<p>A jury Thursday voted 10-2 in recommending the death penalty for serial killing suspect Jeremy Bryan Jones for his capital murder conviction in the 2004 rape and shooting death of a Mobile County woman while he was high on drugs.</p><p>Circuit Judge Charles Graddick set sentencing for Dec. 1. The jury had the option of recommending life in prison without parole over execution by lethal injection. The judge isn't bound by the jury's decision.</p><p>Jones, 32, of Miami, Okla., was convicted Wednesday of rape, burglary, sexual abuse and kidnapping during capital murder, clearing the way for his possible prosecution in separate slayings in Georgia and New Orleans.</p><p>Investigators say he may be linked to 10 other killings.</p><p>In statements to sheriff's investigators, Jones admitted killing Lisa Marie Nichols, 44, of rural Turnerville on Sept. 17, 2004 while high on methamphetamines. In his trial testimony, however, he blamed the victim's neighbor for the murder, but prosecutors punched holes in that account. The neighbor died in August.</p><p>Nichols' daughter, Jennifer Murphy of Theodore, hugged one of the prosecutors after hearing the jury's penalty decision.</p><p>"This was our goal. We've accomplished our goal," she said. "The hard part is over."</p><p>"If ever anybody deserved the death penalty it's Jeremy Jones," said Assistant Attorney General William Dill.</p><p>Jones, wearing a suit and tie, stood between his two attorneys and showed little emotion to the jury's decision.</p><p>Before being led away to jail, he placed his fist over his heart and reached out to his girlfriend Vicki Freeman of Douglasville, Ga., who was seated nearby.</p><p>Defense attorney Greg Hughes had urged the jury to recommend life without parole, arguing that Jones is "sick" and a victim of a chaotic upbringing.</p><p>"He has a spark in him of humanity," Hughes said. "Death is not proper punishment for someone who is sick."</p><p>At the time of his Alabama arrest on Sept. 21, 2004, Jones, who was using an alias, was wanted in Oklahoma for rape and failure to register in 1997 as a sex offender. He also had 1992 burglary and theft charges in Missouri.</p><p>Assistant Attorney General Corey Maze told jurors that the aggravating circumstances _ burglary, kidnapping and rape _ warranted a death sentence for killing a "hard-working" woman who had raised two children by herself and was helping raise two grandchildren.</p><p>"He violated her home. He violated her freedom. He violated her body. He didn't stop there. He violated her soul," Maze said.</p><p>Forensic psychologist Dr. Daniel Koch, a defense witness, said he tested Jones and concluded that Jones had untreated Attention Deficit Disorder and was prone to go into fits of rage.</p><p>Dr. Doug McKeown, the prosecution psychologist, found that long-term and chronic drug abuse contributed to Jones' anti-social behavior. But he concluded that at the time of the Nichols slaying, Jones was able to distinguish right from wrong.</p><p>Nichols, who lived alone, was shot three times in the head, splashed with gasoline and burned, according to testimony in the Mobile County Circuit Court trial that began Oct. 17. The attack occurred a day after Hurricane Ivan struck the area, knocking out electrical services to the victim's rural home.</p><p>Jones also is charged in separate murders in New Orleans and Georgia and has been described by investigators as a serial killing suspect, who could be linked to at least 10 other murders, including the April 15, 2004 disappearance of metro Atlanta hairdresser Patrice Endres.</p><p>Jones is charged with murder in the death of Amanda Greenwell, a 16-year-old in Douglasville, Ga., whose remains were found in April 2004, and Katherine Collins, a 45-year-old New Orleans woman whose body was found in February 2004.</p><p>In a recorded phone call to a former friend, Jones admitted killing Nichols while high on drugs.</p><p>"It was like a nightmare, I was in a movie," Jones said in the Dec. 10 call from jail. "I was higher than I had ever been in my whole life."</p>
