Deer Lodge News

A Morgan County jury deliberated just 20 minutes Thursday before convicting a man of the aggravated rape of a 90-year-old woman.

Harold L. Morris, 49, faces a minimum of 15 years in prison for his conviction of aggravated rape, aggravated burglary and aggravated robbery.

Morris, a Deer Lodge resident, forced his way into the elderly woman's house in Lancing on April 8, 2007 and bit her on her breast during the sexual assault. After the attack, Morgan ripped jewelry and a watch off the woman's fingers and hand, further injuring her.

Morris was arrested several hours later in Crossville. Items found in Morris's possession linked him to the incident.

Knoxville News-Sentinel editorial, June 26, 2009:

Justice was not served when prosecutors in the Ninth Judicial District agreed to five years' probation for a Lenoir City man who shot his girlfriend to death.

John Kenneth Harvey, 26, was originally charged with second-degree murder in the February 2008 death of Savannah Cass McMahan, 21.

Harvey admits he was arguing with McMahan when he picked up a loaded .22 from a nearby table. The two argued often, according to McMahan's father, who said Harvey bullied his daughter, and "she said she was going to leave him several times before the shooting."

The gun was a single-action revolver, and the detective in the case said it had to be cocked before it could be fired. The powder burns he found showed McMahan was shot at close range.......

If prosecutors could not do better than a no-jail-time deal in that case, they should have gone to trial and let 12 citizens decide who had the best ballistics expert.

This plea bargain simply undermines faith in the judicial process.

(The full editorial is longer than Topix allows on the news board. To read it in its entirety, visit the accompanying link. The Ninth Judicial District includes Loudon, Roane, Morgan, and Meigs counties.)

A Morgan County jury deliberated just 20 minutes Thursday before convicting a man of the aggravated rape on Easter Sunday 2007 of a 90-year-old woman who is still recovering from injuries she sustained in the attack.

The parents of a Lenoir City woman shot and killed by her boyfriend are speaking out against a plea bargain that sentenced their daughter's killer to five years on probation.

The plea-deal was granted by the office of Russell Johnson, District Attorney General for Roane, Loudon, Meigs, and Morgan counties.

"I want justice for my daughter," said Sarah Berry, mother of Savannah Cass McMahan, 21, who was shot by John Kenneth Harvey, 26, in February 2008.

Harvey was originally charged with second-degree murder, and admits he shot the woman during an argument but claims it was an accident. The charge was reduced to reckless homicide.

The victim’s mother, Sarah Berry, said she met several times with the district attorney general's office. She says the office wanted to avoid a trial from the beginning,

The victim's father, John McMahan, said he witnessed the couple's frequent arguments and what he called "bullying" by Harvey. McMahan says his daughter was going to leave Harvey. He says:

I know that's why he shot her, because she said she was going to leave"

Assistant Attorney General Bill Reedy says one critical factor in not pursuing a murder charge was a "dying declaration" made by the victim that the shooting was accidental. The witness was said to be Nathan Lane, who called the ambulance that night.

Lane says that he never heard a dying declaration and never agreed to testify to hearing such a thing:

By the time I saw her she was already going into convulsions. She didn't say a thing to me."

For more details, see the full story.

A Lenoir City man who admitted shooting and killing his girlfriend during an argument last year will receive five years' probation for the crime.

John Kenneth Harvey, 26, was arrested in February 2008 and charged with second-degree murder in the death of Savannah Kathy McMahan, 21.

Prosecutors said they reduced the charge to reckless homicide and agreed to five years' supervised probation after reviewing the evidence in the case.

A Morgan County commissioner says he will withdraw his proposal urging the state to consider moving terrorism suspects from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay to a recently closed state prison.

Commissioner Nick Bishop released a statement today saying he lacked public support and will remove his proposal.

Motorists stopped for traffic violations in Tennessee could be fingerprinted if state lawmakers approve a bill pending in the legislature.

Currently, when drivers are cited during traffic stops police officers ask for the driver's signature on the ticket But the proposed bill would allow police departments to eliminate signatures and collect fingerprints.

Supporters say collecting fingerprints would save money and help police determine whether the driver is wanted for a criminal offense, but opponents worry that it allows the government to tread on individual privacy rights.

"The way I see it, if they take your fingerprint, they have access to your history and that's an invasion of privacy," said Martha Simms, 27, a mother of two who recently got a speeding ticket in Davidson County.

State Sen. Joe Haynes and State Rep. Mike Stewart co-sponsored the bill, which gives police departments the choice of collecting a signature or a fingerprint, or collecting a signature and a fingerprint. The bill has been approved by the state House of Representatives, and senators will vote on the measure Wednesday. The bill, if passed, will take effect on July 1. At that time, any police department within the state could require fingerprinting as a means of identification, said Haynes, a Goodlettsville Democrat. "It's their discretion," he said.

The link accompanying this story will direct you to an online article on a website called Deep Green Perspective. This is apparently an environmental advocacy site.

In this article Mr. Russell Johnson, District Attorney General for Loudon, Meigs, Roane, and Morgan counties, is accused of helping TVA hide itself from public scrutiny on the matter of air quality.

Among other things, the following is alleged:

1. United Mountain Defense volunteer Matt Landon was arrested for trespassing on newly-purchased TVA land, even though the residents (and former owners) had given him permission to be there. Landon was on this land to check on air monitoring equipment that UMD had set up there, near the Kingston coal ash spill.

2. UMD had entered into a legal, contractual agreement with the landowner to monitor air quality.

3. In a truly Orwellian turn, TVA forbade the former landowner from informing Landon that TVA had purchased the property. In other words, TVA is accused of acting to entrap Mr. Landon.

4. DAG Russell Johnson threatened Landon with a year in jail for putting up an air monitor.

5. Landon demanded a pre-trial hearing. Russell Johnson’s office offered a plea bargain which Landon refused.

6. Johnson’s office then offered another plea bargain.

Without offering any opinion on my part, anyone interested in this case should follow the accompanying link to the full story.

Tennessee’s new state-of-the-art prison will officially open next week in Wartburg.

The Morgan County Correctional Complex will house more than 2,400 inmates and will lead to the decommissioning of the historic Brushy Mountain Correctional Complex.

The new complex is 500,000 square feet and sits on 65 acres. It will house minimum, medium and maximum-security inmates.

A now-retired doctor has been indicted for TennCare fraud and reckless endangerment following a Tennessee Bureau of Investigation probe.

The story that ripped through east Tennessee on Wednesday, Feb 11 did some major damage in Morgan County, leaving a librarian at the Abner Ross Community Center Library wondering if she'd survive.

Sherry Waschevski didn't know what hit the library. "All of a sudden, I heard a big swooshing noise and then crash! I guess the roof came off…..It was just a really scary thing to be through. I'm smiling about it now but at the time I was just so scared."

Sherry wasn't the only one with a close call. Just down the road a barn is moved nearly four feet off it's foundation. Also nearby, a home barely missed a run in with a large pine tree.

Twisted tin and split lumber covered the parking lot outside the Deer Lodge Public Library and the Abner Ross Community Center. The community center and library are housed inside the old Deer Lodge School that closed down in the early 1980's.

The librarian was the only person inside the building. She hid in the hallway for about two minutes before she called for help.

The gymnasium's roof had blown off. It crashed into a play area and on power poles out front. A secondary roof in the gym now sits in place though rain still drips in. The library and community center in the front portion of the building weren't touched.

Alden Joe Daniel, Jr. was charged with, and eventually pled guilty to, the sexual molestation of three underage girls.

An appeal was filed, claiming that Daniel’s privacy rights were violated. As shown at the accompanying link, the judgment of the Morgan County Criminal Court has been affirmed by the Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals in Knoxville.

The appeal apparently regarded the collection of evidence by local law enforcement officers. Daniel argued that the Video Privacy Protection Act (18 U.S.C. § 2710) prohibited officers from obtaining private information regarding his rental of pornographic videos.

This was done to prove that part of his modus operandi was showing pornographic movies to the underage girls he was said to have molested.

Prison officials have confiscated 600 cell phones smuggled in to Tennessee prison inmates this year.

It's a growing problem that could jeopardize the safety of prison guards as well as the public.

This year, more than 30 cell phones have been confiscated this year from Riverbend Maximum Security Prison.

Gov. Phil Bredesen wants to see improvements on keeping cell phones out of state prisons.

Locked up behind bars the threat of violent criminals is seemingly erased, but a cell phone can be the lifeblood needed to connect to the outside world.

"The inmate had planned to escape through use of cell phone," said Riverbend Warden Ricky Bell.

George Hyatte was an inmate who received a smuggled cell phone while at Riverbend in 2005. Officials said he used it to plan a Roane County shootout that resulted in his escape and the murder of a corrections transportation officer.

"It's a significant problem that seems to be increasing," Bell said.

Prison officers have found 600 cell phones in Tennessee prisons in every type of unit including death row. The devices are hidden in every place imaginable including televisions, mattresses and body cavities.

The phones are usually smuggled during visitations or by staff taking money in exchange for cell phones.

Officials are concerned about inmates calling in threats or orchestrating drug deals, escapes or even gang murders.

Investigators can monitor all authorized prison phone calls, but not cell phone calls, which they said, are dangerous.

Metal detectors do not pick up cell phones so the Tennessee Department of Correction is looking at new technology that detects cell phone frequencies.