Young jury continues deliberations

Bill Gang

Tuesday, Sept. 21, 1999 | 11:19 a.m.

Convicted quadruple killer Terrell Cochise Young was proclaimed "the worst of the worst" by prosecutors who asked the District Court jury that convicted him a week ago to punish him with the death penalty.

But after four hours of deliberations Monday, there was no consensus on the fate of the 20-year-old defendant who casually drank a beer as he guarded the four duct-taped victims.

The nine-woman, three-man jury in District Judge Joseph Pavlikowski's courtroom returned today to resume its task.

Deputy District Attorney Robert Daskas reminded the jury that trial evidence showed not only that Young advocated murder of the four young men, but he also wanted their two pit bull puppies killed.

"He has no regard for human life or the lives of animals," Daskas fumed before telling the jury that "this is a case where the death penalty is the only appropriate punishment."

Jurors will decide between that and a sentence of life in prison with or without the possibility of parole.

While prosecutors during closing arguments repeatedly called Young "the worst of the worst," defense attorney Lew Wolfbrandt said the onetime high school star wrestler "was not even the worst of the worst in this case."

Young is the second defendant to be convicted of three charged in the Aug. 14, 1998, slayings during a well executed but poorly conceived robbery of a house near Tropicana Avenue and Nellis Boulevard.

Nineteen-year-old Sikia Smith was sentenced to life in prison with no chance for parole for his relatively minor role as the one who ransacked the house looking for the $6,000 in cash and quantity of drugs the bandits believed were there. Only about $200 and a few pills were found, according to the confessions of Smith and Young.

Donte Johnson, 19, is scheduled to stand trial Jan. 10 on charges he was the gunman who stood over each victim and fired bullets into their heads.

Those killed were Tracey Gorringe, 20, Jeffrey Biddle, 19, Matthew Mowen, 19, and Peter Talamantez, 17.

In an unsworn statement to the jury last week, Young asked for leniency and said his whole life shouldn't be judged on "three weeks on the wild side."

That period not only involved the quadruple murder, but also his involvement in disposing of a body from another murder, his shooting at two people in a hotel-casino who owed him money from a drug deal and his pulling a pistol on a Nevada Highway Patrol trooper.

Deputy District Attorney Gary Guymon said it wasn't three weeks, but three years -- dating back to a 1996 incident during which Young and some friends caned a couple of teenage boys in a supermarket.

Guymon presented a chart emphasizing how that incident, which resulted in a juvenile conviction, started Young on a slide that resulted in deaths and violence in 1998.

Wolfbrandt lamented that Young didn't qualify for a prison Boot Camp Program after one conviction that might have turned him away from the path to drugs and death that he chose.

Wolfbrandt argued that if Young were given a life sentence rather than the death penalty, he could act as an example of what happens when a person strays to the "wild side."

Guymon countered that if Young is executed, he would be a better example of the fate that awaits those who commit robberies and murders.

Wolfbrandt conceded that even if given the lightest sentence of life with the possibility of parole, Young would be spending the rest of his life in prison.

"The state just wants you to give him a date" through the death sentence, the attorney said.

His voice cracking with emotion, Guymon responded angrily that "Matthew Mowen didn't have a date with death. None of those boys did."

Guymon said that Young should not be considered for a life prison term because he attacked a county jail corrections officer and beat him to the ground a week ago, just minutes after the jury pronounced Young guilty of all charges in the quadruple slaying.

Prison guards, the prosecutor argued, shouldn't have to be exposed to that kind of risk.

"The defendant's conduct has displayed that he is unstoppable, that he is still going to harm others."

Although Young has been animated at some earlier hearings, smiling at jurors when he was pronounced guilty and making obscene gestures at newspaper and television cameras, he was relatively sedate at the closing arguments in the penalty hearing Monday.

During jury selection two weeks ago, Young overturned a table and threw documents around the courtroom before he was subdued by bailiffs.

He was fitted with a stun belt -- in essence a remote controlled stun gun -- for later court sessions, but even that didn't stop him.

When he spit on his own lawyers, whom he had criticized for what he said was an inadequate defense and rarely visiting him, Young was zapped into submission.