Sosebee denied sentence reduction

Published 7:26 am Thursday, August 25, 2011

A Dalton woman who entered a manslaughter plea in Murray County Superior Court last year to killing her estranged husband in 2009 saw her motion for a reduction of her sentence denied on Wednesday, a court official said.

Rhonda Dilynn Sosebee, 46, formerly of 2021 Tillman Road but now an inmate at Arrendale State Prison in Alto, pleaded guilty in August 2010 to voluntary manslaughter and aggravated assault before Judge Robert Adams in the stabbing death of her former husband, Steven Lee Young, 37.

Young was found dead in his Valley Road home in Chatsworth on Feb. 13, 2009. Sosebee was apprehended in Calhoun one month later after a nationwide search. The day after Young’s body was discovered a credit card receipt showed her being in Missouri.

Sosebee made the pleas just before her trial for murder was to have started. Adams accepted the pleas and sentenced her to 20 years in prison and 20 years on probation, to be served consecutively.

“Rhonda Sosebee filed what is called a ‘pro se’ — without a lawyer — motion to modify-slash-reduce her sentence,” said District Attorney Kermit McManus. “She was brought back from Arrendale, that was why she was logged into the jail. She was just here for that purpose.”

McManus said Sosebee “rambled on for about 30 minutes trying to tell the judge why he should reduce her sentence” before Adams denied her motion.

McManus said he met with members of Young’s family before court after the victim advocate’s office notified them of the hearing.

“I don’t know that they had any concerns, except (asking), ‘What’s this all about?’ (and) ‘What’s going to happen?’” he shared. “I told them from the beginning that it was my opinion that nothing was going to come out of this hearing, that the motion would be denied.”

McManus said there were “two problems” with Sosebee’s motion.

“She was using the wrong (legal) vehicle to make the motion, and basically she was saying, ‘Please reduce my sentence because I want you to — I’ll be too old to get a job when I get out.’ That’s kind of what she said, so that’s no legal basis for the judge to grant any kind of a modification of sentence,” he said.

Prosecutors contended Sosebee was in Young’s home when he arrived from work on Feb. 12, 2009. They say she shot him twice — once in the chest and once in the right arm — with a .357 Magnum pistol, then stabbed him several times with a buck hunting knife.

The couple had been divorced for about a year following an eight-year marriage. But they continued living together, even though officers had responded to several domestic disturbance calls while the two were married.

McManus said the Murray County Sheriff’s Office is responsible for the expense of moving Sosebee from Alto and back, a trip of more than two hours one way. A phone call to the sheriff’s office seeking information on what the total expense will be was not immediately returned.