Richard BennettThe misdemeanor trial for Richard Bennett, who before his arrest had been tapped to lead the social services arm of the mayor’s Violence Reduction Initiative, was delayed Monday after a prosecutor requested a continuance.
Assistant District Attorney General David Schmidt said he did not know if drug screening results requested by the defense had even been received by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigators’ crime lab as of Monday. Judge Barry Steelman said that didn’t seem unusual.
Steelman said he wouldn’t have expected the results “even if you sent them in November.”
He suggested setting a status hearing for April or May, but Bennett’s attorney, Gerald Webb, asked to do it “a little sooner.”
Bennett was arrested in June after police found him inside a parked car in East Lake Park with a woman, two open Budweiser bottles, an open bottle of Patron tequila and a baggie with less than a gram of marijuana. Police also found hydrocodone pills in a keychain container.