Jeanne Ann Clery (1966 - 1986)

Born 26 Nov 1966 in Pennsylvania, United States

Ancestors

Died 5 Apr 1986 at age 19 in Bethlehem, Lehigh, Pennsylvania, United States

Biography

Jeanne was the daughter of Howard Clery, Jr., a Boston Irish Catholic and Dartmouth graduate who was CEO of a successful direct mail company, and Connie (Benjamin) Clery, a Barnard graduate from New Bedford of French Canadian descent.

Jeanne graduated from the Agnes Irwin School in Rosemont, a private prep school on the surburban Philadelphia Main Line. She was admitted to Tulane University where her two older brothers attended and she was recruited to the tennis team, but her parents wanted her at a safer and closer school after a Tulane sophomore was strangled to death in her apartment near the New Orleans campus. Her parents quickly shifted course and enrolled her at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, much closer to home and at the time an overwhelmingly white school in an overwhelmingly white county (1% black at Lehigh University and 2% black population in Lehigh County).^[1] As a college freshman at Lehigh, Jeanne studied liberal arts. In fall 1985 she was a successful competitor in doubles tennis, though she dropped it in the spring to concentrate on her studies.^[2]

On April 5, 1986, Josoph Henry, a 20-year-old sophomore from Newark, N.J. who had recently lost an election for president of the Black Student Government, got drunk at a party for prospective minority students and afterward randomly broke into Jeanne's dorm room, beat, tortured, raped, sodomized and strangled her to death.^[3] Henry confessed his crime and did not contest his guilt at trial, instead attempting to show insanity and avoid the death penalty. He was sentenced to die by electric chair. Henry lost all his direct appeals and a bid for post-conviction relief in state court, but 16 years later, in 2002 a federal district court granted a habeas corpus petition and threw out his death sentence. Though it rejected charges of racial prejudice, the federal court found that the state trial court had not applied the correct standard to the jury instructions and verdict slips to allow for consideration of mitigating evidence without unanimous agreement as to its existence, and thus violated a standard set in a Supreme Court decision rendered a year after Henry's conviction.^[4] The district court found the trial court's failure to apply a jury instruction standard for mitigating evidence that was only established later in another case was sufficient to set aside the verdict of death, though it never discussed any mitigating evidence that had been presented that could have changed the result for Henry.

Rather than appealing or attempting to resentence Henry to death, the state agreed to a sentence of life in prison without further appeals.^[5] As of 2023, Josoph Henry, age 57, is still incarcerated at SCI Dallas. In a 2017 interview with The Setonian, Henry again blamed the alcohol he had consumed for his violent behavior. Despite his history of aggressive and violent behavior while drinking, he wrote "If I had known drunkenness could cause me to do what I did, I would not have gotten drunk."^[6]

As a result of her parents' activism, the federal Clery Act was passed requiring colleges and universities receiving federal aid to collect and publish crime statistics.

Sources

1. ↑ https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/arizona-investigations/2016/04/15/tragedy-that-gave-birth-to-clery-act/82811052/
2. ↑ Find A Grave: Memorial #100691344
3. ↑ https://www.mcall.com/1987/04/17/henry-confession-seemed-a-joke-friend-testifies/
4. ↑ https://scholar.google.com/scholar_case?case=4076944279369075745
5. ↑ https://bwarchive.lib.lehigh.edu/?a=d&d=BW20020903-01.2.14&e=-------en-20--1--txt-txIN-------
6. ↑ https://issuu.com/thesetonian/docs/thesetonianissue23april6-2017

• Wikidata: Item Q53645860
• Wikipedia: Murder of Jeanne Clery
• Short video of Jeanne and her Shih Tzu from the Clery Center