Jury deliberates fate of defendant in multiple murder

Bill Gang

Tuesday, Sept. 14, 1999 | 11:23 a.m.

A District Court jury has begun its job of deciding the innocence or guilt of Terrell Cochise Young in the murder of four young men in August 1998.

The case went to the jury Monday afternoon after closing arguments during which jury members were told that although Young isn't alleged to have been the triggerman, his role as a participant in the well-orchestrated robbery is sufficient to convict him of first-degree murder.

Young is the second of three defendants to stand trial in the murders during a holdup, which garnered only a couple of hundred dollars, a VCR and a video game.

Each victim -- Matthew Mowen, 19, Jeffrey Biddle, 19, Tracey Gorringe, 20, and Peter Talamantez, 17 -- was killed with a bullet fired into the back of the head.

The home on Terra Linda Avenue, near Nellis Boulevard and Tropicana Avenue, was targeted on Aug. 14, 1998, because a fourth man, who has not been charged, believed there was $6,000 in cash and a quantity of drugs there, jurors were told.

"In the eyes of the law, the act of one is the act of all," Deputy District Attorney Robert Daskas told the jury in District Judge Joseph Pavlikowski's courtroom.

Defense attorneys have contended that Young, who confessed his involvement to police after his arrest, participated only because of his fear of the gunman.

That alleged triggerman, Donte Johnson, 19, is scheduled to stand trial on Jan. 10. The third man, 19-year-old Sikia Smith, already has been convicted of first-degree murder for his role in ransacking the house and been sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

If Young also is convicted of first-degree murder, the jury will decide if the appropriate punishment is death by lethal injection or life in prison with or without a chance for parole.

Defense attorney Martin Hastings reminded the jury that several witnesses testified to Johnson's volatile temper that makes him "go off like a light switch."

During closing arguments Deputy District Attorney Gary Guymon equated the participants in the assault on the victims' house with a team event that can only be successful if everyone cooperates in doing their job.

"Without one, the team is not going to survive," Guymon said.

While the law makes all participants in a robbery responsible for a murder that may result during that crime, defense attorney Lew Wolfbrandt argued that for Young the robbery was over by the time the fatal shots were fired.

"Terrell was a spectator," he said, citing Young's version of events from his confession. "The robbery was over. He was out of the house."

Wolfbrandt said the only one guilty of the murders was the "crazed psycho little guy who in his own sick way ended the lives of four boys."

Prosecutors, however, countered that the robbery wasn't over until the murder weapon was disposed of and the meager booty split up.

And Guymon suggested that Young was in the house at the time of the shootings.

He noted that testimony from a friend who had talked to Young and Johnson after hearing news reports of the murder indicated that there had been a conversation between Young and the gunman about whether to kill two dogs.

Ace Hart had testified that Young commented that there were two puppies in the house and they should have been killed, but Johnson rejected the idea.