Friday, October 30, 2009
Young guilty in Floyd attack
A jury recommended that 32-year-old Jeffery Young spend more than 16 years in prison.
The Roanoke Times | File June
A Roanoke County jury acquitted Jeffery Martin Young (right), shown with attorney Neil Horn, of hit-and-run and involuntary manslaughter in June.
Previous coverage
FLOYD -- A man who was found not guilty earlier this year of striking one person with a vehicle was found guilty Thursday of striking another.
A jury in Floyd County Circuit Court met for about five hours Wednesday evening and Thursday morning before finding 32-year-old Jeffery Young guilty of malicious wounding for attacking Ciera Sowers Boyd on Jan. 30, 2008.
Boyd was walking into Slaughters' Supermarket for work that day when Young struck her with his mother's car, then beat her over the head with a log and a small wooden club.
Young also was found guilty of assaulting a law enforcement officer and two counts of obstructing justice for advancing toward Floyd County sheriff's deputies who responded to the incident with the club in one hand and a knife in the other.
The jury recommended that Young spend 16 years and eight months in prison -- 12 years for malicious wounding, two years for assault, one year and six months for intimidating one deputy and one year and two months for intimidating a second. The maximum sentence was 45 years in prison.
Young will be formally sentenced in February, but it is rare for a judge to stray from a jury's recommendation.
Boyd's family released a statement after Thursday's hearing saying they appreciate the jury's recommended sentence but "would have liked for him to have received more time in the penitentiary to ensure the safety of our family and the community."
Young's attorneys, Fred Kellerman and Neil Horn, didn't deny that he attacked Boyd without reason. They argued instead that Young was insane at the time of the offense and presented evidence that he had been diagnosed as paranoid schizophrenic but doesn't take his medications.
Jurors apparently agreed that Young suffered some mental illness but didn't believe he was legally insane.
Shortly after jurors began to meet Thursday morning to determine Young's sentence, they sent Judge Howe Brown a note asking if there could be a stipulation that mental health treatment be required for Young. They were told that they should fix his sentence and not concern themselves with what would happen later.
Kellerman and Horn declined to comment after the case wrapped up Thursday, its fourth day.
Young showed little reaction when the verdicts were read, only smiling slightly a few moments later.
He wore a red jumpsuit from the New River Valley Regional Jail and a metal restraint on one leg throughout the trial. That contrasted with the suit he wore during a June trial in Roanoke County Circuit Court.
In that case, Young was tried on charges of hit-and-run and involuntary manslaughter in connection with the death of lawyer Thomas Farrell, 49, who was killed while on a morning jog just two days before the incident at Slaughters'.
There were no eyewitnesses and little evidence tying Young to the scene, and he was found not guilty.
Before the trial, court documents showed that his attorneys planned to argue that he was insane at the time of that incident as well.
