National Roundup

Georgia
High court upholds man’s death sentence
ATLANTA (AP) — Georgia’s highest court on Tuesday upheld a man’s death sentence for killing his ex-fiancée’s adult son, saying he failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he is intellectually disabled.

Rodney Young, 53, was convicted of murder and sentenced to die in the 2008 slaying of Gary Jones in Covington. The Georgia Supreme Court upheld his convictions and sentences, though some of the justices questioned the constitutionality of the state’s tough burden of proof of intellectual disability to avoid execution.

Georgia in 1988 was the first state to pass a law prohibiting the execution of intellectually disabled people, and the U.S. Supreme Court in 2002 ruled that the execution of intellectually disabled people is unconstitutional. But the nation’s highest court left it up to the states to determine the level of proof required.

Georgia has the toughest standard in the nation for proving that someone is ineligible for execution because of intellectual disability, requiring it to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Chief Justice Harold Melton wrote in an opinion released Tuesday that Young failed to meet that bar.

“We are not called upon here to make a pronouncement on the wisdom of Georgia’s burden of proof from a policy perspective, and to do so would be beyond this Court’s constitutional power,” Melton wrote. “Instead, we are called upon to apply the Georgia Constitution and the United States Constitution.”

Brian Stull, a lawyer with the ACLU Capital Punishment project who represents Young, called the Georgia high court’s ruling “devastating.”

“Georgia’s uniquely high and onerous burden means that people with intellectual disability will be executed,” he said in an emailed statement, adding that Young’s legal team plans to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court and “ask it to correct the injustices coming out of Georgia once and for all.”

Three other justices joined Melton’s opinion completely, and all but one agreed with its ultimate result. Presiding Justice David Nahmias wrote a concurring opinion, joined by two other justices, saying that while he agrees with upholding Young’s convictions and sentences, he doesn’t agree with all of Melton’s analysis. Justice Charlie Bethel dissented.

Nahmias wrote that he is not confident that Georgia’s unique law requiring that intellectual disability be proven beyond a reasonable doubt has “continued viability” under the U.S. Constitution. He wrote that if the U.S. Supreme Court says the Georgia high court ruled incorrectly, he would “obediently accept and forthrightly apply such a decision.”

Nahmias also wrote that Young and his advocates could ask Georgia legislators to change the burden of proof required by law in light of “extensive developments in the science of intellectual disability and the law in this area” in the past three decades. He wrote that “if the General Assembly takes a further humane step with regard to criminal defendants who are potentially intellectually disabled, I would embrace that change.”

In his dissenting opinion, Bethel wrote that he would send Young’s case back to the trial court for a new jury trial on the question of intellectual disability and resentencing consistent with the outcome of that trial.

Bethel cited a 2014 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in which, he wrote, “we have learned that States are not authorized to enforce legislative rules or judicial tests that by design or operation create ‘an unacceptable risk that persons with intellectual disability will be executed.’” With Georgia’s highest-in-the-nation standard of proof, “the existence of such a risk seems plain,” he wrote.

Young, who lived in New Jersey, had been in a relationship with Jones’ mother, Doris Jones. Doris Jones had moved to New Jersey to be with Young, but they fought often and she moved back to Georgia and lived with her son, court documents say. Young often wrote to her to ask her to come back.

In March 2008, he went to Georgia and stayed with his half-sister and her husband, driving repeatedly to Gary Jones’ house, where Doris Jones was staying, according to evidence and testimony.

Late the night of March 30, 2008, Doris Jones discovered her son’s body at his home. He was tied to a chair with a bloody knife and hammer next to his body. He had multiple injuries, including skull fractures.

At trial, Young’s attorneys tried to convince the jury he was intellectually disabled, but a jury in February 2012 convicted him on all charges against him and recommended the death penalty.


Maryland
FBI agent charged in off-duty shooting of man on subway
ROCKVILLE, Md. (AP) — An FBI agent has been charged with attempted murder in the off-duty shooting of another man on a Metro subway train last year in a Maryland suburb of Washington, D.C., according to court records unsealed Tuesday.

The agent, Eduardo Valdivia, was scheduled to make his initial court appearance Tuesday afternoon in Montgomery County Circuit Court on charges including attempted second-degree murder, first-degree assault and reckless endangerment.

Valdivia turned himself in to local authorities at a county jail Tuesday morning, according to Chief Deputy Maxwell Uy of the Montgomery County Sheriff’s Office.

The charges stem from a Dec. 15 shooting on a train near Medical Center Station in Bethesda. Police for the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority  said in a Dec. 18 statement that the agent fired multiple shots after the man had approached him that morning and they exchanged words.

The statement said the wounded man was in stable condition less than a week after the shooting. It didn’t elaborate on the nature of the “verbal exchange” between him and the agent just before the shooting.

Robert Bonsib, a lawyer for Valdivia, told The Associated Press on Tuesday on Tuesday that his client “has served his community in some very dangerous and sensitive assignments” for the past decades.

He said that on the morning of the shooting, Valdivia had been confronted by “a man who threatened his personal safety, and he acted reasonably in order to prevent himself from being killed.”

In a statement Tuesday, a spokeswoman for the FBI’s Baltimore field office said the bureau was aware of the charges and is fully cooperating with the investigation.

“As is customary following a shooting incident, this matter will be subject to internal review,” spokeswoman Joy Jiras said.

The Metro Transit Police Department said in December that it had reviewed video footage and taken statements from Metro employees, passengers and others.

In a 911 call released in January, a witness said the agent had warned the man to back away, but the man ignored the command and instead prepared to fight him, the Washington Post reported.
“The FBI agent said: ‘Move away. I’m an FBI agent. Back away,’ “ the 911 caller said. “The other gentleman didn’t, dropped his bag, approached him to fight him.”

The caller said the FBI agent was “attacked” by the other passenger but did not describe how.