The death sentence hearing for a man convicted of killing two College Park teens after raping one in 2007 was put on hold Tuesday because he injured himself, authorities said.
“The reason we were delayed in starting yesterday is because Mr. (Jeremy) Moody injured himself,” Fulton County Superior Court Judge Christopher Basher said Wednesday morning before the hearing resumed.
The judges statement came before witnesses testified about bizarre behavior Moody has exhibited since being arrested for killing 15-year-old Delarlnova “Del” Mattox and 13-year-old Chrishondra Sierra Kimble, witnesses testified Wednesday.
Moody suffered several injuries to his arms Tuesday while at the Fulton County Courthouse and had to be taken to Grady Memorial Hospital for treatment, court officials said. Jail officials would not specify how the injuries happened.
The 35-year-old pleaded guilty last week to murder, rape, kidnapping and a host of other charges in connection with the spring of 2007 killings.
Six charges – two each for murder, felony murder and kidnapping – carry maximum penalties of death by lethal injection.
But since his arrest, witnesses said Moody has been constant trouble.
“He told me when he got finished with me … killing me … I better hope that the authorities and my mother would be able to find my thumb,” his ex-girlfriend, Tameka Wright said Moody told her in a letter after she turned him in to police for the murders.
Fulton County Jail employees, who have worked around Moody for the six years he has been in jail, told stories from the stand of his outrageous and sometimes frightening behavior.
“He ran out of his cell during meal time with a big metal shank,” detention officer James Atkins said, holding his hands more than a foot apart to describe the illegal blade he said Moody attacked jail workers with. “It was just very stressful working with him because you never knew what he was going to do. Whether he was going to cut himself or hang himself.”
Jail employees also reported that Moody set himself on fire in January 2010.
Defense attorney Maurice Kenner pointed out that Moody took medicine to combat frequent seizures, and asked Fulton detention officer Ricardo Rucker, a former Georgia Department of Corrections officer, if the inmate would have gotten better medical attention in a state facility as opposed to the Fulton jail.
Testimony will continue on Thursday.
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