The State v. Jeffrey B. Motts

By Lyn Riddle  

MAY 12, 2011 9:25 a.m. (0)

He shot his great uncle in the face and turned the 79-year-old’s pants pockets inside out looking for money to buy crack. Then he shot his great aunt as she was running away. Ten years later, he beat and strangled a prison cellmate, stuffed the body under a bunk and went to eat lunch and smoke a cigarette.

Yet he was also someone who as a teenager wept hysterically when he backed his truck over his coon dog, Rose. His daddy got him up on Sunday mornings to go to Morningstar Church in Pacolet. His lawyer calls him one of the kindest, most polite clients he’s ever represented, a man whose remorse was sincere and deeply felt.

These are the two faces of Jeffrey Motts, the 43rd man executed since South Carolina reinstated the death penalty in 1977. He was put to death by lethal injection Friday evening in the state’s capital punishment facility at Broad River Correctional Institution in Columbia. He was 36.

Mark Safarik, a former FBI profiler, said such incongruousness is not unusual.

“Every crime is different. Every homicide is different. You have to look at the individual,” he said.

Motts spent about half of his life in prison. He was arrested for burglary, drugs. He had a fierce addiction to crack cocaine by the time he was in his early teens.

But before then, he was the kid parents wanted their children to be around. He said that in his final statement, read minutes before the execution took place and affirmed in interviews with his lawyer, Robert Dudek, and people who knew him as a child. Last week, one of his former teachers asked her church to pray for him and for his family.

“Crack cocaine literally ruined his life,” Dudek said. “That’s where the wheels went off the bus.”

Motts’ brother, David, was eight when Jeff was born. Two years later, a sister, Allison, was born on Valentine’s Day. They lived in a house in Pacolet that backed up to the great aunt’s. Their grandparents and other members of the large extended family lived close by as well.

The father, Gene, was a master plumber who later went to work for the Spartanburg Post Office. Brenda, their mother, worked for Monsanto until a shelf fell on her, requiring many surgeries and leaving her permanently disabled.

Jeff Motts and his dad loved to hunt and the coonhound was a present from father to son. But then when Jeff Motts was about 16, he started stealing from family members, a $20 bill, then $40, then an entire wallet. David Motts said his brother forged his parents’ checks and took his mother’s car without permission.

“He kept his addiction hid and when he couldn’t, he’d just disappear,” David Motts said. “I have chased him before but gave up before one of us got hurt. He didn’t want me talking to him about it.”

Jeff Motts was on house arrest the day in 1995 when Etta Louise Osteen and Clyde Camby were murdered. Osteen, known as Louise, was 73. She was a sister to David and Jeff’s grandmother. Camby had been married to another one of Louise’s sisters.

David Motts was at home with his brother. Several times, Jeff would go outside and when David went out too, Jeff went inside. Then Jeff went outside and disappeared.

The next the family knew was hours later when someone called to say Jeff was all right. Two days later, Osteen and Camby were found dead in the house.

Jeff Motts was arrested and denied he did it. His family stood by him, and visited him in jail. Convicted of murder, Motts escaped the death penalty when the jury could not unanimously agree. He was sentenced to two life terms. David Motts said it wasn’t until he visited his brother in prison that Jeff confessed his guilt.

“He didn’t go down there to harm anyone,” said Motts. “He was high on crack. Jeff knew she had a handgun. His objective was to con them into giving him the handgun.”

In 2005, Motts was at Perry Correctional Institution in Greenville County when he got into a fight with his cellmate, Charles Martin, whose sentence would have been up in three weeks. The incident began when Martin put a knife under a gang member’s pillow then told guards it was there. Martin claimed Motts had been the one who got the gang member in trouble.

Motts strangled Martin, then after lunch dragged the body to the common area, kicked him and said, “This is what happens to snitches.”

He confessed to guards and told authorities there was no need for a trial since he already had two life sentences.

Bob Ariail, the former solicitor who prosecuted Motts, called the crime brutal.

“It was hands on, face to face,” Ariail said. “That’s different from shooting someone and put Motts in the category of worst of the worst.”

Ariail said the comment about adding another life sentence showed a cavalier attitude.

“It told me he’d kill again,” he said.

Ariail also disputed the idea that somehow the Department of Corrections was to blame because guards knew there was trouble between the men. That was Motts’ contention at the trial and the Martin family’s claim in a civil suit against the state agency. The Martins settled for $85,000 and the department did not admit culpability.

“Some said the Department of Corrections should have spotted his meanness and cold-bloodedness, but he’s still cold-blooded, calculating and mean,” Ariail said.

Motts dropped all his appeals and wanted the execution to go ahead as quickly as possible. Dudek said he asked Motts on the last day if he was sure. He never wavered.

He told his family members during their last visit three days before he was executed that he was ready to die, and that he believed he was saved and going to heaven. He did not want them to watch the execution.

This past Tuesday, the Motts family gathered at Morningstar to remember him.

“If people want to refer to him as a murderer that’s fine. That’s a fact,” said David Motts. “But I know Jeff, and I loved Jeff.”

To read Jeffrey Motts’ final statement, go to www.journalwatchdog.com/crime/executed. A list of all the men on death row is located at www.journalwatchdog.com/crime/slated-for-death.

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