Betty Christian began crying Thursday as the man accused of killing her son shuffled into the courtroom.
Click to see a video of Thursday's court proceedings.
She wore a silver charm bracelet that had a picture of her Son Jeff Christian, who was Shot to death in Floyd County more than a year ago.
For the family, emotions flared and pain turned to anger as they heard testimony of the mental status of John Clayton Corley, the one person responsible for taking their loved one away.
Jeff Christian’s daughter Hope told the court that Corley “doesn’t deserve to live in my eyes and in the eyes of my family.” His son Andrew Christian said, “My dad was a great man, and he didn’t deserve to die.”
A skinny, haggard-looking Corley sat slumped, occasionally blinking. At least once during the testimony an expression formed on his face but faded again into a vacant stare.
He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to opening fire on a neighboring home off Wilkerson Road with an AK-47 on Aug. 28, 2007, then shooting and killing Charles Jeffery Christian, permanently injuring Phyllis Hayes Avery and shooting Christian’s dog Lucky.
Click to read the previous report, "Murder victim Jeff Christian’s family still searching for peace a year later."
Avery, who was 32 at the time, now lives with her parents in Tennessee and will never again be able to care for herself.
“There are a lot of people who have suffered for Mr. Corley’s actions,” said Assistant District Attorney Martha Jacobs.
“I don’t think anybody will attempt to say we understand how they feel,” she said about the family. “Because we haven’t walked in their shoes.”
Judge J. Bryant Durham accepted the plea after a hearing outlining Corley’s mental status and sentenced him to be confined to a state mental hospital, most likely for the rest of his life.
Durham assured the Christians that Corley is not getting off easy for the crime and will not “see the light of day.”
“I hope this will put some closure on the case,” said Durham. “Because he is going to be locked up for a long time.”
Jacobs sympathized with the family’s anger at Corley and said to the court that, at first, she was also very skeptical about accepting the plea and reviewed the evidence and history looking for holes.
History of insanity
Television courtroom dramas can lead a casual observer to believe that the insanity plea is something that is brought before the court on a regular basis, but that isn’t the case.
Dr. Robert Bare, a forensic psychologist, testified that out of more than 300 cases he has been called in to evaluate he has only recommended the state to accept a not guilty by reason of insanity plea six times.
Both Public Defender Teddy Lee Henley and the District Attorney’s office submitted evidence that demonstrated a pattern of mental illness leading back more than a decade.
Bare testified that Corley suffered from delusions in which he thought agencies, specifically the CIA, were out to get him and that he had been infected with a virus that was physically debilitating.
Corley thought he was “infected with an alien virus and actually was controlled by some alien being,” Bare testified.
At the time of the crime Corley was on an almost exclusively liquid diet and was constantly in and out of hospitals complaining of his infection and calling for a number of medical tests.
On the day of the murder, Corley had gone to Floyd Medical Center for a CAT scan, hoping for a diagnosis to his malady.
He was released from the hospital around 5:30 p.m., and Bare testified that Corley said the being inside of him was allergic to the “nuclear energy” used in the CAT scan and coerced him to begin “shooting people.”
Less than an hour later authorities were called to the scene where Christian had been fatally shot.
Jacobs read a letter from Corley’s parents to U.S. Representative Phil Gingrey’s office from June 2007 detailing his psychiatric problems and asking for help.
The letter spoke of their attempts to get help for Corley from 1991 through 1995 after he was discharged from the Army where he served as a paratrooper with the 82nd Airborne Division.
