Defense's final arguments in the sentencing of Colt Gray's Father, Colin Gray

[00:00:00] Speaker 1: good morning everyone in this room knows to be true that nothing that happens here today no argument that i make no sense this court imposes can restore what was taken on september 4th from these families from this community college grade is not coming for this court to be excused for that he comes to be sentenced for what he did and not for what his son did when the jury convicted culminated in march they never heard from the one person who knew the whole truth of what was planned in that house corporate did not testify at his father's trial and this court has now spent a week hearing that missing evidence and two days ago it made findings about that missing evidence so i'm going to begin not with our theory but with this court's own record six things now stand in it that no jury ever weighed first would be the concealment from the only voice with first-hand knowledge corporate told the court that he actively did the depth of his involvement in that online community from almost everyone in his life including his father this father did not know what he's planning we did not ask the court to take a confessed killer in his work we asked the court to notice that his words matched the physical evidence that the jury did see the hidden notes the burner accounts the absence after two years of investigation by the state of a single text email or single witness placing that plan within congress knowledge second the notes on culpris phone show hostility towards his father and express hope that his father would be punished i'm not going to read those words in the courtroom i know the court saw them during the trial i raised them for only one reason a son who wanted his father punished and wrote it down had every incentive in the world to implicate him instead of confirm that he kept that world secret from column third the timeline moved because column grade was in fact moving the court heard that colt accelerated his plan when his father sought mental health for him through the school the original plan called for this execution to be on the anniversary in february department shooting because the column was taking steps colt decided to counter move and accelerate his plan wasn't enough what colin did obviously not the jury has said so and colin accepts that but it was not nothing that it was not any difference hi good morning my name is charlie so i'm calling please turn your phones off fourth the expert the defense expert who testified before the court this week described the family profile of children who fall into these communities with your crime community parents who are asked parents who do not nurture parents who physically abuse your honor heard nine days of trial evidence about college and whatever else it showed it showed a father who was presence who pulled his son towards hunting in the outdoors who was trying however inevitably to get him back into school and away from his computer who didn't physically or mentally abuse him and the same expert told this court the single best intervention for a child is to get him away from that community to get him off of the computer that's the intervention that this untrained father was groping towards without even knowing the community's true nature without even knowing his son's involvement in that community fifth the state's own evidence found that the one adult who was inside that hidden world with cold prey was not caught the director of the division of family and children services testified in this courtroom that the boy's mother was in the director's words fueling this ongoing obsession with school shooters the jail calls the state played showed her relaying the community's praise into her son's cell until the corridor the contact stopped that is not my characterization that is the state's witness the state's exhibit in the sport room this week and sixth on tuesday this court found the motive not holy not hatred in the court's own words for the infamy of it the infamy your honor is the currency of exactly one place the true tribe community the hidden community the culprit served in secret the motive this court found did not involve did not live in colin gray's house it lived in a world that colin gray did not know existed now your honor the state's strongest foreseeability evidence at trial was one simple fact marcy gray had told colin to lock up the guys i want to spend a few minutes on what this court has learned since then about the warning and about marcy gray because the companion record has shown what stood behind it and how much of it never reached the man who received it marcy knew the extent of her son's immersion in that community because she was inside of it with him she knew he had like school shooters she knew he was corresponding with the convicted school shooter in florida by the evidence now before this court that fascination was the thing that two of them shared and none of it was shared with colin gray so consider the difference between two sentences two articulations lock up the guns from an estranged co-parent in one sentence versus locked up the guns because our son idolizes school shooters he writes to one prison and i've been inside that world with him that is a different sentence entirely a different statement entirely colin gray when we heard the first sentence he's never told the second and foreseeability as a measure of what a man morally deserves has to be judged by the warning that he actually received not the warning that she was in a position to give why would she keep such a secret record before the school suggests an answer through her own actions the addiction the conviction the loss of her children marcy gray forfeited the ordinary place of a parent in her children's lives what remained to her with this son with colt was one thing the assassination they shared it sat in the relationship where ball games and fishing trips sit in other families it was the thing they talked about it was theirs and to tell colin about it we ended we know what that relationship meant to her because the state showed us after september 4th after four people died she still could not let it go and she still discussed it with her son from his cell until the court finally stepped in and made her stop i don't say this to condemn her she has lost a son to this too i say it because it makes her silence comprehensible and whatever her reasons the fact scans and it is the fact that matters today the knowledge was hers it was never his now wait that unexplained marcy from the way colin had to weigh it against the other voices in his ear in may of 2023 a jackson deputy sheriff stood at colin grace home investigating an online threat given him by the fbi traced to that address colin did not stonewall that officer he volunteered unprompted on video that if there was evidence his son had made the threat the guns will leave the house immediately he never got that answer the case was closed 15 months later trained counselors and hours with cold and what came home to colin was a consent form for a counseling program to get services started through the school and she fell out in return the vocabulary was anxiety that is the information that this man was holding one voice saying lock up the guns with no reasons attached from the one person who's history with him made her the hardest voice for calling the credit a co-parent convicted of a crime against him ordered to stay out of this county whose children were removed from her by the state and who was by the record both of these proceedings the parent who physically abused colt would threaten to kill colt colt colt colt colt colt colt colt had to choose between listening to that voice or listening to the voice or the credentialed voices and that's what he chose to do this is not our indifferent to human life this is how a rational person orders information and it really is one of the many tragedies of this case because here's the cruelest part colin gray had already told the deputy sheriff out loud at his home the exact condition on which he would act tell me you did this and the guns are gone marcy gray held that evidence the analyzation the immersion the correspondence with convicted shooter had she given him the knowledge that she had she would have handed him the very confirmation that he publicly committed to act upon but she never did the confirmation that he was waiting for existed it simply never reached him and september 4th itself proved which parent had that knowledge because marcy is the one who immediately called when she received the text knowing what was going to happen not calling i want to be careful because i know that others had information as well others in cole's family and i don't believe they have anything from calling out of the will i just don't think they perceive the significance of the information that they held but that's precisely the point the people closest to this point pulling the most alarming pictures pieces of this picture did not foresee what was coming they did not foresee it with more knowledge than the moral weight of failing to foresee it cannot justly be concentrated undivided in the sentence of the one man from whom the picture was kept the verdict aggregated this household's knowledge the sentence should match the knowledge of one man so what did columbra actually know because that not what was kept from him what he actually knew is what the jury convicted him on and it is what the court must sentence him upon today he knew his son's struggle anxiety stress from fitting in probably making friends he knew the boy loved guns as colin did as colin's father did he knew he had a temper what he knew was it was a struggling adolescent one of the great many in this country but not one single fact from the hidden world of the true crime community where the plan actually lived was tended and grew was known by colin and the incidents the state lined up at trial did not arrive in congress life as a single timeline they arrived scattered across months each one surrounded by stretches of a child who laughed who was bright who loved his computer video games played guitar who went to the woods with his father a prosecution exhibit can compress 292 days into a column of red flags and delete every ordinary day in between a parent lives all 292 of those days hindsight isolates the spikes a life lived besides the child averages that the jury found that the average this father struck was criminal negligence and he accepts that that there's a difference in sentencing between a man who watched a fire build and did nothing and a man who saw sparks amid seasons of calm and misjudgment and how hard was told to read the state answered itself that question in the court this week the state court told the court that when this voice of the words out of your voices i don't want to black out that he was not breaking down he was performing a scripted imitation of his idol nicholas cruisers arrested and he stray planted by a boy the state describes calculating up to the second of the shooting i accept the state's proof that this court will remember that among the greatest one he's charged against colin grade his trial was that his son spoke of hearing voices in the days before the shooting if that talk was fear a callback that only a student of school shooters could even recognize then the most alarming thing that this father ever heard from his son was a lie from a script he had no way to know existed the same record cannot call a performance in one sentencing and an unmistakable warning in the other and the state also said that it does not know why this boy is what he is i don't know why the shark is the way the shark is maybe he's born that way maybe something no one can make there is an honest answer and i respect that answer and i respect the state for giving it but it does have a consequence for today the state of georgia with a complete record every expert every jail call two years of hindsight if they cannot explain this boy then the law cannot justly sentence an untrained father as though he should have understood him in real time across the living room foresight cannot be demanded where hindsight is failed the fbi sent a warning sent a tip to jackson county sheriff they investigated and closed the file a deputy sat with him and left trained counselors spent time with cold before the shoot and sent him back to class nobody trained to see the side no parent is trained to look at his own child and see a mass shooter especially when the professionals who were trained to do so did not on tuesday this war for the first entry in the ledger that history is going to read as a pair the killer the one who planned it who hit it who staged it and who carried it out received a sentence of life without the possibility of parole made all the more exceptional by the age of the person at the time the crime was committed 14 years old the maximum that the law allows today this court writes the second a father convicted of negligence of failing to perceive what his son by his own count in his courtroom deliberately did from him these two entries have to be morally legible when they are rigged together the entire architect of our homicide law the reason we create these defenses at all is the line between the harm a person intends to do and the harm of the person fails to prevent how a grave is 55 years old a sentence of 30 years 40 years 80 years negligence counts stacked one upon the other is a death in prison sentence functionally it's the very sentence this court just reserved for the individual the killer himself if the father's sentence looks like the son then that line is gone and this court in the first case of its kind in georgia would have written the precedent that erases that line there's exactly one comparable case in american history and i'm sure the court is aware of it the parents of the oxford high school shooter convicted of an involuntary manslaughter for four deaths where he sentenced to 10 to 15 years with their counselor concurrently in your honor their warnings were sharper and closer than anything in this record they bought the gun four days before the shooting they were called into the school the very morning of the attack asked to take their son home and declined to do so they were shown their son's drawing of the gun in the words quote unquote the thoughts won't stop helping and they said nothing to the school about the weapon that they had recently purchased their son and they left him in that school 10 15 years in current was the considered judgment of that court after an impact testimony that was separate that is devastating what the court has heard in the past week and today we would ask this court not to make tours to the national outlier in this first case of the time i guess the defendant who's warnings came with less and he said first one more briefly your honor has to merger we have filed with brief we are asking this case of first impression in georgia we believe that all of the counts should merge into cal one based upon the fact they call in failed to do one thing now i understand without awaiting any objection the court may disagree with that argument and as i said i would understand because this is a sense of first impression and an issue of first impression every count in this indictment arises when one continues course of conduct one gun one child one failure of perception over scan of us the 18 cruelty counts do not describe 18 separate decisions by calling gray they count the child the children present when the son acted the number of those children is a proper measure of the gravity of this harm but the court should weigh it in fully fixing the term but to stack negligence counts consecutively is to count that gravity twice we would ask the court if it disagrees with our argument on to run all accounts concurrent. Colin Ray did not choose his circumstances. It arrived by a telephone call from the Division of Family and Children's Services telling them to come get these 200 children because their mother had relapsed. Throughout Ian and Marcy's marriage, it seemed her sole contribution to this family was to insert chaos. Immediately and without condition, when he received that call, he drove down and picked up his two youngest children and brought them back to monitor. Was he overwhelmed? Was he underprepared? Yes. Did he have a support system? No. Will the State argue that had he cooperated more with the school, with DFAX, that he could have had a support system? He surely will and we may not contest that. That, too, is part of the failure that the jury found and for which he will have to answer. But an overwilling father's perfect engagement with bureaucracies is negligence. It is not indifference. This is the father who was trying. This was a father who was constantly in touch with his children. Your Honor saw the text messages that were admitted to evidence at school. Colin Brady was positive. He told his son that he loved it, that he was proud of him. He encouraged him to go to school. He told him how happy he was when Colton told him that he had a good day at school. This was not an absent father. This was not a distant father. This was not a harsh parent. The rifle, the question to understand what the rifle meant was meant to be because it belongs to a larger and staggered inventory. Colin's plan for his son was the only plan that he had ever seen work. His relationship with his own father was a troubled one and it was redeemed to the extent it could be in the woods, hunting side by side with his dad. Your Honor has a letter from his sister that details that a little more clearly. So when Colin's own son began to slip away from him, Colin reached for everything he could think of and everything that he could afford. He bought his son gifts: guitars, computers, gear. He tried, however, ineptly to get him back into school. He filled out the counseling and paperwork. He took him to the range. He took him hunting. And the hunting rifle, because hunting was the language in which a great father had much managed to say to a great son what he could not say in any other way. He believed that his presence and his generosity in the outdoors could pull cold out of troubled waters. What he did not comprehend was the current that ran through a world that Colin Grave could not see, towards an infamy that he could not imagine, besides a confidant that he did not suspect. The jury called that judgment and that failure criminally negligent, reckless, and the verdict stands. But a father who arms a child out of indifference, and a father who, in tragically poor judgment, gives a hunting rifle to the son he's trying to hold on to, those are not the same man. And sentencing is where the law tells them apart. And one more thing about Colin. From the first hours of September 4th, as the court saw he cooperated, he sat with investigators that same day. No lawyers, no conditions, and he told the truth. In fact, the state built his case on his own candidate. He has no prior family record. He's been in custody twenty-two months now. There is no world in which Colin Grave will re-offend. Specific deterrence and incapacitation are simply not a part of this case. And his punishment did not begin with a verdict, and it will not end with his release. His son is in life for- his son is in prison for life. His daughter is in foster care. His youngest son is in foster care. His family is gone. His name will forever be associated with this tragedy for the rest of his life and afterwards. The state may tell the court this case demands a message. Your Honor, that message is not sent. On March 3rd, the unanimous jury delivered the first conviction of its kind in the history of Georgia, and it was reported throughout the state and throughout this country. Every gun-owning parent in Georgia already knows that the law changed that day. Deterrence requires credible condemnation. It does not require that a 55-year-old first defender die in prison for negligence. A decade or more behind bars, following the first conviction of its kind, is a thunderous message by any account. So here's what we are asking of the court. On each count of murder in the second degree, we're asking the court to sentence Mr. Gray to 20 years, to serve 10 years in confinement with the ballots to be probated. On the counts of murder, 10 years concurrent. On the reckless conduct counts, 12 months concurrent. All the counts concurrent with each other. An effective sentence of 20 years to serve 10 years in custody. That is not leniency. Ten years in a Georgia prison for a man who never intended to harm a single human being is among the most severe sentences ever imposed on a parent in American history for the act of a child. It honors the statutory minimum. It honors their every life, lost their every life, lost their every child in danger. It stands besides the criminal sentences rather than dwarfing them. And it preserves the one distinction this week of sentencing will be remembered for. The difference between the boy who carried that rifle and who pulled the trigger and the father who did not see it coming. Your Honor, we understand the gravity of this situation. Four people are bomb and nothing the court can do today can change that. But the question today is narrower and in some ways harder. What does justice require when a father's negligence and a son's concealed intent meet on a single warning? This court has heard from the son himself and how completely that intent was hidden from the father. It has found that this was done for the infamy of it, the currency of a world the father never knew existed. It has already imposed on the woman who did the killing the heavy sentence the law allows. The sentence can be severe and still be just. We ask the court to impose the one that is both, the sentence we have asked for. And to leave standing the lie, the lie that's always drawn between negligence and murder. Thank you.