THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, February 2, 1996 TAG: 9602020391
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY SUSIE STOUGHTON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: SUFFOLK LENGTH: Short : 47 lines
Jimmy L. White admitted stabbing his younger brother, David, to death last summer, but he called the slaying an accident.
A jury rejected his version of the July 6 killing, which the prosecutor compared to the Biblical story of Cain and Abel.
Also rejecting the prosecution claim that the killing was pre-meditated, the jury on Thursday convicted White, 45, of second-degree murder and using a knife while committing a felony.
The jury recommended 25 years in prison for murder and five years on the weapon charge.
White, who had been free on bond, was taken into custody pending a pre-sentencing report before Judge Rodham T. Delk Jr. imposes sentencing.
The brothers had ``rassled'' on the porch of the Cypress Chapel Road home they shared with their mother and several other relatives, Jimmy White testified Wednesday.
Afterward, he said, he went to the bedroom he shared with his brother. He had hidden a small butcher knife in his pants.
``After the tussle was over, I turned the other cheek,'' he said.
He said he was leaving the living room to return to the porch to finish repairing toys with the knife.
David White, 43, hit him on the side of the head with a beer bottle, pinned him down on a chair and choked him.
In response, Jimmy White said, he pulled out the knife and stabbed blindly.
Kenneth Phillips, who prosecuted the case, insisted that the men were standing face-to-face and that Jimmy White ambushed his brother.
``He took that butcher knife . . . and stabbed his brother in the heart 4 inches,'' he said. ``It takes some effort to stab another human being that far in the heart.''
White is among three Suffolk men charged last year with killing a brother. He is the first to be tried.
``This is one of the oldest crimes known to man - killing your brother,'' Phillips said. ``That makes it one of the most repugnant.''
KEYWORDS: MURDER TRIAL CONVICTION STABBING by CNB