| When the defense lawyers filed their response to the Court of Criminal Appeals, the Daily gave it two headlines and spouted Halbrooks' clumsy lies as fact. When the State of Alabama filed their 25-page answer to Thompson's allegations, they did their best to frame it as outsider Don Valeska attacking our beloved Judge Thompson. It didn't work, especially when they began making direct quotes of the State's document--showing actual discussion of the facts and the law. Although the "Tipton Judge" article was on the front page in the morning edition, by afternoon it had been bumped several pages back. On their Internet site, it was listed 19th of the 20 "other news" stories they did that day. The Huntsville Times did an even shorter version of it , and it wasn't put on the Internet at all. Channel 48, notable for their blind support of Catherine Halbrooks and a heinous killer, didn't see this document as newsworthy. The most important thing the State of Alabama says is this: "Most fundamentally, he (Judge Thompson) still has not identified any prejudice suffered by the defendant from the State's supposed discovery delays that warrant so drastic a measure as a new trial. The law on this issue is clear: A trial judge must find prejudice in order to set aside a jury verdict on the basis of a discovery delay." It also points out that Judge Thompson had already ruled on every alleged discovery violation mentioned in his ruling before and during trial. And: "When the trial judge employed one of the remedies in Rule 16.5, he presumably cured any prejudice caused by the defendant by the delay. When he chose not to employ a remedy, he presumably determined that the defendant had not been prejudiced by the delay. Either way, the judge's ability to address the issue at the time of the alleged delay belies his later determination that the delay was so severe as to warrant an entirely new trial. It is difficult not to conclude that the judge is using the discovery delays as a post hoc excuse for overturning a jury verdict with which he simply disagrees." In other words, Thompson has to explain, with facts and the law, how dwm was prejudiced by these alleged discovery violations. He is required to do it in the ruling itself, which he failed to do. When "ordered" to explain it, he still made no attempt to answer the question; instead, he just said it was all so bad he might well have just let him go. The newspapers both chose to emphasize the concept of Judge Thompson not agreeing with the guilty verdicts, as if to imply Judge Thompson thinks dwm is not guilty of capital murder. On the contrary; I believe Thompson knows dwm is guilty but still wants him to walk free. It's very clear to me that Judge Thompson has seen all the evidence, and he knows exactly what dwm did to Karen. He knows he did it. It's obviously just not that important to him. Instead, he is primarily concerned with maintaining his status within the highly pathological small-town Alabama good-old-boy culture that created and sustains him. I think in Decatur, you don't have to be right. You don't have to be good. You just have to be connected. It's always been that way. |
| To hear patiently, to weigh deliberately and dispassionately, and to decide impartially; these are the chief duties of a Judge. --Albert Pike |
| The higher type of man clings to virtue, the lower type of man clings to material comfort. The higher type of man cherishes justice, the lower type of man cherishes the hope of favors to be received. --Confucius |
| Justice is incidental to law and order. --J. Edgar Hoover |
| A jury consists of twelve people chosen to decide who has a better lawyer. --Robert Frost |
| Justice is not so much inherent in the text of the law as it is in the conscience of the judge. --Author Unknown |
| 99% of lawyers give the rest a bad name. --Author Unknown |