Jury deadlocked in death penalty trial for a West Philly man who murdered his pregnant ex-girlfriend in King of Prussia
The death penalty trial for Rafiq Thompson was the first capital case in Montgomery County since 2014.
Rafiq Thompson, the man convicted of killing his ex-girlfriend and their unborn child at a gas station in King of Prussia last year, will not be sentenced to death after a jury told the judge they were deadlocked on the capital case Friday.
Thompson, 40, was found guilty on Wednesday of two counts of first-degree murder and related crimes in the deaths of Tamara Cornelius, 31, and their unborn child. Thompson shot Cornelius four times at close range at an Exxon station in King of Prussia in April 2022, killing herwhile she was four months pregnant.
The jury took less than two hours to reach a verdict on Thompson’s guilt for the murders.
On Friday afternoon, after nearly six hours of deliberation, the jury could not reach an unanimous verdict on a potential death sentence. Montgomery County Judge William Carpenter dismissed the jury and Thompson is scheduled to be sentenced Tuesday.
Thompson will, at minimum, receive life in prison without parole, a spokesperson for the Montgomery County District Attorney’s Office said. Prosecutors will be pursuing two life sentences, plus additional time for other charges, the spokesperson said.
Cornelius’ younger sister Ta’Naya Dunlap said that at first, she felt “almost disappointed” that Thompson would not be sentenced to the death penalty. But, as she thought more about it, she thought maybe life in prison, where his sister’s killer would spend his life thinking about the murders, would be the harsher sentence.
“I think we’re just grateful that at the end of the day, we are getting justice for our sister, she said.
Niels Eriksen, Thompson’s attorney in the death penalty phase, said he and Thompson were happy that a death sentence would be avoided, saying the murders were an “emotional reaction” to a “difficult set of circumstances.”
“We are absolutely thrilled that the sentence will be life,” said Eriksen.
Montgomery County Kevin Steele said that justice was “moving in the right direction,” as the sentence would still mean that Thompson would never walk the streets again.
A loved one ‘ripped away’
In his opening statements Wednesday afternoon, Eriksen said that his job was not to question the jury’s verdict, but rather to argue for Thompson’s life. Thompson’s life had been taken over by a rough neighborhood and had a difficult upbringing and wasn’t a person of “evil” that warranted execution, he said.
“He’s not somebody that’s the worst of the worst,” Eriksen said to the jury.
But, Steele argued that Thompson’s “cloak of innocence” had been stripped away with the guilty verdict, as he told the jury of the five aggravating factors prosecutors would present to justify the death penalty.
Among the aggravating factors was a 2018 aggravated-assault conviction in which Thompson hit a different former girlfriend with his van and charged at her with a knife after she ended their relationship.
According to police records, Thompson had been harassing the woman, who had obtained a protectionfrom abuse order against him before the attack. Thompson was in prison for three years for the assault and paroled in June 2019. When Thompson was arrested for the fatal shooting of Cornelius, he was on probation for the 2018 conviction.
The woman testified Wednesday, fighting back tears as she recounted the day Thompson assaulted her, telling the court that she still lives with fear and anxiety. She said she has lasting injuries, depression, and PTSD, and takes medication to help.
“Every time I go out, everyone to me looks just like him,” the woman said.
Prosecutors had multiple members of Cornelius’ family give impact statements, which, the judge said, the jury could consider, but could not use as aggravating factors. Among Cornelius’ relatives who spoke was Dunlap, who described her sister as “loving” and “caring” and said Thompson had “ripped away” a loved one from the family.
She was “the glue that held the family together,” Dunlap said Wednesday.
What is the status of the death penalty in Pa.?
If a death sentence was handed down, it would have been unlikely Thompson would be put to death.
Gov. Josh Shapiro has called on the state legislature to abolish the death penalty and has said he will refuse to sign any death warrants.
The last execution in Pennsylvania was in 1999, when Gary Heidnik was put to death by lethal injection. Heidnick raped and tortured six women he kept chained in the basement of his Philadelphia home, then killed and dismembered two of them.
Ninety-nine people are on death row in Pennsylvania, according to a Pennsylvania Department of Corrections list. Three were convicted in Montgomery County, a spokesperson for the District Attorney’s Office said.