The Georgia Supreme Court on Monday threw out death sentences imposed by a DeKalb County jury against a man who killed his wife and the couple’s 2-year-old twin sons.
In a unanimous decision, the court upheld the murder convictions against Clayton Jerrod Ellington but sent the case back for a new sentencing trial. The court said Ellington’s lawyers should have been allowed to ask prospective jurors whether they would have automatically imposed the death penalty in a case involving the murder of children.
When Ellington’s death sentences, imposed for each of the three murders, were handed down in 2008, it was the first time a DeKalb jury had sentenced someone to death in almost two decades.
DeKalb District Attorney Robert James said his office “intends to continue to pursue justice and seek the death penalty in this case for this horrendous crime.”
Using a claw hammer, Ellington bludgeoned to death his wife, Berna, and their twin children, Christian and Cameron, at the family’s home near Lithonia on May 17, 2006. Prosecutors said Ellington, obsessed with a new girlfriend, committed the murders because he wanted out of the relationship.
Then-Superior Court Judge Anne Workman, who presided over the trial, prohibited Ellington’s lawyers from asking prospective jurors if they believed a life sentence was severe enough punishment for a person convicted of deliberately killing a child.
She also barred Ellington’s lawyers from telling prospective jurors the case was about deceased children. She only allowed questions about it if the jurors brought up the issue themselves.
Justice David Nahmias, writing for the court, said Ellington’s lawyers were entitled to ask the prospective jurors whether they would have automatically voted for death in a case involving child murders.
The questioning of prospective jurors is “the engine of selecting a jury that will be fair and impartial,” Nahmias wrote.
“As to the jury’s decision on the sentences in this case, our experience in criminal justice matters and simple common sense indicate that the fact that two of the victims were young children was the critical issue,” the ruling said. There were other aggravating factors in the case, but “the first point the average person would note in describing this case is that Ellington murdered his two 2-year-old sons.”
Nahmias noted that the DeKalb prosecutor who strenuously objected to any inquiry about the jurors’ views on child victims understood the power of that fact. He focused on the twin boys’ deaths from the time he made his opening statement to when he argued for a death sentence, Nahmias wrote.
Jury selection revealed that a few prospective jurors knew, because of pretrial publicity, or surmised that the case involved deceased children. One juror was in tears when she discussed the issue of child murder victims, while another said death was the only sentence he would give in such a case. These jurors were excused on grounds they could not be impartial, the ruling said.
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