PDF: Petition to rehear TWRA case
A defense attorney who proved that the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency shops for judges when it brings its cases to court in Hamilton County is asking a judge again to consider dropping the charge against his client.
At a hearing on Jan. 7, Special Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood ruled there were “serious, serious questions about confidence in the judicial integrity of the (Hamilton County General Sessions) Court” with regard to evidence that wildlife agency officers routinely seek out two specific judges to hear their cases.
The judge stopped short, however, of dropping the case against Gary Wayne McCullough, who is charged with boating under the influence and whose case initially brought forth the charges of judge shopping.
Judge Blackwood instead sent Mr. McCullough’s case back to General Sessions Court to be heard by one of three other judges.
“The defendant believes that the appropriate remedy in a case in which a due process violation of this magnitude is found is for the case to be dismissed outright,” defense attorney Jerry Summers argues in a petition filed Jan. 15 for Judge Blackwood to rehear the case.
Mr. Summers cites two cases in his petition in which higher courts dropped criminal charges because of misconduct.
In one, the Tennessee Supreme Court dismissed charges against a defendant after it was discovered that a private attorney hired to prosecute the case received substantial compensation from a special interest group to prosecute crimes of sexually oriented businesses.
The other is a U.S. Supreme Court case in which the court ruled that “a dismissal may … preserve fairness to the individual defendant” and protect judicial integrity.
Although the hearing Jan. 7 did not yield Mr. Summers’ ultimate goal of getting his client’s case dropped, it did highlight practices of the general sessions court and TWRA officers, who came under fire during the daylong proceeding.
General Sessions Court Judge Bob Moon, whom records show has heard 72 percent of the wildlife resources agency’s cases in Hamilton County over the past six years, admitted he had heard the “lion’s share” but said he never thought to question it.
Court officials testified that the computer system, which is supposed to randomly assign cases to judges, can be manipulated by clerks or through the input given to it. If the random assigning system had worked with regard to TWRA cases, each of the five general sessions judges would have heard about 20 percent, they testified.
An affidavit presented in court revealed that Judge David Bales, who also has heard a disproportionate number of TWRA cases, at a 2006 fundraising event promised to deal with the agency’s cases severely if he were elected.
At the Jan. 7 hearing, Judge Blackwood said such a statement was inappropriate.
“We do not want our courts to become avenues for agencies to use or abuse us,” Judge Blackwood ruled.