| Bulletin Board |
| March, 2004 |
| This month marks five years since Karen was murdered. If it had been YOUR loved one that was beaten, sexually assaulted, tortured, and stabbed 28 times: Would you want to wait a year and a half to get forensic testing done? Would you want Bob Burrell (or Catherine Halbrooks) to be the District Attorney? Would you want Glenn Thompson to be the judge? How would YOU feel if it happened to YOU??? How would YOU feel if your suffering was magnified a hundred times by an exploitative, unethical local press? How would YOU feel if you were thrown into a world of sleazy defense lawyers and personality-disordered nuts? And how would YOU feel, if the sadistic scum that did this to your loved one--matched to the crime by DNA--were to be set free? |
| As everyone knows, the State of Alabama is in financial crisis. For example, the Administrative Office of Courts cut the allocation for Morgan County's "Jury Expense Budget" by one-third this fiscal year, causing cancellation and delays of jury trials. In short, the State of Alabama can't afford to have jury trials, can't afford the forensic testing to bring killers to trial, and can't afford to keep criminals in jail, once convicted. It's my understanding the total budget for jury expenses is approximately $28,000 this fiscal year. This is the TOTAL budget for jury expenses for a year in Morgan County--with hundreds of pending cases. So if Daniel Moore gets a second jury trial, just how much will the jury cost? Here are my estimates: 1. Each juror (twelve jurors and two alternates) are paid $10 per day for their service. Assuming the trial will last three weeks (as it did last time) or more, the expected cost would be approximately $3,000.00. 2. Assuming the jurors are housed at the Holiday in, two to a room, there will be seven or more rooms for three weeks (or more). The regular room rate is just over $800 per week. Given seven rooms for three weeks, the total expense will be approximately $18,000. 3. The jurors have to be fed. If they are allowed $20 to $25 per day each, the estimated food cost would be $6,000 to $7,000. If my estimates are anywhere near accurate, the total jury expense of a Moore trial is about $28,000--the total jury expense budget for three Morgan County Circuit Judges for a year. What it means, is that Judge Glenn Thompson has given Sherman Powell's client the red carpet treatment--and a CLOSED sign to many hundreds of other people whose lives are on hold, waiting for the legal system. Because of Thompson's favors to Powell, justice is delayed--or denied--for hundreds of others. But it's not about justice. It's all about money, power, small-town politics--and a strong undercurrent of stupid. |