The Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday unanimously upheld the death sentence imposed upon Jeremy Moody, who killed two College Park teenagers in 2007.
Moody pleaded guilty to the murders of 15-year-old Delarlonva “Del” Mattox Jr. and 13-year-old Chrisondra Kimble shortly after the prosecution gave its opening statement at the 2013 trial. After raping Kimble, Moody repeatedly stabbed the two cousins to death with a screwdriver and left their bodies near Bethune Elementary School.
On April 24, 2013, two weeks after Moody’s guilty plea, a Fulton County jury gave him death sentences for the two murders. It was the last time a Fulton jury imposed a death sentence.
On appeal, Moody’s lawyers said their client had been wrongly denied his request to withdraw his guilty plea while the jury deliberated over his sentence. But Justice Nels Peterson, writing for the court, said Moody’s plea “was knowingly, intelligently and voluntarily entered and therefore its withdrawal was not required to prevent a manifest injustice.”
The state high court also rejected Moody’s claim that he was entitled to a new sentencing hearing because of juror misconduct. During the sentencing hearing, Superior Court Judge Christopher Brasher received a note from a juror. The juror, a registered nurse, disclosed that after returning home from court the previous evening, he had conducted internet searches on various mental illness diagnoses. He then divulged what he’d done to fellow jurors, who told him he should not have done that.
When summoned to a conference with the judge and parties, the juror said he was curious because “mental instability” had been discussed during the trial. When asked if he had shared what he’d learned from his searches with his fellow jurors, the nurse said he had not done so. Brasher then removed the juror and then questioned each of the remaining jurors, all of whom said there had been nothing in the conversation that would prevent them from being fair and impartial.
Even so, Moody’s lawyers asked for a mistrial, which Brasher denied. In its opinion, the state Supreme Court said the judge’s questioning of the individual jurors established there was no harm to Moody and it upheld Brasher’s decision to allow the trial to continue.
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