Jesus Jihad, a two-time convicted felon, said on the witness stand Thursday that his prison instinct took over when he began stabbing his wife last year. The rush from that instinct didn't subside until his wife was lying dead with 11 stab wounds, mostly in her back, in a parking lot in front of the couple's apartment. Jihad recalled that attack and the details that led to it Thursday as he took the stand in his murder trial.Jiahd said the incident began because he thought his wife was conspiring with her sister to get him arrested, knowing if he had any contact with the law he would be subjected to a lengthy prison term because of his past felony record. But when he tried to talk to her about it in the kitchen of the couple's apartment, she became angry and a wrestling match began, he said from the witness stand. Jihad said he could not get through to his wife because she was high on cocaine and at that point knew he was in trouble for at least striking a woman during their scuffle. "The full force of the law was going to come down on me," said the convicted rapist and murderer. "So, I grabbed a knife and I stabbed her. That is how it happened. The rest of it, everyone already explained to you."
Jihad is accused of stabbing his wife, Aisha Hendricks, to death during a knife wielding rampage July 8, 2007, which also resulted in him critically wounding her sister, Emma Bowens, and slashing the face of Hendricks' son, D'Anthony Holmes, then 15. Hendricks, 35, was stabbed 11 times with two different kitchen knives and then thrown down a flight of stairs outside the couple's apartment on the 2300 block of 92nd Avenue in Oakland. Jihad, 56, who is being prosecuted under the state's "Three Strikes" law, faces life in prison without the possibility of parole.