Posted on 04/15/2012 6:06:56 AM PDT by SmithL
Stuck in the midst of a public relations nightmare and rebuffed at every legal turn, the second highest in command in the Knox County District Attorney General's Office took aim at a judge and reporter in an email obtained by the News Sentinel.
John Gill, special counsel to District Attorney General Randy Nichols, complained in a March email to the state Attorney General's Office about Special Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood, who ordered up new trials in the January 2007 slayings of Channon Christian, 21, and Christopher Newsom, 23, and about the News Sentinel, which has reported on the ongoing proceedings.
"Blackwood hates the News Sentinel, and I fear he is playing fast and loose with off the record emails and communications he states are to avoid the newspaper from knowing," Gill wrote. He was referring to a March hearing Blackwood set in reference to the release of the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation file on its probe of former Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner.
Gill then referenced a News Sentinel editorial urging the release of closed TBI investigative files and a News Sentinel story detailing how Nichols had gone from agreeing to seal the file but use it as proof in the battle over the soundness of the convictions in the Christian/Newsom case to refusing to concede the file's contents as evidence in other cases to agreeing not to object should the file be made public.
"This reporter typically decides what the story is and then ignores all information to the contrary and is particularly disliked by Blackwood," Gill wrote in the email to Deputy Attorney General Ben Whitehouse.
Gill's email was provided to the News Sentinel in response to a request under the Tennessee Open Records Act ...
(Excerpt) Read more at knoxnews.com ...
Dont’ worry, Jackson, Sharpton, Obama and Holder are ON THE CASE.
Can’t imagine the pain of the Christain and Newsom families to have to go through this again .
Yep but the pain is the fault of a judge who engaged in misconduct. Certainly if I or some relative or friend of mine were charged by the state, I would expect the arbiter of the trial to not be on drugs.
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