Chasing Gideon (37 page)

After Doris gives her witness impact statement about her son's murder, a church member does the same. Then Gary's aunt, his girlfriend, his grandmother. “I lived right around the corner on Bradley Street from Gary's house,” his grandmother Annie Sampson says. “He came to see me every day and called me constantly. He was the light of my life. I have a hard time accepting—” She pauses, repressed sobs clogging her throat. “I have a hard time accepting the murder of Gary. My heart feels like it's been ripped out. . . . I have diabetes and neuropathy, and Gary would wash my feet. He would take blessed oil. He would anoint them. He would massage them. He would massage my back, my shoulders, my temples. He was very concerned about my health.”

Three jurors are openly crying. The judge's clerk, a young woman sitting to his right at the bench facing the jury, is also crying. Romond stands and says simply, “I am very sorry for your loss. I don't have any questions for you.”

When it is their turn, defense counsel is hard-pressed to counter these statements with a sympathetic portrayal of Rodney Young. And Rodney does not help his cause. According to counsel, he is hardly following the case. He is more concerned with the clothes he will wear each day than the impact of any testimony. His large frame, hunched shoulders, and impassive face only reinforce the image of an abusive batterer and killer. The defense team tries to subtly counteract this by having Thea Delage, the petite twenty-something lawyer who has a fellowship at the Capital Defenders office, sit calmly beside him, but Rodney's silence allows jurors to project their own ideas on him—and in this mostly white jury, racist stereotypes likely surface. This is the defense team's big chance to address that.

The first witness is Charlie Keats, a social worker at Rodney's school, who also grew up in the neighborhood with Rodney. Keats has known Rodney Young since Rodney was twelve or thirteen years old, and he tells the jury about the rough and violent neighborhood they lived in, alludes to his troubled home life with a single mom on public assistance with several kids. He speaks for all the teachers, Keats says, in saying that they feel terrible and keep asking themselves what happened, how can they match what they know of Rodney, of his teenage self, with this terrible crime. They can't reconcile the two images.

“Mr. Keats,” Thompson says, “do you feel that Rodney should receive the death penalty?”

“No, I don't.”

“And can you explain why?”

“Well, by saying that, by the jury saying that, giving him the death penalty, it would say to those that love him that he has no value, he can't be rehabilitated. And we feel that he can. We feel there's hope there.”

The defense calls four more teachers and coaches from Bridgeton High School, a cousin, an in-law. Then the defense calls Rodney's
mother, Sara Brihm, possibly to raise questions about her own mental acuity and parenting abilities in the minds of the jury. She tells the jury she was a single mother of five when she moved to New Jersey in the '70s. Among other jobs, she worked picking blueberries for commercial growers, and Rodney worked the fields beside her, starting when he was ten years old. “Well, life was a little hard back then,” she says.

“And when you say hard, hard in what way?” Romond asks.

“You, if it ain't nobody but you trying to take care of your kids, it was hard for you because you wasn't getting much money and you wasn't making much money.”

“Ms. Brihm, by now you know that Rodney has already been convicted,” Thompson says. “Do you understand that?”

“Yes.”

“Okay. And what is it you would like the jury to know?”

“I'd like the jury to know that Rodney, he been a good boy. And I don't know what else. And I think it can be more punishment without the death penalty.”

“What would the impact of an execution of Rodney have on you?”

“It'll have a lot on me, just like there's a lot on me now.”

“In what way?

“In all kind of ways. I miss my son every day.”

Finally, Rodney Young's sixteen-year-old daughter, Aa'Liyah, takes the stand. She tells the jury that she has been living with her dad and her two great-aunts since she was two years old. Earlier testimony showed that Rodney had a basement room in the house where his two aunts lived upstairs with his daughter. Aa'Liyah tells the jury that she wanted to come today to talk about her dad. She says she has visited him in prison in Georgia a few times and that she still talks to him on the phone whenever she can. The defense enters five recent letters she sent to him in prison into evidence. She tells them that, as a junior in high school, she is thinking about college. “I want to go to Clark Atlanta University,” she explains.

“And why did you pick that school?” Thompson asks.

“So I can be closer to my father.”

“I just have one last question. Can I ask one more?”

“Yes.”

“You know that your dad has been convicted. Is there anything else you'd like to tell the jury?”

Aa'Liyah nods. “Please don't kill my dad.”

Rodney Young's life hangs with this jury of twelve men and women. As the group steps out of the courtroom to begin deliberating, the defense team returns to the topic of jury selection, worrying each call, second-guessing each decision, revisiting each choice. Two weeks ago, the judge, the district attorney, and these public defenders waded through a pool of 250 jurors in order to compile this particular “death qualifying” jury.

And, of course, race is a factor in this trial, just as it is a factor in all trials when the defendant is African American—and especially in all death penalty trials. By law, jury pools must reflect the latest available census data for the jurisdiction where the trial takes place. Here in Newton County, according to the 2010 U.S. Census Bureau, the population is almost 100,000 (a 61 percent increase over its population of 62,000 in 2000). It has a median household income of $52,361, with 12.7 percent living below the poverty line. Fifty-four percent of its residents are white, 41 percent black, 5 percent Latino.

Rodney Young's jury should reflect that same breakdown—but it doesn't. There are only two African Americans serving on the jury. Two weeks ago, one of them, Gwendolyn Butler (a pseudonym), stepped into the courtroom during jury selection to answer some follow-up questions. In the end, according to Romond, she would play a pivotal role; at the time, she was subjected to the usual collection of standard questions about the death penalty.

“Hey, Ms. [Butler], just have a seat and make yourself comfortable,” the judge told her that afternoon. “As you were told, the death penalty may never be an issue in this case. However, if the jury determines that the state has proved the defendant guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of the offense of murder, the jury will then be called upon to decide whether the defendant will be sentenced to death, life without the possibility of parole, or life with the possibility of
parole.” Then he got right to the point. “Now, are you conscientiously opposed to capital punishment, that is the death penalty?”

“Not in all circumstances,” Gwendolyn Butler answered.

“All right,” he continued. “If the defendant should be found guilty of the offense of murder . . . do you think the death penalty is the only appropriate punishment?”

“No.”

“So, in the event the defendant were found guilty, you would be willing to consider the punishment of life imprisonment as well as the death penalty?”

“Yes.”

When it is the district attorney's turn, she asks her to describe her views about the death penalty in general.

“I do what I feel is right,” Butler says. “I just don't think all circumstances require the death penalty. So I would have to kind of hear all the case. I wouldn't feel comfortable sentencing someone to death if, just depending on what the circumstance was . . . that I heard in the case. I mean, and I wouldn't oppose it at all if it was proven that they were guilty and they maybe killed a baby or a child.”

“Right. So it just depends on the evidence and the circumstances presented.”

“Mm-hmm.”

Teri Thompson, the public defender, then takes a turn asking Butler a few questions. “I guess we all may have different views, you know, whether a person believes in it or doesn't believe in it and things like that. But my question's a little bit narrower.” She goes on to explain a felony murder, how that means someone takes a life in the act of committing another crime such as robbery. “So in those kinds of narrow situations, can you tell me what your thoughts are about the death penalty as an appropriate penalty in that situation.”

“I don't—see, it's really hard for me to say because I don't oppose the death penalty if the circumstances warrant it, just depending on the circumstances. But you know, I've always had a little feelings about, okay, is it man's right to decide if someone should live or not? But I think it's also my civic duty to do the right thing. And so from the question that you just asked, if I felt someone intentionally
killed someone and it was a malice act of just, you know, disregard for human life and just, I could probably consider it.”

“Okay. . . . You understand that you are entitled to, and the Court will instruct you that you are entitled to, your individual, moral assessment as to what the appropriate penalty is for you?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, and how do you feel about that?”

“I feel okay.”

“You know, coming up, hearing everything like you've already said, and making your own individual determination as to what—I think you used the word
comfortable
—”

“I wouldn't be swayed by the other jurors. Just, like, if morally I felt that no, the death penalty in this case is not warranted, I wouldn't just do it because everybody else is, like, let's go, we need to do it.”

Both sides agree to seat Butler as a juror.

Deliberations in the penalty phase of Rodney Young's trial start on Monday at 1 o'clock. A half hour in, the jury sends out a note. “Is there an automatic appeal when the death penalty is given?” jurors want to know.

“That's terrible,” Romond thinks. “That's bad, a bad sign.”

The judge says he is going to tell jurors that “they are to decide this case based on the law and the evidence and not to concern themselves with matters of this nature.” He tells the lawyers, “That's the only thing I know to do.” The judge writes a note to this effect and sends it in to the jury.

Then, one hour and forty-five minutes later, jurors send out another note. One of the jurors has asked to be dismissed as a juror saying she has too many questions about this case, that she can't give the death penalty, that everyone else is in agreement but her.

The judge, who reflexively asks the prosecutor for input throughout the trial—and nine times out of ten, takes her advice—asks what she wants to say about this. “With respect to the Court's proposed solution that was discussed at the bench conference, which was to not respond or not address the note at this point in time, we have no objection,” says Layla Zon. But she has two recommendations.
“One would be to bring the jurors out and ask the juror if he or she is still able to deliberate and then act accordingly or appropriately. Or B, send a note to the jury that would be something of the nature of . . . you're just to continue to deliberate, consider each other's opinions,” an order known as the “Allen charge.”

Scott Sundby, the professor of law at Washington and Lee University who extensively researched capital juries, says that the Allen charge is referred to as the “dynamite charge.” Speaking to me on the phone, he recalls a juror he once interviewed who told him that the judge invoked the Allen charge by explaining they'd be there until the cows come home. “The judge says to the jury, you must abide by your conscience, of course, but you put in so much effort already and you need to listen to your fellow jurors and see if you can't agree. So go back in there. The dynamite charge is used when the jury is deadlocked and the judge hopes to blast out a verdict.”

“Your Honor,” Teri Thompson objects. “The note is clear. This juror, whoever the juror is, has reached his verdict.” (The gender of the juror is not clear since the note was unsigned; in fact, it turns out to be a woman.) “The Court, I think, has the authority to sentence Mr. Young to life without parole based on this note. That is his verdict. He is not saying, he or she, whoever it is, is not saying they cannot deliberate. . . . He has made his verdict, and that should be—”

“So you want me to sentence the defendant based on a note from one juror?” the judge asks.

“Absolutely,” Teri Thompson says. “This juror has made his vote. He's reached his verdict.”

“So what do you want me to sentence him to?”

“I think—well, I can pull the law,” Thompson says. “There is law that addresses where there is, if there is a lone juror, if there are eleven jurors voting one way—”

“We don't know what this juror is saying he or she is wanting the sentence to be.”

Joseph Romond dives in. “Your Honor . . . our position on this would be . . . in the penalty phase of a capital trial, the decision by the juror is an individual moral judgment,” he says. “That's the case
law. This juror has made his or her individual, moral judgment as to what the penalty is, saying that, due to those questions, he can't say yes to the death penalty.”

“Yes.”

“So in that situation, that juror has reached their verdict,” Romond says. “The statute allows the Court, in that event, to sentence the defendant either to life or life without the possibility of parole. I'll pull up that statute.”

“I'm aware of the statute,” the judge says. “I think it may be premature to make that leap based on one juror making this statement.”