Tried in the court of public opinion, Benjamin Brewer already has been found guilty of killing six and injuring others when he crashed his tractor-trailer truck into slowed traffic on Interstate 75 near the Ooltewah exit on June 25, 2015.
After all, blood tests showed he had methamphetamine in his system and had been driving without sleep longer than federal limits allow when he plowed into the vehicles on that rainy afternoon.
But as much as the victims' families would like to be done with Brewer, they can't be.
Out of an abundance of caution, Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Don Poole postponed on Friday the trial that would have started Monday because he wanted to be sure the defendant had all the evidence relative to his case. He said defense attorneys maintained they just learned last week of a second blood test performed on Brewer, though Poole said prosecutors did not "willfully" suppress it.
Brewer's defense said the Hamilton County district attorney's office should have turned over the results of the second test, but the district attorney's spokeswoman said it was never given the results of the second test - which had been requested by the National Transportation Safety Board - and that the results if sought were equally available to both sides.
The upshot is a delay, the same condition that seems to be prevalent in so many high-profile cases today, locally and across the country. The case against three former Calhoun High School athletes for aggravated sexual battery, aggravated battery and public indecency, for instance, dates from a May 10, 2014, event in Gilmer County, Ga., when a student claimed she was assaulted by the three defendants. And the cases against three men charged in a triple murder in Lookout Valley date from about a month earlier on April 9, 2014.
We're grateful our judicial system exercises so many cautions to give defendants a fair trial, but we feel for those left behind, the injured and the families of the dead, who steel themselves for a trial or a hearing only to have their resolve dashed when the proceeding in question is delayed.
In Brewer's case, proceedings had advanced so far that a 16-person jury from Nashville had been selected for the trial last week. With the postponement, Poole dissolved the jury, and attorneys will have to select another one. A date for a new trial will be determined today when both sides return to court.
Judges want to preside over a fair trial, defendants and the public deserve it, and no judge wants to be reversed, so we understand Poole's decision. But we wonder if there aren't ways in which legal proceedings - which have slowed to a crawl in the last three decades, costing more and more money - could be sped up out of concern for all parties.