common Pleas Judge L. Alan Goldsberry to give the 22-year-old Hendrickson life without chance of parole, the judge softened that slightly. Hendrickson got life, but with the chance to ask for parole in 30 years. This is the next harshest sentence Ohio law allows for his offense.
The scene in the packed courtroom was highly emotional, with family members of both Hendrickson and his victim, Jodi Blankenship, crying as the verdict and sentence were read out.
Hendrickson himself took the news with relative composure, first standing to apologize to Blankenship’s family, then sharing endearments with family members before politely cooperating with the sheriff’s deputy who handcuffed him to take him to prison. (A law enforcement official was later overheard praising Hendrickson for his control on hearing the verdict, saying he “took it like a man.”)
Hendrickson stabbed the 21-year-old Blankenship 14 times on April 12, 2007, after an argument at the Nelsonville rental house they shared with other Hocking College students. The two had been romantically involved for over two years, and had broken up in February, but still lived in the same house.
Hendrickson’s defense was that Blankenship had stabbed him first and he reacted in self-defense, but the jury clearly did not buy this.
Before closing arguments Monday morning, Goldsberry closed off a defense-requested option for the jury to find Hendrickson guilty of the lesser-included offense of voluntary manslaughter. He also instructed the jury that the facts of the case didn’t allow for Hendrickson to offer the affirmative defense of self-defense, because he had obviously played a role in creating the situation that led to Blankenship’s death.
The jury did have the option of finding Hendrickson guilty of murder rather than aggravated murder. For the more serious charge, they would have to find that he deliberately planned ahead of time to kill Blankenship. To find murder, they needed only to find that he intended to kill her.
IN CLOSING ARGUMENTS, defense attorney Victor A. Hodge of Dayton (Hendrickson’s hometown) reiterated a point he made in his opening statements: The defense isn’t denying Hendrickson killed Blankenship. Instead, “the issues are purpose, prior calculation and design,” he said.
He insisted that the testimony in Hendrickson’s trial, which began with jury selection May 5, showed that his client didn’t plan or intend to kill Blankenship.
“This situation is one of disarray, disorder, a lack of precision,” he said. “This is a terrible sequence of events, but not a conscious design… What the fact pattern shows is an emotional, highly charged reaction… without the forming of purpose, without the forming of a plan.”
Hodge also noted that while prosecutors have questioned whether Blankenship ever stabbed Hendrickson, he did have two cuts in his left side. “Look at Ron’s left side,” he said. “The wounds are real.”
He pointed out that only one knife was found on the scene, and that a pocket knife that Hendrickson regularly carried was found elsewhere, in a pocket of his pants in his bedroom.
Prosecutors argued that the knife was Hendrickson’s, and that he waited with it for about an hour outside a bathroom where Blankenship had locked herself in. Hendrickson claimed the knife was Blankenship’s, and that he had given it to her as a gift.
Athens County Prosecutor C. David Warren, in his final arguments, told the jury that convicting Hendrickson of aggravated murder would be “a difficult emotional decision to make, but not a difficult factual decision to make.”
Warren maintained that the evidence presented made it obvious Hendrickson deliberately set out to kill Blankenship, after she made clear she planned to have a new boyfriend stay the weekend at the Nelsonville house.
He heaped scorn on Hendrickson’s own testimony, which he portrayed as implausible, self-contradictory, and a transparent attempt to blame his victim for her own murder.
“Even after you’ve heard all this evidence, they continue to blame Jodi,” Warren said. “It’s her fault. ‘It’s her fault I stabbed her 14 times.’”
Though Hodge has acknowledged Hendrickson killed Blankenship, he added, the defendant himself never explicitly admitted this in his own time on the stand, instead suggesting that his memory of the stabbing was a blur.
“Who is the one person who did not admit that Ronnie killed Jodi? Ronnie. He can’t remember,” Warren said.
Going step-by-step through Hendrickson’s testimony, the prosecutor said it was shot full of inconsistencies. “His entire story makes no sense,” he insisted.
For example, he noted, Hendrickson claimed to have sat in Blankenship’s bedroom before she locked herself in the bathroom, calmly chatting with her as she talked on her cell phone with her new boyfriend.
“I wouldn’t want an old girlfriend sitting in my room while I’m talking to my new girlfriend,” he suggested.
He stressed repeatedly Hendrickson’s admission that he cut off power to the bathroom at a breaker box, in what Hendrickson said was an attempt to drive Blankenship out of the bathroom so he could talk to her.
“He wasn’t wanting to talk – he was stalking her,” the prosecutor alleged. “He does not want her to have the relationship with (her new boyfriend), and he’s going to stop it, because he’s in control.”
Though Hendrickson claimed he had to wrest the knife from Blankenship’s hand, Warren noted that Hendrickson had no wounds to his hands. “So he somehow miraculously got that knife away from Jodi, if you believe his testimony, without even getting a scratch,” he said sardonically.
AFTER THE EIGHT-WOMAN, four-man jury announced it had a verdict at 8:30 p.m. Monday and then delivered it a short time later, Blankenship’s parents stood in court to tell Hendrickson of the pain he had caused them.
“Ron, do you realize by taking one person’s life, how many lives you have destroyed?” demanded Deborah Blankenship.
Blankenship’s father, Rick, told Hendrickson that from the moment he learned his daughter had been killed, “I haven’t felt the same since. There’s an emptiness I can’t even have words to describe.”
The prosecutor also showed a brief video, found on Jodi Blankenship’s online social-networking page, which is apparently a clip of her giving a short speech in a college class. In it, she speaks about her fear of public speaking, and encourages others that they can overcome similar fears.
In asking for the maximum sentence for Hendrickson, Warren continued to slam the defendant for trying to duck responsibility for his actions.
“I think this defense that this defendant put on… was the most bogus thing I’ve ever heard,” he told Judge Goldsberry. “His whole defense was, ‘It’s Jodi’s fault.’”
Hodge countered this, insisting that Hendrickson “does accept responsibility,” and noting that he has no prior criminal record.
Hendrickson himself rose to speak before sentencing, saying, “First I’d like to apologize to the family for causing your daughter’s death… and say I’m sorry to my family, for putting you through this.”
His mother, sitting in the front row of the courtroom with his father and brother, replied, “You have nothing to be sorry for.”
Goldsberry, while acknowledging that Warren “makes a strong argument” for life without parole, said he was giving Hendrickson the chance of asking for parole after 30 years. He suggested Blankenship’s death was a tragedy that didn’t have to happen.
“There were other ways to handle the disputes between these two people,” he said.
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