COVINGTON, Ga. — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday denied Rodney Young’s petition for the Court to hear his case stemming from a 2008 murder conviction in Newton County.

District Attorney Randy McGinley said the denial followed the Georgia Supreme Court’s 2021 opinion affirming the conviction and death sentence for Young in the March 30, 2008, murder of Gary Jones in Covington. 

The American Civil Liberties Union had filed a petition for the state Supreme Court to review the case in part because Young has an intellectual disability.

Young, 55, currently resides in the state prison in Jackson. He was convicted of bludgeoning to death his ex-fiancée’s son, 28-year-old Gary Lamar Jones, in 2008.

According to Special Agent Wesley Horn with the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, Young was involved with the victim’s mother for seven years. 

When she ended the relationship and moved from New Jersey to her son’s home on Benedict Drive in Covington, Young became enraged. At one point the victim’s mother’s home was destroyed in a fire that was ruled arson. Once she moved to Covington, Young reportedly sent her several letters, the content of which had not been released publicly in 2011.

On March 30, 2008, the victim returned home from church at Springfield Baptist. His mother found him when she came home from work around 11:30 p.m., bound to a chair, stabbed in the neck and bludgeoned with a hammer. 

Threats including “Get out of the state Atlanta mom” and “we’ll get you Atlanta mom” were scrawled in blood on the walls. 

The Georgia Supreme Court’s description of the case stated, “after weeks of careful planning, Young ruthlessly executed the prolonged attack on and brutal murder of his former fiancée’s son for the purpose of manipulating his former fiancée into resuming a relationship with him and returning to live with him.” 

Young’s attorneys raised 50 claims of error from the trial court in over 540 pages of legal briefs. The state Supreme Court rejected each claim in upholding both the conviction and sentence, McGinley said.

He led the state’s case at the Supreme Court along with assistance from assistant District Attorneys in both the Newton and Walton offices as well as the Attorney General’s Office. The case was prosecuted by now Superior Court Judge Layla Zon and now Probate Judge Melanie Bell. Zon, as district attorney, also handled all of the post conviction motions at the trial court level. 

The case was investigated by the Newton County Sheriff’s Office and the Georgia Bureau of Investigation along with assistance from the DA’s Office, the GBI Crime Lab, the New Jersey State Police, and the Bridgeton Police Department in New Jersey.