John Young was executed by the State of Georgia for three murders
According to court documents John Young would break into a home and in the process of robbing it would fatally beat Coleman Brice, Gladys Brice, and Katie Davis.
John Young would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death
John Young would be executed by way of the electric chair on March 20 1985
John Young FAQ
When was John Young executed
John Young was executed on March 20 1985
How was John Young executed
John Young was executed by way of the electric chair
John Young Case
The sister of triple murderer John C. Young, who died early Wednesday in Georgia’s electric chair, said he faced his execution calmly and his only concern was for the welfare of his brothers and sisters.
Katie Young Vasser, who spent more than three hours with the condemned man Tuesday at the Georgia Diagnostic and Classification Center, said he read the Bible and expressed hope that his four sisters and three brothers would comfort each other after his death.
Young, 28, spent nine years on death row for murdering three elderly Macon residents during a 1974 rampage. Coleman Brice, 85, his wife Gladys, 83, and Katie Davis, 83, were beaten and kicked to death in their homes.
Three other elderly residents of Young’s racially mixed neighborhood were seriously injured in similar attacks. All six were white.
Young is the sixth man, and the fifth black, to be executed in Georgia since the state resumed using the electric chair in 1983 after a 19-year suspension.
Mrs. Vasser, who lives near Houston, Texas, said her brother never acknowledged the murders.
″I don’t think he knows,″ she said, adding that he was ″real, real out on drugs″ when the attacks occurred.
Mrs. Vasser and another sister, Annie Duncan of Milledgeville, were among Young’s last visitors Tuesday.
″We read the Bible, we cried and when we left he had a smile on his face,″ Mrs. Vasser said in a telephone interview. ″He had peace within … and, having come to know Christ, he was calm.″
No representatives of the victims’ families were at the prison for the execution.
Young’s attorneys filed numerous last-minute appeals based on the admission of his trial lawyer that he was under the influence of drugs while representing Young. But Young’s last chance for a stay vanished Tuesday evening when the U.S. Supreme Court turned down his appeal request by 5-3.
About four hours later, Young was escorted into the execution chamber and strapped into the varnished wooden chair by six guards.
In a barely audible final statement delivered to 12 official witnesses, Young complained that poor people and blacks were ″pawns of society.″
″Being born black in America was against me,″ he said. ″Y’all cry that America was built on Christianity, I say it was built on slavery.″
At 12:15 a.m., Warden Ralph Kemp read the court’s execution order and two guards placed a leather harness over Young’s shaved head, while two others attached electrodes to his right leg and head.
Then, with a leather mask over his face, 1,080 volts of electricity was applied.
Two minutes later the current was turned off and his body was allowed to cool for six minutes before two doctors pronounced him dead.
Outside the central Georgia prison, about 30 death penalty opponents staged a 45-minute vigil, holding candles and singing hymns.
About 20 people demonstrated in favor of the execution, including Ed Stephens, grand dragon of the Georgia Ku Klux Klan, and two other robed Klansmen. The two groups were separated by a barbed wire fence.