Floyd County’s ‘Loss of Innocence’
In her closing arguments for the sentencing phase of the four-day trial of Jeffrey Martin Young this week, Commonwealth’s Attorney Stephanie Shortt said Young’s brutal, unprovoked attack of Ciera Sowers Boyd in the parking lot of Slaughter’s Supermarket on Jan. 30, 2008, marked a “loss of innocence” for Floyd County.
Slaughters, Shortt said, is more than a grocery store. It’s a community gathering place, a location where people see friends, discuss issues and exhange stories about family and life. When Young ran Boyd down with his mother’s car and then beat her first with a wooden log and then a bat-like club, it not only left her scarred physically and emotionally but shocked the community to its core. She told a jury of six men and six women that she is afraid now to go shopping alone, avoids strangers and fears walking through parking lots.
The jury convicted Young of malicious wounding in the case, along with three other counts that included threatening sheriff’s deputies and interferring with their duties and recommended a sentence of 16 years, eight months. If Judge Howe Brown accepts the recommendation, as most Virginia judges do, when he sentences Young on Feb. 8, 2010, the 32-year-old man will stay in prison until he is 49. Virginia no longer allows parole. The time you get is the time you serve
Christianburg attorney Fred Kellerman and Roanoke-based co-counsel Neil Horn tried to convince the jury that Young should be found not guilty by reason of insanity. Horn successfully won an acquittal for Young in the hit-and-run murder of Roanoke County Attorney Tom Farrell but Floyd County juries don’t buy excuses for criminal behavior. The Sowers family had hoped for a longer sentence (he could have received up to 45 years) but the Copper Hill resident with a long history of bizarre and dangerous behavior will be off the street for at least 16 years and will remain jailed until his sentencing in February.
There’s little doubt that Young should not be on the street. First diagnosed with a “psychotic disorder” in 2003, he has a long record of dangerous behavior. He choked his mother until she was unconcious. He poured gasoline on her bed. He cut off his hand with a chain saw — which may or may not have been an accident. He declared himself to be Jesus Christ with a small band of followers.
Yet the mental health system continued to put him back on the street. That system failed and now its up to the prison system to protect society from Jeffery Martin Young.
Shortt may be right when she says Floyd County lost its innocence but Young’s brutal attack of a young woman in a public parking lot is only one symptom of the disease that threatens the health of the community. Crime, both violent and otherwise, is on the rise: Two violent deaths last year, another in 2009. Break-ins and robberies increase each month, taxing an already-overburdened sheriff’s department facing cutbacks in funding and manpower.
Vandalism is on the rise, graffiti now appears more often around the county. Reports of gasoline theft from cars become routine. Lawn tractors disappear. Someone recently stole an expensive bicycle that belonged to a volunteer at Angels in the Attic.
Defense attorney Kellerman, in his opening statement for the trial of Jeffrey Martin Young, quoted from John Milton’s epic blank-verse poem Paradise Lost. In the end, a jury from a county threatened with losing its paradise sent his client to prison.
A FAIR defense? What a stupid lame excuse for a reply. IYes, yes, everyone should be given a FAIR defense. I take issue with lawyers who manipulate the system as creatively as possible to give the guilty idiots a FAIR defense so they are treated better than the victim and have a greater chance of being found not guilty or being sentenced to much less time. Take your FAIR defense excuse and keep it to your dumb self.
The mental health system failed this young man. You know, that treatment safety net that we as a society decided long ago that we couldn’t afford, didn’t need, and opened the doors on our asylums releasing the detainees.
I feel absolutely terrible about Ciera Boyd’s injuries. And I’m glad that this young man is off the street. It is my understanding that his condition relates to a head injury sustained in a car accident. He should have been institutionalized long ago. Oh yeah, we don’t have institutions anymore.
And please clarify – there was only circumstantial evidence for the killing of Tom Farrell. The Floyd jury had a slam dunk case to decide.
I’m glad to see you doing what you do… and enjoying it. Hopefully, both of us. I know that I am.
Dread
Neil Horn is the reason that lawyers get a bad name. He defended this Young character to the ultimate victory in the Tom Farrell murder trial and won a not guilty charge. Then, Neil Horn takes on the same character and actually pleads for him to get off for a crime that involved several eye witnesses. Neil Horn, you should be ashamed of yourself and I hope your nights are less than peaceful for defending the guilty while the innocent have suffered at his hands. Blame the mental health facilities all you want. I don’t buy it. Families are responsible for the idiots they bring into the world and if they can’t handle it, then it is their ultimate responsibility to find help for those idiots instead of leaving it up to chance for the innocent to suffer.
My compliments on a thoughtful, well-written article. Mr. Young is a very smart, dangerous person who thought he could use his illness to protect him from having to take responsibility for his actions. As Mrs. Shortt proved, mental illness is not the same as being “insane.” It is easy to feel sorry for anyone who is mentally ill, but it is apparent that the mental health system is not going to help him unless he wants to be helped. The prison system is unfortunately full of the mentally ill who choose not to take the medicines that can control their behaviors. Someone who refuses to take blood pressure control medicine hurts only himself; someone who refuses to take medicine that grounds himself in reality can hurt others. There is an old saying, “My rights end where yours begin.” Our world would be a much better place if more people based their actions on the Golden Rule.
Is everyone not entitled to a fair defense? By the sound of your comment it seems as if you believe not. If that’s so, why not do away with the whole act of going to trial and let you determine the guilt of a person charged with any crime.
I’m not familiar with the case but neither do I have to in order to respond to your statement. Whether Young was guilty or not, the case must go to trial and from there must be rightfully defended in the confines of the law. If we were to assume the opinion that you so faithfully shown, then who among us is qualified to pre-determine the fate of a person without hearing all the facts?
You? I hope for your sake and the sake of the lives of others, no one person, besides the Lord above, can seal a man’s fate by what this one person assumes is true.
By the bloggers own admission, it was the mental health system is what failed Young. Not Mr. Horn.
The above artivle is a well written one. We know of both cases against Jeffery Young. In the Floyd county case they had eye witnesses and the Floyd county police department did an excellent job of collecting evidence, and working together with the commonwealth to present there case against Jeffery Young. And the victim and there family can have some closer and know that he is off the street and being punished for what he did to her.
As far as the Roanoke County case goes, all they had was circumstantal evidence due to the TERRIBLE Roanoke County police dept. Each one pointed fingers as far as who was to collect evidence,etc. And didn’t fully collect evidence, it was all washed away (FACT). If they didn’t let the evidence get WASHED away and collected evidence when they were suppose to immediatly after the incident we would have the proof. Circumstancial evidence did show that the injuries to Tom Farrell and the damage to the jeep match. Bottom line.. the whole trial in Roanoke was a very emotional case.Feel that the police dept. needs better qualified employees, that are proud to do there job and represent the city. Take action!! We continue to be very concerned citizens if anything did happen to our family in roanoke county, and if the police dept. had to investigate. We continue to be very dissapointed and afraid for our family after this case. This case was one example of how the roanoke county police dept. needs to improve immediatly.
Each person is still entitled to a defense ofcourse..but people need to really look at who to point the blame to. As far as Jeffery Young he is to blame for his own actions, The family and doctors should of pointed him in the right direction of getting help. He made his own choices.