The Noura Jackson case is the Memphis prosecution of an eighteen-year-old convicted in 2009 of stabbing her mother to death, then freed after the Tennessee Supreme Court unanimously threw out the conviction in 2014 for prosecutorial misconduct. Jackson entered an Alford plea to voluntary manslaughter in 2015, maintaining her innocence, and was released from prison in August 2016 after roughly eleven years behind bars.1ABC News. Woman Won Release From Prison Years After Being Convicted of Mother’s Murder The killing of her mother, Jennifer Jackson, has never been conclusively solved.
The Killing of Jennifer Jackson
Shortly before 5:00 a.m. on June 5, 2005, Noura Jackson banged on the door of neighbors Joe and Rachel Cocke near 5001 Newhaven Drive in Memphis, screaming that her mother was dead and someone was breaking into the house. Joe Cocke went inside and found Jennifer Jackson lying naked on her bedroom floor, covered in blood, a wicker basket placed over her head. A paramedic pronounced her dead at 5:18 a.m. She had been stabbed more than fifty times.2Paramount Press Express. 48 Hours Mystery: My Mother’s Murder
The house looked ransacked, and broken glass sat on the kitchen floor near a door to the garage.3Innocence Project. New DNA Testing May Exonerate Tennessee Woman A kitchen knife block had empty slots, and knives were collected from the home, but the murder weapon was never identified or recovered.4Tennessee Courts. State of Tennessee v. Noura Jackson, Opinion
Why Police Focused on Noura
Officers documented twenty-two people entering the house that morning, and the scene was not taped off until roughly 6:30 a.m.4Tennessee Courts. State of Tennessee v. Noura Jackson, Opinion Noura gave a formal statement at 9:53 a.m., after signing a consent-to-search form and speaking with an attorney who was a family friend. She offered shifting accounts of where she had been the night before and changed her explanation for a cut on her left hand, first saying she tripped over a beer bottle and then that she cut it chasing a kitten.
Surveillance footage showed her buying first-aid supplies at 4:00 a.m. on June 5, apparently cleaning blood from the hand injury.1ABC News. Woman Won Release From Prison Years After Being Convicted of Mother’s Murder Jennifer’s boyfriend, Mark Irvin, was briefly considered, then cleared once investigators confirmed he was asleep at his home more than ninety minutes away.4Tennessee Courts. State of Tennessee v. Noura Jackson, Opinion Noura was arrested on September 29, 2005, and charged with first-degree murder. Bond was set at $500,000, which she could not post, and she sat in jail for about three and a half years before trial.3Innocence Project. New DNA Testing May Exonerate Tennessee Woman
What the Physical Evidence Actually Showed
No forensic proof linked Noura to the killing. The Tennessee Supreme Court later stated plainly that “no forensic proof implicated” her.5FindLaw. State v. Jackson Investigators found no fingerprints with usable ridge detail. DNA from at least two unknown individuals, neither Jennifer nor Noura, was recovered from the victim’s pillow, the blood-soaked bedsheet, and the bedpost.6Commercial Appeal. Compromise Plea Leaves Lots Unknown About East Memphis Murder
Long blond hairs were found clutched in Jennifer’s hand. Noura is a brunette. The hairs were never tested. Judge Chris Craft later acknowledged that “neither side tested it,” adding, “They could have.” A pair of sneakers belonging to Andrew Hammack, an acquaintance of Noura’s, was turned in by his friends but never collected into evidence or tested.5FindLaw. State v. Jackson
The 2009 Trial
Trial began on February 9, 2009, in Shelby County Criminal Court before Judge Craft. Assistant District Attorney Amy Weirich led the prosecution, calling forty-five witnesses and introducing 376 exhibits.7Courthouse News Service. New Trial for Woman Accused of Matricide The state’s theory was that Noura had killed her mother to gain control of her deceased father’s property and to collect Jennifer’s life insurance and 401(k) proceeds to fund partying and drug use. Prosecutors also told the jury Jennifer had been trying to rein in her daughter and was considering sending her to boarding school.
Andrew Hammack testified that Noura had called him on the phone around the time of the murder and asked him to meet her at the house. Defense attorney Valerie Corder argued the state had no physical evidence or DNA connecting Noura to the crime, and called no witnesses of her own, resting on the absence of forensic proof.3Innocence Project. New DNA Testing May Exonerate Tennessee Woman
On February 21, 2009, the jury returned a verdict of second-degree murder rather than first. Judge Craft remarked afterward that “circumstantial evidence just drew a tight noose around her.” On March 27, 2009, he sentenced Noura to twenty years and nine months.8Tennessee Courts. State of Tennessee v. Noura Jackson, Court of Criminal Appeals
The Tennessee Supreme Court Reversal
On August 22, 2014, the Tennessee Supreme Court unanimously reversed the conviction. Justice Cornelia A. Clark’s opinion identified two constitutional violations.9Tennessee Courts. Supreme Court Says District Attorney’s Improper Argument, Withholding Evidence Require New Murder Trial
The first was Weirich’s closing argument. Pointing at Jackson, she told the jury, “Just tell us where you were! That’s all we are asking, Noura!” The court called this a “constitutionally impermissible comment” on the defendant’s right not to testify, a right Tennessee had recognized for more than a hundred years.7Courthouse News Service. New Trial for Woman Accused of Matricide
The second involved evidence the state had withheld. Andrew Hammack gave a third statement to police on June 13, 2005, that “gave a completely different account” of the night in question from his trial testimony.10Commercial Appeal. Noura Jackson: Prosecutors Hid Very Important Evidence Later reporting indicated Hammack had been on ecstasy that night and had lent his phone to a friend, which cut against the state’s claim that Noura had called him.3Innocence Project. New DNA Testing May Exonerate Tennessee Woman The defense did not learn of the statement until after trial. During trial proceedings, prosecutors had argued the statement “never existed.”11Action News 5. Noura Jackson: Prosecutor Hid Evidence in Murder Trial
Because the state’s case rested entirely on circumstantial evidence, the court held it could not prove these errors were “harmless beyond a reasonable doubt.” The conviction was vacated and the case remanded.5FindLaw. State v. Jackson
Discipline for the Prosecutors
The Tennessee Supreme Court’s Board of Professional Responsibility brought misconduct charges against both prosecutors. Co-prosecutor Stephen Jones was charged over the withheld Hammack statement. His attorney called the omission “inadvertent”; disciplinary counsel called it “more than just a mistake.” Jones was ultimately cleared.12Action News 5. Weirich Accepts Private Reprimand for Misconduct in Noura Jackson Trial
Weirich, by then the elected Shelby County District Attorney General, accepted a private reprimand in March 2017, avoiding formal charges. She admitted to “errors” as lead prosecutor and said she took the resolution “to save my office and my family from a long drawn-out hearing.” The Board found she had violated rules on diligence, fairness to opposing parties, and general misconduct, concluding she “failed to exercise due diligence, to the detriment of others involved in the trial.”13Tennessee Bar Association. Weirich BPR Resolution A report by the Equal Justice Initiative singled her out as having “one of the most troubling records” among prosecutors with misconduct allegations between 2010 and 2015, and cited a separate federal reversal of a 2001 capital case in which she was found to have elicited false testimony about an FBI payment.14Equal Justice Initiative. Report Exposes Persistent Prosecutorial Misconduct
The Alford Plea and Release
Rather than face a retrial, Jackson negotiated a deal. On May 20, 2015, she entered an Alford plea to voluntary manslaughter and was sentenced to fifteen years.15WREG. Plea Deal in Noura Jackson Case Avoids Retrial An Alford plea let her keep asserting her innocence while acknowledging the state likely had enough evidence to convict her again.16Memphis Flyer. Noura Jackson Pleads to Manslaughter, Could Get Parole Soon She had already served nearly nine years.
Offered parole, she declined it. Her attorney, Michael Working, explained that she chose to “serve a little more time and be completely free from supervision” rather than accept five years on parole.17Commercial Appeal. Noura Jackson Declines Parole, Will Serve Remainder of Sentence She left prison in August 2016. Looking back on the plea, she said, “I remember feeling sick and embarrassed and ashamed. So, somebody’s just getting away, and I helped make that happen.”3Innocence Project. New DNA Testing May Exonerate Tennessee Woman
Where Things Stand Now
Jennifer Jackson’s estate was valued at roughly $1.5 million. Her siblings sought to bar Noura from inheriting under Tennessee’s slayer statute, which blocks a person who kills another from taking from the victim’s estate or life insurance. A judge denied the relatives’ summary-judgment motion and set the matter for a probate trial in July 2017.18Action News 5. Noura Jackson Opens Trial to Receive Mother’s Estate According to later reporting, Jackson eventually settled with her mother’s sisters for a portion of the estate.1ABC News. Woman Won Release From Prison Years After Being Convicted of Mother’s Murder
After release, Jackson lived with a family friend, Ansley Larsson, having earned her GED behind bars. She later moved to New York, saying the stigma of a felony in Memphis made daily life difficult and that New York offered more opportunities for someone with a record. In July 2022, then thirty-five and living in Nashville, she was arrested in Cadiz, Kentucky. Police responding to a suspicious-person report at a Cracker Barrel found her removing items from her vehicle with marijuana in plain view; a search turned up cocaine and prescription medication not in proper containers. She was also charged with failure to surrender a revoked license.19WREG. Noura Jackson Arrested on Drug Charges in Kentucky20West Kentucky Star. Cadiz Police Net Nashville Woman on Drug Charges
The murder itself is still open. The Innocence Project has taken up the case and is pursuing updated DNA testing on biological material from the scene, including the unknown DNA on the bedding and the untested hair from Jennifer’s hand, aiming to identify the sources and potentially exonerate Jackson. No public results of that testing have been disclosed.3Innocence Project. New DNA Testing May Exonerate Tennessee Woman As Jackson put it to ABC News: “On paper, I’m the killer, even though I maintain my innocence. That’s what the cops look at.”