Chasing Gideon (32 page)

“I ain't kill nobody. Why wouldn't I go to sleep? I sleep every day. . . . I didn't kill nobody.”

“Your life will never be the same. . . . It gets down to you. It gets down to Rodney. It's about why something like this happened. At the end of the day, Rodney, when we go back to Georgia, you have to answer for it. . . . You and I, you and I are going back to Georgia. You understand that?”

There is a moment during the two-hour taped recording, as investigators cajoled, harangued, coaxed, and urged Rodney Young to confess—and he denied committing the murder, repeatedly—where doubt enters the mind of listeners.

What if he really was innocent?

It is obviously illogical. Overwhelming evidence indicated he committed the murder. Yet, he does not admit it. What is the psychology behind this? listeners speculate. Is it because this is an act so profoundly abhorrent that he cannot admit it to himself? Or what if he really cannot understand that he committed the crime? In arguing for clear procedures to determine mental retardation, the authors of a 2005 Constitution Project report called Mandatory Justice: The Death Penalty Revisited argue that the reason mentally retarded people are not “morally culpable” is in part because they simply do not understand the consequences of their actions: “Persons with mental retardation suffer from substantial disabilities affecting moral reasoning, cognitive functioning, control of impulsivity,
and understanding of the basic relationship between cause and effect.”
²
Probably this is what is going on. But what if he was telling the truth? Is there any chance at all that he did not commit the crime?

Listening to the recording, jurors were no doubt waiting for the admission of guilt to come, the aha moment that comes at the end of every
Law and Order
episode to clarify motive and method. We have come to expect such things, steeped as we are in tight episodic narratives of crime and punishment. One assumes the reason the prosecutors are playing the audio is so that jurors will hear the suspect break down and spill all. All this questioning by detectives, the voices spilling out into the dead silence of a courtroom four years later, presumably, was leading up to Rodney's spectacular confession.

But as the tape winds down, the conversation repeats. “Ain't nothing happen,” Rodney insists. “I said, ‘Ain't nothing happen.'” The recording hangs on a question about Rodney's cell phone. “Then why on Sunday, during the homicide, was your phone in Covington the better part of six or seven hours?” the detective asks. “Did you get a flat tire? What made you stay there?” Moments later, the tape dribbles off into a heavy silence. The cursor on the blue screen above the jury's head just comes to the end of its trajectory and stops. And jurors blink out of their reverie, suddenly alert, shifting in their chairs, stretching, glancing at the clock.
Is it lunchtime yet?

And the thought—what if he is innocent?—nudges, insistent and awful in the stale air of this Covington, Georgia, courthouse. Or, more likely, what if, given his extremely limited mental abilities, he cannot even acknowledge—let alone comprehend—the nature of what he has done? Under those circumstances, what is the function and role of our justice system? And does a defendant like Rodney actually need extra help from the government, via an adequately funded public defender, to protect his rights?

These thoughts gather steam in the afternoon when a parade of teachers, coaches, and social workers from Rodney's Bridgeton, New Jersey, high school are put on the stand to testify about his mental acuity. The defense addresses a skeptical jury, and will have a tough time painting a portrait of Rodney as mentally retarded in
the eyes of the law. After all, jurors knew that he held a job, lived more or less on his own, moved through the world like the rest of us. But the teachers tell a different story.

The defense team brings down twelve teachers and others to talk about Rodney Young as a student so that the jury can see him in an expanded way. The big question hanging in the balance is whether or not Rodney is mentally retarded and thus ineligible for the death penalty. Secondarily, the tactic is a way of pleading for mercy in sentencing—a way of setting up phase two of the trial (in case Rodney is found guilty and
not
mentally retarded). Revealing who he is as a person with very low functioning mental abilities and a troubled childhood becomes a way of asking the jury to recognize his humanity and spare his life.

To prove that he is mentally retarded, his attorneys must rely loosely on the American Psychiatric Association's
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
, which defines someone who is mentally retarded as having an IQ below 70, being diagnosed with the condition before age eighteen, and having deficits in adaptive functioning (daily living skills). Before the trial began, an independent psychologist evaluated Rodney, without his attorney present. However, the psychologist was given leeway by the court to question Rodney about the crime itself. Without knowing what he said, the defense attorneys worried to the judge in advance that admitting this expert's testimony, wherein Rodney was asked details about the crime, was a violation of Rodney's Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. The day that jury selection began, the judge agreed to seal the psychologist's evaluation, which was not released to either side. In order to keep it sealed, however, defense lawyers had to agree not to call any expert witness to try and establish Rodney's retardation. They could present evidence of retardation through “lay witnesses” but not via experts. Reluctantly, Rodney's attorneys were forced to agree.

From the very beginning, this proves challenging, for all sorts of reasons. The defense calls twelve of Rodney's New Jersey teachers, guidance counselors, and coaches, who attest to the fact that he was in special education classes throughout his entire student life in the Bridgeton schools, and that to be in special education
classes, students underwent an assessment, including an IQ test; all students in special ed had IQs under 70. However, in those precomputer days, the school district threw out records after seven years. Nothing on paper from his school career proves definitively that his IQ was below 70. (In fact, the defense team had hired someone to do a current, adult IQ test on Rodney and he scored 77, classified by the Wechsler Intelligence Scale as “borderline mental retardation.” They chose not to introduce that evidence.) But at the time, IQ tests put him below 70, according to twelve defense witnesses.

Wayne Hendricks, a small, precisely dressed African American man in his sixties, is the first to take the witness stand for the defense. He has been a teacher for thirty-eight years, teaching special education at Rodney's Bridgeton High School. He testifies that Rodney was classified as “educable mentally retarded” based on the standard IQ test, which means he fell between a range of 60 and 69.

“Could Rodney read?” asks defense team member Teri Thompson.

“He could read but not very well, third- or fourth-grade level when he was in tenth grade.” Hendricks went on to say that he worried a lot in those days about whether African American students were rightly assessed and placed—or whether being disadvantaged and discriminated against, they were sometimes too quickly shuffled into special ed. His voice catches and his eyes fill with tears; Rodney is looking across the courtroom right at him. “I was certain that Rodney's placement was correct,” he says. He describes a day when he was teaching and Rodney was really struggling with a basic math assignment. “Rodney was having some difficulty and I was trying to help him,” Hendricks says. “We got into a conversation about football.” Rodney was a running back and a powerful star player on the varsity team. “Then I guided him back to the activity and walked away. He was still having trouble.” Hendricks's eyes fill again as he speaks. “I could see that he was beginning to cry and it was at that point I realized how very much trouble he was really having with this work.”

Thompson points out that Rodney was actually accepted into college. He got a 220 on his SAT—you automatically get 200 for filling out your name correctly on the form. Still, he was admitted to
Norfolk State University and received a football scholarship. He went for almost two years and then went to a vocational school instead.

Hendricks says that a local man served on Norfolk's board and likely got him the scholarship.

Then the prosecution takes a turn. “Would it surprise you to hear that he got an A in psychology?” Layla Zon asks.

“Yes,” Hendricks replies. “It could very well be that he didn't do the work himself.”

“Would it surprise you that he kept down a job all these years?” Zon continued.

“That would not surprise me, no.” Hendricks says Rodney worked in a summer youth program at the school every year where the kids did landscaping and construction work. Anything rote and straightforward, Rodney could do.

Next, a special ed teacher named Karen Denise Owens-Jones testifies. She taught for twenty-two years in Bridgeton and first had Rodney when he was fourteen years old and in ninth grade. “I'm not very comfortable using that term—educable mentally retarded—but at that time, that was the term that was used,” she says.

“Did you ever see Rodney's [IQ] test results?” Bell asks when she cross-examines her.

“Yes, I saw them.”

“What was his score?”

“It had to be in the range of 60 to 69 to be in that class, but I can't remember the specific score from thirty years ago.”

“Were you in the room when the test was administered?”

“No.”

“So you couldn't know whether [the tester] followed protocol?”

“No. Are you asking me, was she a professional?”

“No, I am asking, were you there?”

“No.”

When Rodney's teachers speak, it is the only time during the trial when he looks up from his close study of the patterned carpet to meet someone's eye. All his teachers mention his wrestling and football prowess, and most say, because one year the team he was on went all the way to the state championship, that they saw every varsity game he played. They smile at him as they say this—and
then look away when they say things, as Owens-Jones does, such as, “Rodney could tell me it was 1 or 1:30, but quarter of the hour . . . that he couldn't do. When digital clocks came out, I tell you, I was hopeful for those kids.”

Another teacher, Jill Swaim, says that she taught remedial math to the special ed kids. “But Rodney didn't have the skills. He just couldn't do it, it was too advanced.” She says that lots of the teachers were loyal sports fans, herself included, and went to all the football games. “We'd follow the kids and encourage them,” she says. “They were so needy and some didn't have family. We were his family.” She recalls getting a late-night phone call from him once. “‘Miss Swaim, I need a ride,' he said. ‘Okay, where are you?' I thought he was in Bridgeton somewhere. He was at a bus station in Delaware. I said, ‘Give me your brother's number and we'll go down to get you.'” She doesn't know exactly what happened. “He could have gotten off the bus to get a drink of water and not thought that far ahead.”

Layla Zon insists on facts, not anecdotes. “You specifically don't know what disability Mr. Young had because you did not test him, is that correct?”

“Correct,” Swaim agrees.

“In all your years of teaching did you ever see a child who was misplaced?”

“How would I know?”

“You never saw a kid in a remedial class who should have been in another class?

Swaim hestitates, but then admits, “Yes.”

The defense team is trying desperately to show Rodney is mentally retarded, but they can't produce the evidence of an IQ test—and are banned from using experts, unless they want Rodney's Fifth Amendment rights compromised.

Another teacher, Mary Beth Galex, says Rodney reminded her of a big teddy bear. “A part of me always felt so guilty. He was so good, I was worried people would take advantage of him,” she says. “He showed me not to give up. He didn't let his mental abilities hold him back. . . . Rodney was just a special person.”

Later in the evening, at the Holiday Inn Express, seven of the Bridgeton staffers gather in the hotel lounge. I bring two six-packs
and chips, someone brings a couple of bottles of wine, ice cream, lemonade, Doritos—and the Georgia Capital Defenders pick up the tab for dinner: pizza and wings from Domino's.

The teachers are excited, jazzed, a bit on edge as they ease down from the formality and high drama of the afternoon. Like most Americans, who rarely encounter the courts except on TV, they quickly sense the significance of trivialities as presented against the sharp backdrop of death. The mundaneness of our daily lives slips away for a moment and, as the stakes go up—
he could be put to death; death haunts us; we too will die someday
—there is nervous chatter. They want to unwind with a drink and talk about the trial, how they did, what they remember about Rodney, what they remember about their other students, what they remember about the year the football team went to state for the first time in twenty-six years, what they remember of that championship football game, what Rodney was like on the field—“three, four, five people couldn't pull him down,” Jill Swaim marvels—and what they themselves were like thirty years ago when they were young.

Everyone has changed from their fancy court clothes—suits, jackets, ties, skirts, heels—back into the everyday—jeans, sweatpants, tennis shoes, T-shirts. The subdued voices of court go up several notches as they cut each other off and insist on being heard.

Romond is nowhere to be seen.

Finally, an hour or two later, he and his girlfriend, Jennifer, show up. She has driven down from Charlottesville, Virginia, where she is a week away from defending her PhD dissertation, to watch Romond's first capital trial. “After hearing him talk about this case for so long, it's exciting to finally see it happening,” she says. She chats with all the witnesses, knows everyone's name, and they know hers.