MCRAE-HELENA, Ga. — In Telfair County, a 9-year-old double homicide case was delayed again, until at least December. District Attorney Tim Vaughn is seeking the death penalty for Jay Towns, and it was supposed to start in September, after COVID-19 delays.
Towns is accused of killing Bud and June Runion in 2015. He allegedly lured the couple from Cobb County to Telfair County to buy a car from him.
In April, a man stumbled on new evidence while magnet fishing in a creek. According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, he found a .22 caliber rifle, and a bag containing drivers’ licenses and credit cards belonging to the Runions, and a cell phone believed to belong to the Runions.
"That is the court's intent is to try to move this case forward to start in jury selection in December," Chief Judge for the Oconee Judicial Circuit Superior Court Sarah Wall said.
Wall said she has every intention of moving the case forward as soon as possible, but the new evidence complicates things. They're still waiting on one more test report from the FBI, and that testing will be done at a separate FBI lab from where the rest of the new evidence was analyzed. They don't know if the evidence has been sent to the new lab yet, or what the timeline looks like for the report to come in.
On Tuesday, a status conference was held at Telfair County Superior Court, and prosecutors gave the defense the current FBI reports on the new evidence. The defense asked to have more time to review the evidence, and called the September trial date "unrealistic" after the new evidence was found in April.
"Because it's a death penalty case, it's gonna receive all the best and highest scrutiny of the courts and the lawyers. Because the punishment is irreversible," defense attorney Franklin Hogue said.
He said if the trial didn't get pushed back, the defense wouldn't have a chance against the prosecutors.
"We would've been so unprepared that it would not have been a fair trial," Hogue said.
With the new evidence, Wall said they'll need more hearings and motions. She hopes to get the final report back from the FBI soon, so the defense can decide if they'll conduct their own independent testing.
"Our experts, wherever we end up getting them - and we have talked to one who's not in the United States - but wherever we get them, they're gonna have to come to wherever the evidence is," Hogue said.
He said they're hopeful everything will be ready to go in December, and said Towns is glad the trial got pushed back, so the case won't be rushed.
13WMAZ also spoke with family members of the Runions, who said they'll continue waiting patiently for their day in court.
Wall said the December date is tentative, and could change if anything else gets pushed back. Since that's the month of Christmas, she hopes to have jury selection over in December, and start the actual trial in January.
Vaughn said the rifle that was found in April, hasn't been "thrown out," but said investigators have found evidence that it is probably not related to the death of the Runions.