SALISBURY, Md. - Salisbury University leaders say it's now time to heal after a Princess Anne man pled guilty to racist graffiti that was found on Salisbury University's campus several times.
54-year-old Jerome Jackson was sentenced to 18 months at the Wicomico County Detention Center, with no probation. It comes after pleading guilty to a single count of maliciously defacing property while exhibiting racial animosity Friday morning. The Wicomico County State's Attorney's Office says that charge is commonly referred to as a hate crime.
Racist and sometimes gender discriminatory graffiti was found on five separate occasions on SU's campus beginning in Oct. of 2019. By the fifth incident in February, the school canceled classed for a day of healing. Salisbury University Police identified in suspect in February. Since then, the Wicomico County State's Attorney's Office worked with SU and Jackson to come to a pre-charging plea agreement. Under that agreement, Jackson agreed to plead guilty Friday and accept responsibility for all of the incidents. What remains unclear, however, is a motive.
"The defendant declined to exercise his right of allocution," Jamie Dykes, Wicomico County State's Attorney, says. "For that reason, we'll never know. Not that any reason given would justify, or make us whole, or provide us true closure."
Dykes says his connection to Salisbury University is not entirely clear, but she says he was denied admission to SU about a decade ago. She says the sentence was appropriate.
"Absolutely, it is what we recommended. It is what provides for him accepting responsibility and for healing moving forward," Dykes says. "I think it was a just result. Judge Marsh agreed, indicating that what happened today was justice."
She adds, "While we are grateful that this wasn't worse, the potential for violence in this situation, the nine scrawlings that he made, the vulgarity, that we didn't have worse violence. We didn't have violence as a result. People were scared and in many ways, rightfully scared. I can imagine being a parent, sending my child off to college and not knowing what's going to pop up on a wall the next day. Safety and security is a commodity that you can't put a price tag on, especially for your children."
A representative of SU spoke at the hearing. While he declined to comment on camera afterwards, he said it's now time for Salisbury to begin healing. Salisbury President Dr. Charles Wight said in a statement, "“Earlier today, the person responsible for the racist and hateful vandalism on our campus pled guilty to his crime and was sentenced to jail time. I am grateful to those who worked so hard to bring this person to justice, but let us remember: This is just one step toward helping us confront the larger issues of systemic racism that were made so painfully obvious during the last several weeks. We have a lot of work to do – as a campus, as a community and as a nation.”
As part of the plea agreement, Jackson paid $494 to the university in restitution for the permanent property damage. The restitution was not $449, as WBOC previously reported.
