Jesse Tafero

Jesse Joseph Tafero (October 12, 1946 – May 4, 1990) was an American man who was executed via electric chair in the U.S. state of Florida for the 1976 murders of 39-year-old Florida Highway Patrol officer Phillip A. Black and 39-year-old Ontario Provincial Police Corporal Donald Irwin, a visiting Canadian constable and friend of Black. The officers were killed during a traffic stop where Tafero, his wife Sunny Jacobs, and their children were passengers. Tafero's execution was botched; his head burst into flames during the execution by electric chair. Some believe Tafero to have been innocent of the murders, while others believe his guilt was clear. A few years after Tafero's conviction, the driver, Walter Rhodes, confessed to shooting the officers. However, he later retracted his testimony, saying other inmates had pressured him to confess. Tafero arrived and attempted to rape the tied up woman, then forced the other woman to perform oral sex. The men held the women hostage for a total of eleven hours, before fleeing with a stolen shawl, a black leather coat, a Sheffield watch, costume jewelry, clothing, a hair dryer, and roughly $150. Forensic evidence also indicated that a taser, which Jacobs had purchased months earlier, had been fired before the murders took place. The state argued that Sunny fired the taser, then the gun at Black, then Jesse grabbed the gun from and fired at both of them.

The trio later disposed of the police car and kidnapped a man and stole his car. All three were arrested after being caught in a roadblock. When they were arrested, the gun was found in Tafero's waistband. Gunpowder tests found residue on Rhodes consistent with "having discharged a weapon", residue on Tafero consistent with "handling an unclean or recently discharged weapon, or possibly discharging a weapon", as well as residue on Jacobs and her son consistent with "having handled an unclean or recently discharged weapon".

Rhodes entered into a plea agreement for a reduced sentence of second degree murder in exchange for his testimony against Tafero and Jacobs. Rhodes later recanted his testimony on three occasions, in 1977, 1979, and 1982, stating that he shot the policemen. However, he ultimately reverted to his original testimony. A trucker who witnessed the murders testified that he believed the initial shots had come from the back seat, where Jacobs had been sitting. Rhodes was sentenced to three life terms. He was released in 1994 following parole for good behavior. Jacobs's children were placed in the care of her parents until the parents' deaths in the crash of Pan Am Flight 759 in 1982. The children were then separated and Sunny's younger child, Christina, was placed into foster care with a friend of Jacobs.

Aftermath The case became a cause célèbre among death penalty opponents, who cited the brutal circumstances of Tafero's execution as reasons it should be abolished. Filmmaker Micki Dickoff made a crime drama on the case entitled In the Blink of an Eye, which aired as an ABC Movie of the Week in 1996. Sunny Jacobs, even though she had not been exonerated, is featured in The Exonerated, a made-for-cable television film, first aired in 2005.

Ellen McGarrahan, who later wrote a book about the case, said advocates for Tafero and Jacobs had obscured the facts of the case by attempting to portray them as completely innocent. For example, The Exonerated ignored the fact that Tafero and not just Rhodes was a convicted felon on parole. In 2011, Jacobs married Peter Pringle, who had been exonerated after being convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in the Republic of Ireland. (Pringle's sentence was commuted to life imprisonment, the death penalty having been abolished in practice in Ireland since 1954, abolished for ordinary murder in 1964, and permanently abolished for all crimes in 1990.)

Sunny and Peter Pringle had founded The Sunny Centre where they helped other exonerees with their healing process. The centre is non-profit and gives individuals support upon leaving prison. The couple welcomed exonerees into their home and incorporated a holistic approach to healing through yoga, meditation and prayer.

Jacobs died at the age of 77 in a house fire in County Galway, Ireland in June 2025.