Judge questions murder defendant's 'Crime Pays' T-shirt, wants explanation from jail
A Philadelphia judge wasn’t favorably impressed when a murder defendant showed up in municipal court last week wearing a T-shirt emblazoned with pink palm trees and the phrase “Crime Pays.”
Asked for an explanation, defendant Jeremiah Jakson, 22, who has been held without bond, said the shirt was given to him by someone at the jail because he had no clothes of his own there, the Philadelphia Inquirer and the Philadelphia Daily News reported. It didn’t occur to him to turn the T-shirt inside-out, Jakson told Judge Teresa Carr Deni.
The judge asked Jakson’s lawyer, Andres Jalon, to investigate to determine whether someone at the jail did in fact give Jakson the T-shirt and why he was allowed to come to court wearing what the judge called “unacceptable” attire.
Jakson is accused of killing recent Art Institute of Philadelphia graduate Laura Araujo, who had recently rented a room in a West Philadelphia boardinghouse next to Jakson’s. He is charged with murder, robbery, abuse of a corpse, crimes he allegedly committed to get her laptop, camcorder, and ATM card.
