As Circuit Judge Jalal Harb sat at the bench in a Bartow courtroom on Feb. 5, he held the power to usher Cheyanne Jessie into a unique category. Having been convicted of killing her father and her 6-year-old daughter, Jessie faced the possibility of becoming the first woman sentenced to death in Polk County.
A jury had recommended that Jessie be executed for the fatal shooting and stabbing of her daughter, Meredith, in 2015, while suggesting a life sentence for her father’s murder.
Instead, Harb sentenced Jessie to life for both killings. That decision placed her in another rare category: convicted murderers who have had jury recommendations of a death penalty overridden by a judge.
BARTOW Convicted double-murderer Cheyanne Nicole Jesse will spend the rest of her life in prison for the brutal murders of her 50-year-old father, Mark Ivan Weekly, and 6-year-old daughter, Meredith Leeann Jessie.
“It is this court’s conclusion that Cheyanne Nicole Jesse should lose her liberty, not her life,” said Circuit Judge Jalal Harb. “Accordingly, as to count one, you are sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. As to count two, you are sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole.
Jessie, who is now 31, confessed in August 2015 to killing her father and daughter, who investigators believe died on July 18, 2015 the day they were last seen by a friend of Weekly’s. Weekly was stabbed at least 12 times and shot in the head three times, while Meredith was repeatedly stabbed and shot in the back of the head. It happened in Weekly’s rented west Drane Field Road home.
BARTOW Convicted double-murderer Cheyanne Jessie could learn her fate on Friday afternoon death by lethal injection or life in prison.
Circuit Court Judge Jalal Harb is scheduled to sentence Jessie for repeatedly stabbing and shooting her 6-year-old daughter, Meredith, and her 50-year-old father, Mark Weekly, in July 2015. Prosecutors say she killed both so she could be with her boyfriend, who was going to break up with her over her volatile relationship with the little girl.
A jury convicted her four years later almost to the day of both murders and recommended the death penalty in the killing of her daughter. However, they recommended life in prison for the murder of her father in their west Drane Field Road home.