PDF: Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency Document
After a judge again refused to dismiss a case amid accusations that a state agency "judge shops" in Hamilton County General Sessions Court, local attorney Jerry Summers said he is glad at least to have gotten the issue into the open.
"Gary Wayne McCullough is my client, and he's the most important thing in this process," Mr. Summers said of the man charged with boating under the influence -- the charge Mr. Summers had tried to get dismissed. "But the fact that the court has determined that (the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency's actions are improper) makes the idea in the public clear that they may get a fair shot rather than before two judges that the officers choose."
Mr. McCullough's case spurred allegations last summer of judge shopping by the Tennessee Wildlife Resources Agency, the state agency that enforces boating, hunting and fishing laws.
In court documents, Mr. Summers described how the agency's officers for several years have been able to override the court's usual random selection of judges to get their cases heard before the two General Sessions judges believed to know the most about the agency's laws.
During a hearing Jan. 7, special Hamilton County Criminal Court Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood acknowledged that Mr. Summers' allegations were true, but he stopped short of dismissing Mr. McCullough's case.
Mr. Summers filed a second motion to dismiss the case on Jan. 15, but an order filed Jan. 25 with the court affirms Judge Blackwood's original ruling that the case be kicked back to General Sessions court to be heard by one of three other judges.
Judge Blackwood did not give any reason for his decision in the one-line written order.
Mr. Summers said Wednesday that he has 30 days to file an appeal with the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals. He said he did not yet know whether he would file the appeal.
At the Jan. 7 hearing, Judge Blackwood said there were "serious, serious questions about confidence in the judicial integrity of the (General Sessions Court)" with regard to the evidence presented.
It included documentation that Judge Bob Moon heard 72 percent of the agency's cases over the past six years. Had the cases been assigned randomly, each of the five general sessions judges would have heard about 20 percent of TWRA's cases, officials said.
Judge Moon is an avid outdoorsman and hunter.
An affidavit presented at the hearing revealed that Judge David Bales, who also heard a disproportionate number of TWRA cases, at a 2006 fund raising event promised to deal with the agency's cases severely if he were elected.
"We do not want our courts to become avenues for agencies to use or abuse us," Judge Blackwood ruled.