Jury sentences Young to 16 years

By Doug Thompson

A jury of 6 men and 6 women found Jeffrey Martin Young guilty of all four charges in the 2008 attack of a Slaughter’s Supermarket employee and sentenced him to a total of 16 years, eight months in prison.

The jury rejected a defense contention that the 31-year-old man with a history of mental illness was insane at the time.

Young, dressed in prison garb and wearing a shock brace to prevent escape, showed no motion as Judge Howe Brown read the verdict.  His victim, Ciera Sowers Boyd, was in the courtroom. Afterwards, family members gathered around her and shared hugs.

In a prepared statement released after the trial, the Sowers family thanked the jury for its verdict but said “although we appreciate the sentence given by the jury we would have liked for him to have received more time in the penitentiary to ensure the safety of our family and the community.”

The verdict came on the fourth day of the trial in Circuit Court.  The case went to the jury shortly before noon Wednesday but the jury did not agree on a verdict before Brown sent them home for the night after nearly four hours of deliberation.

They resumed at 9:13 a.m. Thursday and notified the court they had reached a verdict at 10:08.

After a short sentencing hearing, the jury began deliberations on Young’s punishment at 11:24 a.m.

In arguments for the sentencing hearing, Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie Shortt called the attack in the parking lot of the supermarket on Jan. 20, 2008, a “horrific act” that changed the life of Boyd and created a “loss of innocence” for Floyd County.

Boyd told the jury that she had trouble returning to work after the attack and was afraid to go shopping alone, adding that parking lots and large crowds bothered her. She said she suffers from vertigo as a result of the attack and takes medication to control it.

Young faces prison time that could run from 8-45 years along with fines up to $100,000 on individual charges of malicious wounding, threatening a police officer and two charges of interfering with police officers.

The jury gave Young 12 years on the malicious wounding charge, two years on the charge of interfering with threatening deputy Tim Dulaney, 1 year, six months for interring with Dulaney’s performance of his duties and 1 year, two months for interfering with the performance of deputy Chad Harris in his duties

Judge Brown ordered a pres-sentencing report and set sentencing for Feb. 8.,  A jury sentence is a recommendation, but Virginia judges seldom change what the jury sets.

Young, a former chess champion and Eagle Scout, felt he had to slaughter someone at Slaughters Supermarket on January 30, 2008, and that feeling led to an unprovoked, violent attack on a 20-year-old Virginia Tech student who worked at the grocery store on U.S. 221 south of Floyd, a forensic psychologist told a jury in circuit court Tuesday.
Young’s attorneys don’t dispute the attack that left Boyd scarred but they contend the 32-year-old man with a troubled past is not guilty by reason of insanity when he struck Boyd with his car in the store’s parking lot before attacking her first with a wooden log and then a club when the log broke. Young also threatened police and others with a knife.

Dr. Doris Nevin, the forensic psychologist who testified for the prosecution, said that while Young may be mentally ill she does not believe he was legally insane when he attacked Boyd.

Nevin said the name of the supermarket triggered a feeling in Young that someone had to die at the grocery store.

Young faced charges of malicious wounding in the attack, assaulting a law enforcement officer and two charges of obstructing justice. Testimony in the trial began Tuesday after Circuit Judge J. Howe Brown, a retired judge from Fairfax County, Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie Shortt and defense attorneys Fred Kellerman and Neil Horn spend most of Monday culling a pool of 72 potential jurors down to 14 for the trial.

Both sides presented witnesses for the case Tuesday with the defense presenting two final rebuttal witnesses Wednesday morning.
In closing arguments before the judge sent to the case to the jury shortly before noon, Shortt called the attack “brutal, unprovoked and calculated.”
Recalling Young’s prowess as a chess player, Shortt said the defendant was still playing chess with the court and the jury.
“But in this case, it is checkmate,” she said.

Witnesses Tuesday said Young sat in the parking lot of Slaughters most of the day on Jan. 30, 2008, appearing to wait for someone before Boyd arrived for work after attending classes at Virginia Tech.  As the Floyd County High School graduate walked from her car to the store, Young gunned his mother’s Nissan compact car and rammed Boyd, knocking her to the ground and scattering the contents of her handbag around the parking lot.

“The next thing I know, I’m laying on the ground in front of the door,” Boyd testified. “I saw a man standing over me, circling. I said ‘I’m Ciera and I work here.’” Young, she said, did not speak to her.

Employees and customers of Slaughters told the jury they saw Young’s car strike Boyd and then saw him beat her on her head with both the log and club. The employees watched from behind the locked front doors of the store. At one point, several said, he came up to the door and tapped on the glass with a kitchen knife.

Deputy Tim Dulaney testified that he arrived to find Young attacking Boyd and drew his weapon, telling Young to drop the club and knife. As Young advanced, Dulaney said he backed around the car and continued to yell at Young to drop his weapons.

Deputy Chad Harris arrived shortly after Dulaney and told the jurors that he shot pepper spray into the air but was too far away from Young for the spray to reach its target. Young, however, threw down the weapons and submitted to arrest.

The attack left Boyd with scars on her head and vertigo, which she must tread with medication. Her wounds required several stitches and places where he hair has not grown back.

In her opening statement, Shortt said Young’s attack on Boyd was unprovoked and said the young man knew what he was doing in the assault.

Kellerman told the jury that his client was “profoundly mentally ill” and quoted John Milton, saying “the mind is at its own place.”

Young, born in Ohio in 1977, moved to Roanoke with his mother in 1988 and graduated from Patrick Henry High School. His mother, Rebecca Young, described her son as a happy, smart student who won the city chess championship three times and a national youth chess championship. He also modeled as a teenager.

The young man went to Queens College in North Carolina after graduation but dropped out in his sophomore year after breaking up with his girlfriend, his mother testified. After a car crash that nearly killed him, she said he began to change, going into prolonged periods of depression.

Young was sent to mental hospitals in Virginia and Georgia in 2003, 2004 and 2007. In 2003, doctors at Southwest Virginia Mental Health Center in Marion diagnosed Young with a “psychotic disorder.” Other doctors later diagnosed him with schizophrenia.

Young cut off his hand with a chain saw near the Blue Ridge Parkway in 2006. The hand was reattached and he told police the incident was an accident.

His mother told the jury that her Young was “not the son I once knew” and said he once choked her until she passed out and on another occasion soaked her bed in gasoline and threatened to burn her “in hell.” Mrs. Young said he son began to believe he was Jesus Christ and got upset when she tried to call him by his real name. She twice had him committed to mental institution and once drove from their home in Copper Hill to Roanoke with him clinging to the hood of her car.

Dr. Joy O’Grady, a psychologist brought in by the defense team, told the jury that she believed Young was criminally insane when he attacked Boyd at Slaughters.

Dr. Nevin disagreed, saying he was, in her opinion, a controlling personality who was fully aware of his actions. She noted that he had told differing stories to different doctors about the attack on Boyd but described the incident in exacting detail when she interviewed him earlier this year.

Young appeared for court Monday in street clothes, a common practice for defendants in a jury trial but his lawyers insisted he appear before the jury in his jail uniform, which delayed the start of proceedings Monday because his jail attired was still at the New River Regional Jail in Dublin. He wore a “shock brace” on his leg to prevent escape.

Kellerman and Horn peppered Judge Brown with motions before and during the trial, requested a change of venue several times because of pre-trial publicity and also asking for a last-minute delay for a competency hearing.

Brown rejected the motions. Young appeared to participate in his defense, conferring with attorneys often during jury selection. At times he would laugh and he often attempted to make eye contact with jurors and those sitting in the courtroom. At one point, he asked a Floyd County Sheriff’s deputy for the name of an attractive reporter.

The 72 jurors summoned for the case is believed to be the largest jury pool ever summoned for a Floyd County case. The judge dismissed 19 at the outset because they said they had already formed an opinion about the case, based on their knowledge of those involved or news coverage they had read or viewed on the case.

The judge and attorneys then began questioning jurors six at a time, dismissing several when they said they knew those involved in the case or had preconceived opinions on mental health or the case.

Those dismissed included a relative of the county sheriff and a former girlfriend of one of his deputies.

Earlier this year, a Roanoke County jury acquitted Young of charges in the hit-and-run death of attorney Thomas Farrell.