Simpson guilty

Jury delivers 25 year sentence in murder for hire case

By Brian Knox
Published June 25, 2006

Jurors did not believe Rebecca Simpson’s version of events in her murder for hire trial, finding her guilty Friday after less than three hours of deliberation over two days.

Later that afternoon, the jury sentenced her to 25 years in prison after about an hour and a half of deliberation. She was also fined $10,000. Simpson faced a possible sentence of five years to life in prison, but she was also probation eligible.

According to prosecutors, she could be eligible for parole in a little less than six years.

Even before the verdict was read, Simpson broke down in tears in the hallway outside the courtroom.

When she returned to the stand a few minutes later to begin the punishment phase of the trial, she broke into tears again, pleading with the jury to give her probation.

“It’s not how it appeared,” Simpson said. “Whatever ya’ll decide, I will abide. I ask for your forgiveness.”

Simpson described an earlier traumatic event in her life when she said she was raped by three men in Round Rock when she was 17. She also talked about being beaten and threatened with a gun by her first husband.

Her second husband Ross, who she is now separated from, had a bad temper, she said, and was abusive to their children. When asked if she admitted that she had done things she shouldn’t have, she said yes, including telling an undercover officer posing as a hit man that she wanted Shemane Watts, the wife of her former lover, dead.

“I have asked for forgiveness for the things I said (on the videotape). I believe if you ask God, He will forgive you. I still have a hard time forgiving myself,” she said, drying her eyes with a tissue.

Under cross-examination by prosecutor Christy Jack, Simpson stopped short of accepting responsibility for the solicitation of capital murder.

“What I testified to was the truth,” Simpson said, referring to her claim that it was Bridgeport resident Kevin Cash who pressured her into seeking a “hit” on Shemane Watts and who would not let her back out of a meeting with the “hit man.”
“I did what he told me to do,” Simpson said of Cash.

She continued to say that what she said on the two surveillance video recordings was said out of anger. In those recordings at a Costco parking lot in Southlake on Oct. 26 and Oct. 28 of 2004, she ordered the murder of Shemane Watts and the assault of Danny Watts and also discussed the assault or murder of former friend Clarice Thomas.

Simpson’s best friend, Bobbie McKittrick of Bridgeport told the jury that Simpson has “always been a kind person” and was treated like an aunt by her three children.

David Tooley of Arlington, Simpson’s fiancé, also became emotional when he asked the jury to give her probation.
“Please don’t take Becky away from me,” he said, telling the jury that his children had also formed a close relationship with Simpson.

During their closing arguments in the punishment phase of the trial, prosecutors Jack and Kim D’Avignon asked jurors to keep in mind the victims in the case, Shemane Watts and her family, when deciding on Simpson’s punishment.

“The reason I’m not here asking for the death penalty is because of good police work,” D’Avignon said. “Everything she (Simpson) asked for would have left Shemane Watts dead.”

She asked the jury to let Shemane Watts’ two young boys grow up with the knowledge that their mother was safe.

Jack told the jury that Simpson’s punishment didn’t warrant a life sentence, but it also needed to be more than probation, which Simpson would have been eligible for if the jury returned a sentence of 10 years or less. She said that as far as rehabilitation, Simpson needs to first accept responsibility for her actions.

“The heart of rehabilitation is recognizing what you’ve done,” Jack said. “She will go to her grave in denial.”
Simpson’s attorney, Ray Bass of Austin, told the jury they were the most powerful people in the world at that moment because they held “another person’s life in (their) hands.”
In asking for probation, Bass asked jurors to think about the effect a prison sentence would have on Simpson’s children and the fact that Simpson had never before been convicted of a crime.

“Let her begin to be healed,” he said in his closing argument.
When Judge Mike Thomas read the jury’s sentence, Simpson hunched over slightly and put hand up to her face. As the jury filed out of the courtroom, Simpson’s mother, Mary Jones, pounded her fist on a bench behind her daughter and angrily said, “There is no justice.”

Simpson was immediately taken into custody and led by bailiffs to a holding area to be taken to jail.

Bass said he knew the case would be tough, but he was “shocked” by the jury’s sentence of 25 years in prison.
He said the sentence was 10 years longer than the 15 year deal presented by prosecutors before the trial.

“My view is this jury held it against her that her husband has a great deal of wealth,” he said. Ross Simpson is a Bridgeport attorney.

As he told the jury many time during the trial, Bass said he believes Kevin Cash was not being truthful when he gave his statement to police and testified at the trial.

“This guy has this obsession with murder for hire,” Bass said.
He said he does plan to look at options for an appeal, including talking to jurors to make sure there was no jury misconduct during the trial.

Jack said she thought the jury returned “an appropriate verdict.” She said that when jurors had to decide if Simpson was her true self on the video or in court, they made the right choice. She said jurors were influenced not only by the “overwhelming evidence” in the case but also the fact that “witness after witness could independently corroborate how she (Simpson) would have acted.”

“You couldn’t compare who she pretended to be in there in her jury trial against who she was in that video, they are so diametrically opposed,” D’Avignon said.

The trial, which was held at the Tarrant County Justice Center in Fort Worth, lasted two weeks.