A state appellate court panel upheld the first-degree murder conviction today for a Solana Beach interior designer found guilty of killing her stepfather.
Jade Sasha Janks, 41, was convicted by a Vista jury of killing 64-year- old Thomas Merriman, co-founder of Butterfly Farms in Encinitas.
Prosecutors say Janks killed Merriman on Dec. 31, 2020, by a combination of strangulation, suffocation and lethal doses of prescription pills. Police discovered Merriman’s body in his driveway underneath a pile of trash on Jan. 2, 2021.
Defense attorney Marc Carlos argued at trial that Merriman’s death stemmed from a history of substance abuse and overall poor health. Merriman’s official cause of death was found to be an overdose of prescription pills and Carlos argued there was little to no physical evidence to suggest he was strangled or suffocated.
Janks was sentenced last year to 25 years to life in state prison.
Prosecutors said the killing was prompted by Janks’ discovery of nude photographs of herself on Merriman’s computer. The photographs — which were taken years earlier consensually with her then-boyfriend — prompted her to hatch a plan to kill Merriman with the assistance of several other people, according to prosecutors.
On the last day Merriman was seen alive, Janks picked him up from a medical facility and by this point, prosecutors allege she already had a plan in motion to kill Merriman with the assistance of a man prosecutors identified as a “fixer.”
After picking up Merriman on Dec. 31, Janks was accused of texting the fixer, “I just dosed the hell out of him” before stopping at a shopping center to buy items prosecutors allege were used in the killing.
When the fixer was unable to come out to Solana Beach that day to assist in the murder, prosecutors alleged he sent a friend of his instead.
When that friend arrived, Janks was accused of telling the man, “I want you to strangle him and then bring him into the house. I’ll take care of the rest.” The man did not want to get involved and left, Deputy District Attorney Jorge Del Portillo told jurors.
Prosecutors allege Janks next contacted a friend of hers. After he arrived, Janks allegedly told him that she had killed Merriman and wanted help moving the body. Prosecutors say he also left, then called police the next day.
Del Portillo said Janks then used either a grocery bag or a pillowcase to suffocate a dosed-up Merriman. When that didn’t kill him fast enough, she used her bare hands to strangle him, the prosecutor said.
Janks testified during the trial that she understood that the fixer worked in security and she wanted his protection while she confronted Merriman about the naked pictures.
She also testified Merriman was heavily intoxicated following his discharge from the medical facility and she only sought help from others to move him from her vehicle to her home. When she was unable to move him on her own, she left him in her vehicle to sleep it off.
On the morning of Jan. 1, she said she moved the car to Merriman’s house, then realized he was dead after he was cold to the touch.
When asked why she didn’t call 911 at that point, Janks testified that she was scared that she would be blamed for killing Merriman. In a panic, she tried to move him into a wheelchair to take him inside but his body fell onto the driveway, she testified.
Not wanting a neighbor to see, she said she piled empty boxes and other debris on top of Merriman to keep him concealed until she could figure out what to do.
Janks was pulled over by a police officer later that day and texted the fixer, “Lose my number. I’m getting pulled over.” Janks testified she wrote that text because she did not want the man to be unfairly suspected by the police.
On appeal, Janks argued the physical evidence in the case was insufficient to prove her guilt and that her conviction relied largely on statements she allegedly made to various parties.
A three-justice panel of the Fourth District Court of Appeal disagreed and wrote that her statements — such as having “dosed the hell out of him” — in conjunction with the physical evidence helped support the inference that she killed Merriman. The panel wrote that Merriman had “toxic levels of zolpidem in his system,” and the presence of Janks’ DNA on Merriman’s blister pack of pills corroborates that she dosed Merriman rather than Merriman taking the fatal dose himself.
Merriman’s DNA was also found on a rope, a bag and disposable gloves, which the panel said could lead a jury to reasonably infer that she used those items to try to strangle or suffocate Merriman.
The appellate panel also rejected additional arguments that the killing could have been committed in the heat of passion or that the jury wasn’t properly instructed on how provocation could reduce first-degree murder to second-degree murder.
-City News Service
