McKinney: No excuses for double murder

WARREN — Jermaine McKinney, speaking to jurors for the first time regarding the murder convictions that may bring him the death penalty, said he won’t blame his mother’s drug history or the fact that he grew up in a crack house for the situation he’s in.

In fact, he said today at a hearing that he never wanted to present mitigating factors against the death penalty to the jurors or even go to trial.

He went along with his defense team and followed their advice because mitigation specialist Pat Millhoff, an attorney from Akron, convinced him to. “She’s become a dear friend. She wants me to keep going,” the 26-year-old Youngstown man said from the witness stand this morning.

Jurors were deliberating today on whether McKinney, convicted in the killing of Wanda Rollyson and Rebecca Cliburn in Rollyson’s Newton Township home Dec. 21, 2005, should receive the death penalty.

McKinney said he grew up in a crack house, where drugs were sold and traded for sex, but none of that information is relevant.

“I don’t blame the system that I’m in this situation. I don’t blame my mother’s drug history for this situation. I didn’t even want to have mitigation.”

“A lot of people have had bad experiences in their lifetime, and I’m not going to use that as an excuse.”

“It’s not that I don’t care, but what do you do if you have no options. Cutting me away from my kids for 25 or 30 years, I’m as good as dead anyway, so I mean in the end its either death or slow death, I really don’t have an option.”