A Look at Court Land
 
   Special Note:  Preferring not to get COVID, the Mel Gibson Look Alike stayed away from Circuit Court coverage for at least 18 months. True they require masks to be worn, or did anyway, that stuff about wearing a ventilator, we didn't want to take a chance. This coverage is our first venture behind the big wooden doors. Here goes.
  County Clay is served by two Circuit Judges, Jack Alsop and Ric Facemire. Both have been on the bench for decades. They know the ropes. There's not much that gets by em.
  Every month the presiding Judge gathers the gaggle of Lawyers and gets them organized for upcoming hearings, trials, pleas, or butt chewings and on and on.
  During normal times, those with upcoming stuff, some dressed in orange, show up for those motion days but let their attorney do the talking. Before or after the Court time, defendants have a chance to talk with their Lawyer, all on one page, and usually that means, Buddy, you better cop a plea.
  Normal times are not here. 
  Instead of all the parties showing up for an eye to eye with the Judge, they do it via a phone or tele conference. For instance, the defendant would be connected at Central Regional Jail, his attorney would be on the phone from down in Charleston or elsewhere, and the Robe would be trying to keep everything connected so all parties could participate.  The final wrench in the machine is CRJ dealing with too few tele ports and all Courts  getting under way at roughly the same time, 9am, daily.  That creates some real challenges. It sucks.
  For us in the peanut gallery, much of the chemistry is lost. With everybody separated with a tele line, there is no chance for tempers to flair, or for the big conference table to get turned over with a thud, skedaddle out the back door, or to try and beat up a Bailiff / Badge.
  Maybe the worst part of the current operation, it's real tough for the peanut gallery to hear what's going on.
  With each new Grand Jury, the Judges rotate duties. For this season, Jack Alsop is doing the heavy lift.
  Sitting in Court for a couple hours Jan 28th and then again on Monday Jan 31st, here's what we can report on with Judge Alsop on the bench.
  The upstairs was all quiet. Nobody was loafing in the hallway. No lawyers were gabbing with one another. In between each case, it took a while for CRJ to shuffle one person in and the new one back in front of the puter monitor. Sometimes it took several minutes. With crappy DSL service, at other times, the connection would be lost all together.
  Of the 13 cases on the docket for pretrial discussions, every one one of em took a plea. Here's the names on that list:
Justin Delwarte
Trenton Dale Marks
Cody Brooks Moore
William Edmund Johnson
Franklin Allen Adkins
Kyle Britt Hamley
Franklin Christopher Moore
Catherine Jean Vandervort
Spencer Dwayne Hall
Daniel Marquis Craddock
Kelly McKinney
Franklin Christopher Moore
Catherine Jean Vandorvert
  On Jan 28th, Alsop was plopped down a few minutes ahead of time. He was ready to go. After taking a few minutes to get everybody connected, then disconnected, and then connected again, Delewarte was first up followed by Marks, Moore, and Johnson.
  We sat thru those four and left the Court room due to boredom.
  In each of those four and all the others we understand , everybody took a plea deal. That means no court cases in the near future.
  On Monday Jan 31st, Alsop set up Court to formally accept the deals. Once again we only stayed for a couple of the pleas before taking off.
  Delewarte and Marks were handled together.  Delewarte was caught in Jan '21 on fleeing, meth and some misdemeanors. The pleas included dismissing the misdemeanor stuff. For Marks, his caper was caught in August '21 and included burglary, attempting a felony, destruction of property. In each case, Judge Alsop read off a big long list of stuff in an effort for each defendant to know what was going on. Those instructions take probably 20 minutes for each bad guy and girl. Alsop has to tell each and every person the same thing. So often he says it, most of his words are from memory.
  And then what we always wait for... Prosecutor Samples getting his butt chewed.
   That happened after Alsop noticed each plea included allowing probation in the plea.  He said he had some real issues with a possibility of getting probation on serious offenses with significant priors.
   Samples also got his hind end nibbled on for not checking prior arrests from others states.
   We like the butt chewing parts and the issues raised sounded important but in the end, after the dust settled, the pleas were accepted.  Actual sentencing for this class of bad people will come in March of this year after mental tests are completed etc.
  Sorry we don't have more to let you in on this time around.

AW