While the UK farming community is gripped with F and M and Bluetongue problems, the noteworthy item in my county is the upcoming trial of the man accused of killing our sheriff 3 years ago. Tomorrow is the big day, the start of jury selection. 1000 people have been issued summons, this in a county with a population of not over 7000, if that. Here we are supposed to be judged by 12 of our peers, and the jury is supposed to be impartial. In the beginning, this was to be a federal case because our state death penalty was called into question. After the Feds spent a small fortune preparing the case, it was tossed back to the state, as the death penalty was ironed out(they are going to seek the death penalty for the accused). A change of venue was expected(to a different county) as it was hard to imagine finding 12 people who could be impartial in our own county, but the defendant has demanded to be tried in this county. Theories abound now, including one he intends to try to escape during the daily journey from the prison to the county courthouse, and that some of his fellow drug dealers may try to intimidate the jurors, as it will be impossible to keep their identities secret, and equally impossible to protect all of them. While this may seem hardly noteworthy to many, it has gripped our community,and I think the next few months are going to prove rather difficult for many of the populace, as many memories are going to be dragged up, and I expect a few peoples names tromped in the mud when their ties to the illegal drug trade come out. I am just glad I did not get called for duty, but I am interested to hear from all of my friends and neighbors who were called how things go tomorrow.
In a show of what might be called "frontier justice" the three houses that had been occupied by the murderer and his cohorts were burned to the ground this spring, the only surprise was that it hadn't happened sooner. The amazing part of this entire situation is that the highly trained police squad who finally got him out of the one house after a day long standoff fired on him supposedly 17 times after he shot at them, and missed, one would think they could have hit him by accident. If only they had, we wouldn't have to go through all of this now.