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- Court Update: April 13
Court Update: April 13
no presence needed Friday; please stay tuned!
Big note: in person support no longer requested on Friday April 14! More on that below <3
PROCEEDINGS UPDATE:
Today, Thursday April 13th, was the third day of official court proceedings for the Aston Park/sanctuary camp defendants who are currently facing trial on “felony littering” charges. The day focused on administrative proceedings only.
The defense made several motions: the court granted one to sequester witnesses (except for the main investigating cop), and reserved ruling on a couple motions involving what kinds of witnesses can testify and what they can talk about (rulings will come on those as relevant during trial).
And then as the court prepared to see in the jury pool, it became known that there were only 35 potential jurors in today’s pool, and no more could be called for tomorrow, and since there was no likelihood that out of a pool of 35 people, 15 (12+3 alternates) could be seated given that each side has 12 peremptory challenges, jury selection is now scheduled for Monday. Monday afternoon, in fact, since Monday morning will be the regular calendar call.
SUPPORT NEEDS:
No supportive presence needed Friday, but pleased stay tuned; it’ll likely be needed mid-next week.
But perhaps this delay is a relevant time to remind everyone of, and invite you to share, this thoroughly reported recent article in the Asheville Citizen-Times: “40 Murder Defendants Waiting to Be Prosecuted; ‘stretched’ Buncombe DA Asks AG for Help” (https://www.citizen-times.com/story/news/local/2023/03/08/stretched-buncombe-da-asked-ags-office-to-prosecute-murder-cases/69903992007/)
A few bits from that:
About 40 murder defendants are pending a disposition — a legal outcome in their cases, such as a conviction or acquittal at trial, or a plea — in Buncombe County, Williams confirmed to the Citizen Times in late January.
"There are now pending 41 defendants charged with various degrees of murder," the district attorney said in an email.
…
Some of the unresolved cases date back to 2020, leaving untried defendants in jail and victims' families without closure for years.
"If I was a loved one of a family member that was killed, and here we are two years later and I have no idea what's going on with the case, that wouldn't sit well with me," said Christopher Herrmann, an assistant professor and police expert at John Jay College of Criminal Justice's law and police science department. He was speaking of the 40 defendants pending a disposition.
He pointed to the number of arrests tied to alleged murders in Buncombe County and Asheville over the last few years, saying they were far too small for such a backlog.
To be clear, this means folks are sitting in the state’s deadliest jail, sometimes for years, just waiting for some kind of resolution to the charges they face. But the Buncombe County District Attorney’s office has been prosecuting 16 mutual aid volunteers on charges of “felony littering” for more than a year, after a previous decade in which they enforced that statute precisely once.