Offender gets 49 years in prostitution case
9 years for acting as pimp for teen
Sharoski Bernard Jackson’s manipulation of a girl who’d just turned 17 in the first few months of 2013 earned him convictions on five felony counts including human trafficking, promoting prostitution and taking the earnings of a prostitute when he went to trial in December.
That conviction netted nine years at his sentencing Tuesday before 2nd Judicial District Judge Briana Zamora, but it was his priors that racked up the additional years — 40 of them — as a habitual offender. The 49 years of sentences are to run consecutively, despite an argument from Jackson’s attorney Frederick Jones for a three-year sentence.
Jackson’s mother came from Georgia to speak at the hearing, telling the judge, “Sharoski is no junk” and insisting that he came from a good family, went to church and school regularly and took care of the lawn before he fell in with a bad crowd.
But the aunt of the victim B.G. said, after controlling her sobs, “I wanted you to know he has destroyed my niece’s life. ... May God forgive him.” She suggested that Jackson should get the maximum possible sentence to take him off the streets.
That was certainly the view of Sharon Pino, now a senior deputy attorney general in charge of criminal affairs, who tried the case.
“The pre-sentence report details that from 2004 to now, the defendant has never stopped being his own personal crime spree,” Pino said of Jackson, now 28 years old.
“He gets out on probation and starts again,” she said, noting Jackson was released from custody two weeks before trial after posting $100,000 bond and used his time in part to “tamper with witnesses.”
Jackson admitted to a 2005 Georgia conviction for receiving stolen property and New Mexico convictions for trafficking with intent to distribute cocaine and possession of a controlled substance in 2007 and 2008. Those are the charges that provided the basis for the habitual offender enhancement.
He also has a pending case from 2010 charging armed robbery with a deadly weapon, conspiracy and possession of a firearm by a felon.
In a transcript with the victim, who knew Jackson as “Rock,” she says she met him through a friend and started talking to him often on the phone. He told her she could make money by posting on an escort website, and she did.
Jackson’s girlfriend, Tiffany McKnight, who also was charged with conspiracy in the same case as Jackson, used her phone number for prospective clients to respond and arrange to meet B.G. at a motel to perform sex acts. McKnight pleaded guilty to promoting prostitution and received a conditional discharge deferring proceedings for 18 months.
The first few times, B.G. got to keep half of the money she earned, but that soon changed and B.G. gave it all to Jackson, according to the transcript.
B.G., who dropped out of school in ninth grade, said he did not hit her, though he did hit McKnight, and that example persuaded her to give him her money, according to the transcript.
There was a point when she thought she had feelings for Jackson.
“Well, I thought I loved him and stuff but then come to think of it ... you can’t love somebody that will put you through something like that,” B.G. said, according to the pretrial interview.