On the morning of Wednesday, October 1, 1997, Luke Woodham, a 16-year-old in Pearl, Mississippi, killed his mother, Mary Ann Woodham, before school. He then went to Pearl High School, where he killed two girls and injured seven other people before Pearl police took him into custody. Within a week, police had arrested six more young men from his circle of friends and accused them of conspiring with him, and for a time the case was told as the story of a secret club and its oldest member.
The courts treated it as a murder case with an insanity defense. In June 1998 two juries, sitting a week apart, heard Woodham describe visions and an older friend who he said had told him what to do, and both rejected the claim that he did not know right from wrong. He was sentenced to life imprisonment for his mother's murder and to two more life terms and 140 years for the killings and injuries at the school, every term to run consecutively. The Supreme Court of Mississippi affirmed the school judgment in January 2001 and the judgment in his mother's death that November. The prosecutions of the six other young men largely fell away. Woodham has been in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections ever since. In 2011 he published a notice asking the governor for clemency, and in 2016, after a ruling of the United States Supreme Court on sentences imposed on teenagers, he asked to be considered for parole.
Pearl sits across the Pearl River from Jackson, a suburb of roughly 20,000 people in Rankin County. In the fall of 1997 its high school had 1,039 enrolled. Woodham lived in the town with his mother.
He had repeated the ninth grade. On the witness stand in 1998 he described himself, in the court's summary, as an outcast with very few friends, a boy picked on from his first years in school who had been depressed since he was eight. He said that after a few months among his new companions he had gone "from failing the ninth grade to a few months later reading books on astrophysics."
At Pearl High School he met Christina, one of the two girls who would die, and the two began dating. The relationship was brief, about a month, the year before the killings. When it ended, the Supreme Court of Mississippi later wrote, Woodham "was upset and hurt, and he felt emotionally destroyed." In his own testimony he tied what happened at the school to his anger over the breakup. The second girl who died that morning was Lydia.
Shortly after the breakup, Woodham became friends with a group of other young men who talked about books and philosophy and played role-playing games. The oldest of them, a 1997 graduate of Pearl High School then in his first year at Hinds Community College in Raymond, is the figure around whom the later accusations turned. Woodham said this older friend had drawn him into occult belief and repeatedly told him he was worthless for not taking revenge on his former girlfriend. He said the two had talked for hours on the night of September 30, 1997, and again that morning, and that he had been told "pretty much what to do." The older friend never gave his own account in court.
The night before the killings, Woodham told a younger member of the group by telephone that he was going to kill his mother the next day. The friend did not believe him. Early on October 1 Woodham killed his mother in Pearl. When the two spoke again that morning, Woodham told the friend what he had done.
He then went to the high school, arriving before classes began. There he killed the two girls and injured seven other people. Pearl police officers arrived and took him into custody that morning.
The officers who handled Woodham that morning read him his Miranda rights at least three times: once at the arrest, once on the way to the police department, and once more at the station. Each time he said he understood. At the department an officer handed him a printed waiver form and read it aloud while Woodham followed along on his own copy. Woodham initialed one blank to show he understood his rights and another to show he wished to give a statement, and he signed the form, along with a release for a video recording and a form headed "Voluntary Statement." He then gave two confessions, one written and one on videotape. Three officers described his manner as "very calm and observant," "calm and in control," and "calm...real calm."
On the videotape he spoke about his mother. "I didn't want to kill my mother," he said. "I just wanted her to understand." He also said he wanted revenge on his former girlfriend and told the officer he was not insane.
The investigation moved quickly from Woodham to his friends. Police said the inquiry into the killings had led them to his circle, and investigators took members of the group out of their classrooms to question them. On October 7, six days after the killings, police arrested six young men on suspicion of conspiring with Woodham. Five were current or former Pearl High School students, four of them 16 or 17 and one 18. The sixth was the older friend. All of them, like Woodham, pleaded not guilty. The older friend and one of the younger defendants were also charged with conspiring to kill the younger defendant's father, a plan that was never carried out.
At a preliminary hearing on Tuesday, October 14, 1997, a Rankin County investigator testified that the older friend had led the group and that its members had discussed further killings and a flight out of the country afterward. Under cross-examination by the defense, the investigator conceded that much of what he knew came from the other young men under arrest. A witness who had known the older friend at church testified that he was a follower, not a leader. The judge found enough evidence to send the older friend's case to a grand jury and revoked his $2 million bond on two counts of conspiracy to commit murder. Three of the younger defendants had by then been released from jail, and the two youngest were held in a juvenile facility. Woodham, charged with three counts of murder, was held without bail, and preliminary hearings for him and the other five were set for October 21.
On October 20, 1997, a Rankin County grand jury indicted Woodham for the murder of his mother. He was charged separately with two counts of murder and seven counts of aggravated assault for the events at the school, one assault count for each person injured. The older friend was indicted as an accessory to murder. The classmate Woodham had called the night before was charged in the Rankin County Youth Court, under an order of October 15, 1997, that required his case to be kept confidential.
The conspiracy cases did not survive in their original form. The district attorney asked the court to drop the charges against four of the younger defendants, telling it that the charges would be too hard to prove under Mississippi's conspiracy law, and the court agreed. The older friend pleaded guilty to conspiracy in February 2000. He was sent to a state regimented discipline program for young offenders and then served five years of supervised probation.
Because of the attention the case had drawn in Rankin County, the trial for the death of Woodham's mother was moved on a change of venue to Neshoba County. It opened in early June 1998 in Philadelphia, Mississippi, before a circuit judge, and lasted five days.
The defense did not dispute that he had killed his mother. It argued that he was mentally ill and not responsible. A psychologist from Santa Fe, New Mexico, called by the defense, testified that Woodham had a severe borderline personality disorder and delusions, a distorted reality that left him unable "to judge the appropriateness of his behaviors, to appreciate the implications of his conduct, or to conform those conducts to the requirements of the law." Two experts called by the prosecution said he had been sane on October 1. One of them, a psychiatrist, allowed that Woodham might have mental problems but said, "He is not so wrong that I would consider him to have a major mental disorder." The other pointed to what Woodham had said about his reasons that day, to the telephone call the night before, and to the absence of any history of severe mental illness or psychotic disorder, and gave the opinion that Woodham was fabricating his symptoms.
The prosecution called the classmate, who testified about the telephone call the night before and the second conversation that morning. Woodham testified too, sobbing at times. He said he had woken that morning tormented by visions, had heard the older friend's voice, and could not remember killing his mother. "When I opened my eyes," he said, "my mother was lying in her bed dead." Under cross-examination he told the prosecutor, "Sir, I don't know if I murdered her. And so stop trying to get me to incriminate myself."
The defense then called two witnesses of its own, and neither would testify. The older friend gave his name and nothing more; his lawyer told the court he was directing his client to invoke the Fifth Amendment and the matching section of the Mississippi Constitution and not to answer any question. The classmate, who had already testified for the prosecution, was recalled and read a statement invoking the same privilege. He cited the breach of the youth court's confidentiality order through a motion that had been disclosed to the press. At a bench conference, Woodham's lawyer said he had wanted to ask the older friend whether he had been present in the Woodham household the morning Woodham's mother died. The judge ruled that putting questions to a witness who had claimed the privilege would amount to the lawyer testifying.
The jury deliberated for about three hours and on Friday, June 5, 1998, found Woodham guilty of murder. The judge sentenced him to life imprisonment in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. Asked whether he had anything to say, Woodham answered, "No, sir."
The trial on the school killings began the following Monday, June 8, with a new jury before the same judge. Woodham faced two counts of murder and seven counts of aggravated assault. His lawyers conceded that he had been the one who carried out the attack and again argued insanity.
Against their advice, Woodham took the stand. He said the breakup and his fascination with the occult had led to everything that happened that morning. He described the older friend as both mentor and tormentor, the person who had told him to kill his mother. "He told me I had to kill my mom," he testified. On cross-examination he said that he knew what he was doing at the school was wrong and that he had not wanted to do it. The defense called the older friend, who read a statement saying he would answer no questions from either side and was excused.
The jury deliberated for several hours and on Friday, June 12, 1998, found Woodham guilty on all nine counts. Before sentence was passed he spoke to the families in the courtroom. "I am sorry for the people I killed and the people I hurt," he said. He called what he had done "sick and evil," said he had been forgiven by God, and told the court that if the death penalty had been possible in his case, "I deserve it." No death sentence was available.
The judge imposed the maximum: life imprisonment on each murder count and 20 years on each of the seven aggravated assault counts, every term to run consecutively to the others and to the Neshoba County life sentence. The total was three life sentences and 140 years. The judge also ordered fines and restitution so that Woodham could not profit from the crimes. The defense said it would appeal every conviction.
On June 22, 1998, Woodham's lawyers asked the trial court for a judgment notwithstanding the verdict or a new trial in the school case. The motion was denied, and the formal judgment of the Rankin County Circuit Court was entered on July 31, 1998. The appeal, No. 1998-KA-01479-SCT, went to the Supreme Court of Mississippi, which heard it en banc.
Woodham raised four issues. The first was the treatment of the older friend as a witness. Woodham argued that the trial court should have let his lawyers keep questioning him after he invoked the Fifth Amendment. The court disagreed. The witness had taken the stand and claimed the privilege in front of the jury, and once a witness does that, the court held, he is protected from further questioning. He had refused every question without distinction, so pressing on would have told the jury little, and the opening question the defense put to him, whether he ran around with younger kids to control them, showed that answers might well have incriminated him.
The second issue was the confessions. On appeal Woodham argued that he had been too young to understand his rights or to waive them. At trial, though, his objection had been different: that no lawyer had been present. Because the ground on appeal differed from the ground raised at trial, the court held the issue procedurally barred. It went on to say the argument would have failed anyway. The officers had warned him at least three times, he had initialed and signed the waiver form, three officers described him as calm, and on appeal he did not claim he had been threatened, coerced or forced.
The third issue was the jury instructions. The trial court had refused five defense instructions, four of them on manslaughter and one on insanity. The supreme court found the insanity instruction contradictory and confusing, since it first asked the jury to decide whether the State had proved Woodham sane and then listed elements of insanity the State would have to prove. The jury had been properly instructed on insanity in other instructions. As for manslaughter, the court held that the proposed instructions misstated the law and lacked an evidentiary foundation, pointing to Woodham's own testimony that he had talked with the older friend for hours beforehand and had been told what to do.
The fourth issue was whether the evidence of insanity was so strong that no reasonable jury could have found him sane. The court reviewed the evidence the State had relied on: his admission that he knew what he was doing was wrong, and his own written statement and conduct that morning. Both sides had called experts in psychology and psychiatry, the jury had heard them all, and the question of sanity belonged to the jury. Its finding was supported by substantial evidence and would stand.
On January 18, 2001, the court affirmed the convictions on two counts of murder and seven counts of aggravated assault and the full sentence of two life terms and 140 years, with restitution. All participating justices concurred. A motion for rehearing filed on January 29 was denied on March 22, 2001, and the mandate issued on March 29.
The appeal from the Neshoba County verdict, No. 1998-KA-01689-SCT, reached the same court separately and was also heard en banc. The record came up as a judgment of the Rankin County Circuit Court, where the indictment had been returned. Woodham again raised four issues, and the opinion, written by a presiding justice, took them in turn.
The first concerned the two defense witnesses who had refused to testify. Woodham argued that he had a right to call and question both of them even after they invoked the privilege, and that many questions could have been put to them that would have helped his insanity defense without exposing them. The court noted that he had identified only one such question, whether the older friend had been present the morning of the death, and that nothing in the record suggested he had been. Since no other questions or expected answers had been put on the record, the point was not preserved. On the merits, the court accepted the State's position that a blanket claim of the privilege is proper in a criminal proceeding when the witnesses are potential accessories to the same crime, when on their lawyers' advice they would refuse every specific question, and when the judge knows enough to see that any answer about the offense would tend to incriminate them. The older friend had been indicted as an accessory to murder and the classmate had been charged in youth court. Both were entitled to the protection.
The second issue was the waiver of his rights. Woodham argued that he had been a minor in a state of shock, depression and emotional instability, with no lawyer or other adult to guide him, and so could not knowingly and intelligently give up his rights. The court applied the totality-of-the-circumstances test it uses for both adults and minors, repeating its earlier holding in the school appeal that "the age of the minor is seldom per se conclusive." Woodham had no prior experience with the authorities, but he had been warned at least three times that morning, had said each time that he understood, and had initialed the waiver form twice. The court also relied on his own testimony at trial, which it found showed a grasp of his position. The trial court's finding that he waived his rights knowingly and voluntarily would not be disturbed.
The third issue was again the refused instructions on insanity and manslaughter. The court called the proposed insanity instruction "confusing, contradictory and misleading," since it required the State in one paragraph to prove insanity and in the next to prove sanity; a missing "not" appeared to explain the error. The jury had been instructed on insanity through other instructions, including one telling it that once Woodham put his sanity in issue, the State had to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt, and a verdict form allowing a finding of not guilty by reason of insanity. Read as a whole, the instructions fairly stated the law. On manslaughter, the court held that a lesser offense instruction needs an evidentiary basis and that none existed. Insanity had been the only theory the defense offered in its opening and closing, and the evidence of the telephone call the night before and of Woodham's written and videotaped statements pointed to deliberate design.
The fourth issue was the weight of the insanity evidence. Mississippi applies the M'Naghten test, under which the accused must have been laboring under such a defect of reason from disease of the mind as not to know the nature and quality of the act or, if he knew it, not to know that it was wrong. That question belongs to the jury, which may accept or reject expert and lay testimony. Faced with competing experts, the jury had not found insanity, and its verdict stood.
On November 29, 2001, the court affirmed the conviction of murder and the sentence of life imprisonment. The Chief Justice and seven other justices concurred; one presiding justice concurred in the result only. The mandate issued on December 20, 2001. With that, all three of Woodham's murder convictions were final on direct appeal.
Woodham was committed to state custody after the 1998 trials. By the summer of 2011 he had served 13 years. In June 2011 a legal notice ran in a newspaper in Brandon, the Rankin County seat. It read: "I, Luke Woodham, am filing for executive clemency." It went on: "I am sorry for my crimes and I am asking for a chance to live the new life that God has given me." In December 2012 he was still serving his three life sentences.
In January 2016 the United States Supreme Court ruled that people sentenced as teenagers must be given a chance to argue for parole. Four months later, in May 2016, Woodham asked to be released on parole. At that point the state had not set a parole eligibility date for him. He was then still serving the three life sentences and the 140 years imposed in 1998.
The central dispute in both trials was Woodham's mental state. The defense presented a depressed, isolated teenager drawn into occult belief and steered by an older friend. The prosecution's experts found no major mental disorder and said he knew what he was doing. Two juries and the Supreme Court of Mississippi, in two separate appeals, accepted the State's view on the legal question of sanity.
The older friend's part in the killings was never tried. The account of his influence rests on Woodham's own testimony and on statements from other members of the group, much of which the investigator at the October 1997 hearing conceded came from the young men under arrest. The older friend refused to testify at both of Woodham's trials, and his guilty plea in 2000 was to conspiracy, not to any of the killings. The accusations against four of the younger men were dropped.
September 30, 1997: Woodham tells a younger friend by telephone that he will kill his mother.
October 1, 1997: Woodham kills his mother in Pearl, then kills two girls and injures seven other people at Pearl High School; he is arrested by Pearl police and gives written and videotaped confessions.
October 7, 1997: six more young men arrested on conspiracy charges.
October 14, 1997: preliminary hearing; the oldest co-defendant bound over to a grand jury and his bond revoked.
October 15, 1997: Rankin County Youth Court confidentiality order in the classmate's case.
October 20, 1997: Woodham indicted in Rankin County for the murder of his mother.
June 5, 1998: Neshoba County jury convicts Woodham of murdering his mother; life imprisonment.
June 8, 1998: trial on the school charges begins.
June 12, 1998: Woodham convicted of two counts of murder and seven of aggravated assault; sentenced to two life terms and 140 years, consecutive to the first life term.
June 22, 1998: motion for a new trial filed; later denied.
July 31, 1998: formal judgment entered in the Rankin County Circuit Court.
February 2000: the oldest co-defendant pleads guilty to conspiracy.
January 18, 2001: Supreme Court of Mississippi affirms the school convictions and sentences.
March 22, 2001: rehearing denied; mandate issues March 29.
November 29, 2001: Supreme Court of Mississippi affirms the conviction and life sentence in his mother's death; mandate issues December 20.
June 28, 2011: clemency notice placed in a Rankin County newspaper.
December 2012: Woodham still serving three life sentences.
May 2016: Woodham asks to be considered for parole; no parole eligibility date yet set.