Judge adds to sentence of man found guilty in attack of woman in parking lot

By Doug Thompson

When a Floyd County jury recommended a sentence of 12 years in prison for Jeffrey Martin Young after his conviction in the unprovoked attack on a Floyd County woman in the parking lot of Slaughters’ Supermarket, Young laughed. Then he told a county deputy sheriff that maybe he should have killed her because he would have received a lighter sentence.
Deputy David Cook told a shocked Circuit Court audience Saturday of Young’s claim before Judge J. Howe Brown added caveats to the jury’s recommendation from the trial last year and sent Young to prison for 16 years, eight months along with court supervision and a four-year suspended sentence at the end of his prison term.
Cook, in opening testimony at the hearing for sentencing of Young, said he was getting the defendant ready for transport back to the New River Valley Regional Jail following his conviction in October 2009 when Young asked the deputy if he knew why he laughed when the jury’s sentenced recommendation was announced.
Cook said he told Young he didn’t know, and Young responded that he had spent time in jail with a man who received a lesser sentence for murder and wondered if he would have receive a lesser sentence if he had just killed the woman.
The revelation brought a gasp from some in the courtroom.
The jury, at the end of a four-day trial in October, recommended a sentence of 12 years for malicious wounding and two years for assaulting Ciera Sowers Boyd by hitting her with his car and then beating her with a club and threatening her with a knife as she walked from her car to the Slaughters’ Supermarket front door on Jan. 30, 2008. She worked at the grocery store at the time.  Young did not know her. The jury also recommended a sentence of a year and six months for intimidation of one deputy and a year and two months for intimidating another.
Brown accepted the jury’s recommendation Saturday but added a four-year suspended sentence at the end of Young’s jail time along with court-mandated supervision after his release, noting that Young had committed an “especially brutal crime.”
Before sentencing, Brown asked the 32-year-old Young if he had anything to say.
After saying he didn’t know he would be allowed to speak and hadn’t prepared anything to say, Young stood and said, “I’ve never had a criminal record and I don’t know if that counts for much. This is my first crime.”
That statement brought an audible gasp from some in the courtroom audience, composed mostly of family and friends of Boyd.  Young’s attorneys—Fred Kellerman and Neil Horn—looked down and said nothing. Horn had defended Young last year on charges stemming from the hit-and-run death of Roanoke attorney Thomas Ferrell in 2008. A Roanoke County jury acquitted Young of the charge although police tied a Jeep owned by Young to the crime.
Ferrell’s widow, Connie Ferrell, attended the sentencing, as did several members of Boyd’s family. Boyd was not in the courtroom.
Young remained expressionless when Brown pronounced the sentence and additional punishment.
Kellerman and Horn withdrew a motion for a new psychiatric examination for Young, who has a record of mental illness and schizophrenia. The lawyers had offered a defense of “not guilty by reason of insanity” during the trial, but the jury rejected the premise.
Before sentencing, Kellerman asked Brown to consider less prison time and more time under court supervision, acknowledging that Young was a “threat to the community.”
“One thing is certain, he is coming back into the community,” Kellerman said.
Brown declined to reduce the actual prison time but did add the suspended sentence and court supervision to the sentence, noting that he felt Young—while mentally ill—knew how to manipulate the system.
The judge added that Young’s statement to the court before sentencing “is the statement of a rational-thinking person.”
The rare Saturday court hearing was scheduled because the earlier sentencing date was postponed by weather. Brown, a retired Fairfax County circuit judge, heard the case after Judge Ray W. Grubbs stepped down from the case.
After the sentencing, Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie Shortt said she and Boyd’s family were satisfied with the sentence.