May 25, 2006 By Steve Ferris 5 min read

WAYNESBURG – Jessica Kathleen Marie Petrie’s mother said a jury’s verdict that her 17-year-old daughter’s husband was guilty of voluntary manslaughter for shooting her in the head after she ignored his requests to wash the dishes in July 2005 was a fair one. “The decision, I think was fair,” Petrie’s mother, Wendy Morris, said Wednesday afternoon, at the end of James Russell Petrie’s three-day trial in Common Pleas Court in Greene County.

Morris said she does not understand why Petrie shot her daughter, who survived cancer as child and wanted to become a cancer doctor. Jessica was a student at West Greene High School at the time of the shooting.

The nine-woman, three-man jury asked President Judge H. Terry Grimes to repeat the definitions and instructions for murder and manslaughter charges twice during their deliberations, which began Tuesday afternoon after Petrie testified.

Petrie, 28, who showed little reaction when the decision was read, was returned to the county prison where he has been held on $250,000 bond since his preliminary hearing last August.

Grimes ordered the county adult probation office to prepare a pre-sentence report on Petrie in 30 days and said he would schedule a sentencing hearing after those 30 days.

District Attorney Marjorie Fox said voluntary manslaughter and one of the aggravated assault counts each carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison. The maximum sentence for the second aggravated assault charge is 10 years, she said. Recklessly endangering another person is a misdemeanor.

The jury found Petrie not guilty of first-degree murder, third-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter, but found him guilty of two felony counts of aggravated assault, recklessly endangering another person and voluntary manslaughter.

The jurors were polled at defense attorney Brian Teslovich’s request and said they agreed with the verdict.

Fox did not offer an opinion about the verdict, saying she deferred to the jury’s judgment. The goal of the trial was to “pay respect to Jessica Petrie and that’s why we’re here,” she said.

In her closing argument, Fox said a first-degree murder charge was appropriate, but she pursued a general charge of homicide, leaving it to the jury to decide which, if any, of the murder or manslaughter charges fit the incident.

The shooting occurred July 7 in a mobile home the Petrie’s rented on Chapman Road in Graysville shortly after 10 a.m., according to testimony.

Their home was near a home her parents rented and another home her bother rented, but the landlord was evicting all of them because she was selling the property.

Petrie testified that he asked Jessica to wash some dirty dishes the day before the shooting because he wanted to pack them and he wanted to pour the used dishwater on the ground to attract worms for fishing bait.

The dishes weren’t done the next morning and Petrie again asked her to wash them. She said she would get to them as she continued watching TV with him.

He said he “hovered” over her and tried to kiss her to get her attention, but she ignored him.

A .22-caliber rifle that was in the living room “caught my eye,” he said and he picked it up.

Petrie said he pointed it at Jessica and said, “I should just shoot you” before pulling the trigger.

He claimed he did not know the gun was loaded and disputed testimony from Jessica’s father and cousin, who said they saw one bullet in the magazine the day before.

Jessica’s brother, who owns the rifle, said he left one bullet in the magazine and placed it in a closet separate from the gun about six weeks early when he left for Army basic training.

Petrie admitted to lying to state police investigators when he told them that he worked the bolt action on the rifle three times to make sure it was empty before he pulled the trigger.

He said he wanted police to believe the gun was not working properly.

“I thought they’d try to make it look like I did it on purpose,” Petrie told the jury Tuesday.

Under cross-examination, Petrie testified that he waited 45 minutes after the shooting to call 911, but under re-direct questioning, he said he waited only a few minutes.

“I don’t understand why he did it,” Morris said, tightly clutching a small stuffed toy bear that belonged to Jessica and wearing her dolphin necklace… “I don’t understand why he grabbed a gun.”

Morris said she expressed concerns she had about Petrie to Jessica, but she said she loved him. They appeared to have normal “family ups and downs,” she said.

May 15 would have been their second anniversary, she said. Jessica was 16 when she married Petrie.

“She was being a grown up and a kid at the same time,” Morris said.

In her testimony Monday, Morris said at a family event a week before the shooting she overheard Petrie ask his sister if she would visit him in prison if he committed a murder.

Jessica’s kidney and adrenal gland were removed during cancer surgery when she was 4 years old and part of a lung was removed following a relapse a year or two later, Morris said.

She said Jessica was “go lucky” and “believed no one could do wrong.”

“I’m just lost without her,” Morris said. “When he married her, he promised to love her forever.”