Former Hertford councillor sentenced to prison for sex crimes

EDENTON, NC — Quenton Sherard Jackson, 39, a former Hertford, North Carolina, city council member, was sentenced to decades in prison Monday after pleading guilty to multiple charges, including the rape of a juvenile.

On July 15, Jackson pleaded guilty to one count of rape of a minor, two counts of sexual abuse of a minor, two counts of first-degree sexual exploitation, and two counts of indecent exposure to a minor.

According to the North Carolina 1st District Attorney's Office, Jackson was 36 years old at the time he committed these crimes and his victim, the daughter of a woman he had dated several years earlier, was 15 years old.

According to the North Carolina 1st District Attorney's Office, these offenses were consolidated into a single sentence as a result of a plea agreement.

As a result of a plea agreement, Judge Marvin Blount Jr. consolidated those offenses into a single verdict in Chowan County Superior Court on Monday and sentenced Jackson to a minimum of 23 years and a maximum of 32 years in prison.

“Anyone who has worked in the criminal justice system will tell you that sex crimes are the most difficult to prosecute,” District Attorney Cruden said. “Fortunately, the victim and her mother were strong and remained faithful to the end.”

According to Cruden, in the weeks leading up to his sentencing, Jackson attempted to discredit the victim's testimony and the evidence against him.

Prosecutors presented the victim's testimony and evidence in the form of Jackson's DNA recovered from the victim's underwear and shorts, as well as explicit photographs and videos from Jackson's phone with the corresponding dates, times and locations, to convince the court to sentence him to the maximum sentence allowed by law.

In January 2019, Jackson, then 33, was convicted of punching Sid Eley, another Hertford councillor, in the head after a face-to-face confrontation between the two escalated at a meeting in October. Eley was 72 at the time of the attack.

Subsequently, in May 2019, a Supreme Court judge ordered the two men to maintain a distance of more than six metres and to erect a physical barrier so that they could attend town hall meetings in the confined spaces.