In court filings, lawyers for Rodney Young acknowledge that his murder of Gary Lamar Jones in Covington was a “shocking and horrific crime.”
In March 2008, Young bludgeoned Jones with a hammer and stabbed him with a kitchen knife while his hands and legs were bound. In 2012, Young received the death penalty for it.
But in Young’s appeal, to be argued Tuesday, his lawyers contend his death sentence for a single killing is excessive when compared to hundreds of other murder cases. If the Georgia Supreme Court would do what it is supposed to do when reviewing Young’s sentence, it will come to the same conclusion, the appeal says.
Jones’ murder “simply did not fall within that small core category of the ‘worst-of-the-worst’ crimes that warrant the death penalty in the modern era of this state,” the lawyers’ 473-page brief says.
By law, the state Supreme Court must make sure every death sentence is in line with punishment in similar cases and throw out sentences that are disproportionately severe. Typically, when upholding a death sentence, the court’s proportionality review cites other capital cases with similar crimes.
In their brief, Young’s lawyers referred to a 2007 investigation by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution that showed the state high court had botched its proportionality review. The newspaper found that almost 20% of the cases the court was citing as comparable to similar capital cases had previously been overturned on appeal. Some of those defendants had been released from prison.
A subsequent investigation by Young’s legal team found that of the 266 cases cited by the court in its proportionality review, 134 of those defendants are now serving life sentences or have been released from custody.
The lawyers also cited the dwindling number of death sentences that have been imposed since Young was sent to death row: six in the past nine years (one of which was changed to life without parole). Just one case in the past seven years received a death sentence, that being a Gwinnett County woman who acted as her own lawyer and put up no defense.
Young’s brief asks the court to refrain from conducting a perfunctory proportionality review and instead return the case to the trial court for an evidentiary hearing on the issue.
In response, the state attorney general’s office said Young’s death sentence was neither excessive nor disproportionate. The brutal murder of Jones fits squarely within the type of crimes for which the death penalty is sought and given, it said.
“By Young’s analysis it is difficult to conceive of any murder case — except those involving multiple victims enduring the most horrific murders — that would survive his proportionality review,” the state said. “This reveals the true intent of Young’s suggested proportionality review — to circumvent the Legislature and have this court effectively end the death penalty in Georgia.”
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