| For the past two days, Judge Glenn Thompson has held a hearing to consider freeing Daniel Wade Moore, forever releasing him of any responsibility for robbing, beating, sexually assaulting, torturing, and murdering Karen. The hearing received heavy press coverage. I believe a significant number of people who were entertained by Karen's death, and who took great delight in trashing Karen, me, our friends and family, the police, and the prosecution are now concerned that Daniel Moore is about to be turned loose on THEIR streets. They SHOULD be concerned. Overall, the press coverage has been fair--more fair than at any time in the past five years. Channel 31 did the longest story, Channel 19 did the best story, and although Channel 48 still can't bring themselves to mention the DNA, at least they weren't offensive. The Decatur Daily provided the seventh-grade version of the story. But in the end, it was only Chris Bell of the Huntsville Times that totally "missed it." He described the victim's family and friend personality questionnaires from the FBI as "investigative interviews" and claimed "prosecutors said the police received the FBI report after asking for a profile." Any conscious person attending the hearing would know the DPD NEVER RECEIVED ANY OF THIS ALLEGED "REPORT" FROM THE FBI!!!! But there are several things I'd like to add to this coverage. One is to emphasize (again) that I was banned from attending the first day of the hearing, in direct and overt violation of my rights as a victim--guaranteed in the Constitution of the State of Alabama. The excuse for violating my absolute right was that Sherman Powell and Catherine Halbrooks said they were going to call me as a witness--and THEY NEVER DID SO!!! They never intended to; it was just another lie in a series of lies from two ethically-challenged defense attorneys. They did it because they enjoy heaping gratuitous abuse on victims. And they did it to prevent me from aiding the prosecution with my memory of the events of the past five years. The Chief Investigator, Mike Pettey, also has the right to be present in all proceedings, but Thompson banned him, too, in order to handicap the prosecution in every manner possible. Thompson stopped just short of actually banning the prosecutors themselves from the proceedings. When the prosecutors objected, Thompson made a pithy comment that they'd had three years to talk to Pettey, which elicited an outburst of laughter from the Moore side of the courtroom. It was a circus, with Thompson as the ringleader. Pam Smith, the state's "NEW WITNESS" admitted in Court she did not know Karen, and had never seen her before. She claimed to be making an identification of a person she'd never seen before, while driving down Chapel Hill Road. She complained she didn't want to be in court, but spent the rest of the day there, and came back today for more, sitting with her friends on the Moore side. There were other glaring problems with her testimony, but I'm not going to give the defense any "freebies" here, in the event they decide to bring her back for a second trial. Whenever the defense team was unable to ask an articulate question, Judge Glenn Thompson took over the questioning himself, always trying to help his friends. There was no pretense of fairness; the judge was simply defending the killer. But perhaps the most glaring misconduct on Judge Thompson's part came in Mr. Dill's cross-examination of Mike Pettey. Pettey indicated the FBI dropped the case when the forensics was returned, matching Daniel Moore to the crime. Dill asked which particular test result led the FBI to drop the case--whether it was the microscopic test, the nuclear DNA, or the mitochondrial DNA. Halbrooks objected, claiming Dill had misrepresented the testing done on Moore's hair. Judge Thompson jumped in to state that THERE WAS NO NUCLEAR DNA TEST DONE!!!!! Mr. Dill responded that indeed, a NUCLEAR DNA TEST WAS DONE. |