A jury recommended death for man who killed woman, 92. The judge disagreed. Here's why.

TAVARES — Joshua McClellan, who was facing a possible death sentence for killing 92-year-old retired teacher Rubye James in her Leesburg home, was instead sentenced to life in prison on Monday.

A jury in September recommended death in a 10-2 vote after unanimously deciding the state proved five aggravating circumstances. However, Circuit Judge Heidi Davis ruled that three were not appropriate or were duplicates, and some mitigating factors carried more weight.

For example, she agreed with defense mental health experts that despite being almost 20 years old in 2017, he was “very immature and functions as a teenager.” Another said, “his brain development was far behind that of a typical 19-year-old.”

That factor carried “great weight,” she decided.

McClellan and Krystopher Laws attacked James on the front porch of her Leesburg home in the early hours of Feb. 8, 2017. Prosecutors said she would not have opened her fortified door in the Montclair neighborhood if she had not recognized McClellan’s voice. He had done yard work for her, and she sometimes fed him.

Her injuries were horrific. She was struck in the head, dragged through the house, kicked, beaten with garden tools, and repeatedly stabbed. The two killers stuffed her body in the trunk of her car and drove her to a place near McClellan’s home where she was buried in a shallow grave.

Laws pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in 2020 and was sentenced to life in prison.

McCllellan claimed he and Laws found the car in the Leesburg parking garage.

“Mr. McClellan stated that the key fob was found on the car, and he and Mr. Laws went on a joyride to Wildwood and Lake Panasoffkee before returning to Leesburg. Mr. McClellan was also adamant that he and Mr. Laws were together all night…,” according to the judge's sentencing order.

Those words would come back to haunt him. Police found the key fob where McClellan said he ditched it, and by saying he was with Laws all night, he made himself an accomplice. Laws implicated McClellan in his confession. Both made contradictory, confusing statements.

One of the aggravating factors that Assistant State Attorney Nick Camuccio pushed for was that the murder was cold, calculated and premeditated.

“…the defendant walked over five miles to get to Ms. Rubye’s home. The murder was carried out sometime around 3 … in the morning. He made a conscious decision to commit this crime under the cover of darkness, dressed in dark clothes with bandanas to conceal their identity. He was armed the whole time with his knife,” he wrote in his sentencing memo.

The judge agreed there was premeditation but, citing case law, said it did not rise to the level of the state standard of one of the most heinous aggravators.

“Mr. McClellan did have a knife, but there is no evidence to prove that the knife was procured specifically for the intent of murder,” she wrote in her sentencing order.

She said the crime scene “shows a reasonable hypothesis that the murder occurred at the spur of the moment and little planning went into it.” Police found Laws’ palm print on a mirror in James’ Montclair home, along with one of his sweaters, and a bloody bandage with his blood on it that matched one found on the floorboard of the car.

The pair rifled through the home and came away with $70, which they immediately spent on marijuana.

The judge did agree with the state’s contention that he was an accomplice and that the victim, because of her age and health, was especially vulnerable.

She ruled that there was insufficient evidence that James was murdered to avoid arrest.

Defense attorneys Frank Bankowitz and Wanda Greene argued that McClellan was under the influence of an extreme mental, or emotional disturbance — a statutory mitigating factor that falls just short of insanity, but the judge disagreed. Nor did she agree that he was under the domination of his co-defendant.

She also rejected the notion that he could not appreciate the criminality of his conduct.

She did give some weight to the fact that McClellan came from a dysfunctional family. He was twice removed from his mother’s home because, in her words, she was smoking marijuana. She gave “slight weight” that he was put in foster care instead of another family member’s home.

She also gave slight weight to the emotional deprivation argument, but rejected the idea that McClellan was deprived of nutrition.

She gave some weight to the notion that he suffered some childhood trauma, slight weight to remorse, no weight to his having low-esteem, some weight to poverty, but no weight to premature birth, or major skills deficits, some weight to evidence of brain abnormalities, good behavior in the courtroom, lack of good family role models, and making friends.

McClellan was enrolled as an emotionally behaviorally disabled special education student in school, giving the judge reason to assigning some weight to this condition.

The judge gave slight weight to evidence of prenatal drug use and premature birth, and to McClellan's own drug use.

She did not find that McClellan’s IQ, at 86 was too slight. It is considered to be low average.

She also did not give weight to the fact that McClellan married a woman twice his age, who had children his own age, though the defense cited that as an example of his immaturity.

“The jury found that evidence proved beyond a reasonable doubt the existence of five aggravating factors, and after an independent analysis the court found two of those aggravating factors proven and has given them great weight. The court further finds that Mr. McClellan was a major participant in the burglary and acted with reckless indifference to human life,” the judge wrote.

The proven aggravators warrant a sentence of death, she noted, but “two statutory mitigators have been proven by the greater weight of the evidence, along with 26 catch-all mitigating circumstances.”

Not mentioned in the court ruling, but possibly having some impact, is the fact that James’ son, Wayne Solomon, is opposed to the death penalty for religious reasons.

“The law is going to do what the law is going to do what it wants to do,” he told the Daily Commercial. He said he was glad Laws was sentenced to life in prison without parole.

“I hope he [McClellan] gets the same thing.”

Bankowitz, in one hearing, argued that McClellan should not get the death penalty, because he took a chance and exercised his right to a jury trial.

James taught school for more than 50 years in Lake and Sumter counties, and in Georgia. The crime shocked and outraged residents, and not just in the African American community. Goodwin Orchids even named an orchid for her in her honor.

This article originally appeared on Ocala Star-Banner: No death penalty for Florida man, despite 10-2 jury recommendation