Oakdale News

A federal grand jury indicted 14 people on a 34-count indictment in connection with an alleged methcathinone ring in Morgan County, according to U.S. Attorney James R. Deadrick.

Morgan County Sheriff Dennis Ledbetter said, “This group is responsible for putting a lot of dope into Morgan County. We want to make sure they get locked up for as long as possible.”

The Indicted, alphabetically by last name:

- Eddie E. Aslinger, 51, of Lansing, Tennessee

- Michael Carroll, a/k/a Mickey Carroll, Michael Herrell, Bo-bo, 41, of Oliver Springs, Tennessee

- David Chamblee, a/k/a David James Chamblee, Jr., 23, of Oliver Springs, Tennessee

- Tiffany Crass, 21, of Oak Ridge, Tennessee

- Brandon Martin, a/k/a Brandon Scoot Martin, 29, of Oliver Springs, Tennessee

- Danny Lee Monday, 44, of Oliver Springs, Tennessee

- Lisa Orme, a/k/a Lisa Dudas, 38, of Coalfield, Tennessee

-Deborah Phillips, a/k/a Debbie, Deborah Braden, Deborah Crabtree, Deborah C. Daugherty, 53, of Oliver Springs, Tennessee

- Frances Richardson, a/k/a Frances M. Phillips, 40, of Coalfield, Tennessee

- Natasha Richardson, a/k/a Tasha, 22, of Oliver Springs, Tennessee

- Mary Roberts, a/k/a Mary Carroll 33, of Sunbright, Tennessee

- Nerisa Rogers, a/k/a Nerisa Jane Aslinger, Nerisa Phillips, 30, of Briceville, Tennessee

- Elizabeth Scisco, 24, of Oak Ridge, Tennessee

- Deadrea Wilson, a/k/a Dee-dee, Deadra Candice Martin, 28, of Harriman, Tennessee.

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.)

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.

Police arrested a Morgan County teenager on May 20 on child porn charges, according to a news release issued Wednesday.

An independent report on water, sediment and fish samples collected after the Dec. 22 Kingston Fossil Plant ash spill shows high toxin levels and a fish population at the toxic “tipping point” of losing reproductive ability.

The report estimates the ash sludge contains 3,380 tons of the 10 most toxic elements in fly ash.

“Overall, these test results indicate much more severe impacts to water, sediment and fish than has been previously reported by TVA, which tells us they haven’t been sampling in the right places,” said Watauga Riverkeeper Donna Lisenby of Appalachian Voices, an environmental organization based in Boone, N.C.

Scientists with Appalachian State University, Wake Forest University, the Tennessee Aquarium and Appalachian Voices released the study Monday online and in a telephone conference call.

Tennessee Valley Authority spokesman Gil Francis said agency officials are reviewing the report.

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 Emory River has hit flood stage level as it passes through Oakdale in Morgan County.

The Tennessee Valley Authority has argued in court it should be immune from lawsuits after spilling millions of gallons of coal ash, arguing its actions fall under federal agencies' discretionary function exemption.

In its motion, TVA asks for the cases to be dismissed. By invoking discretionary exemption, TVA is arguing that, as a government entity, it is not subject to the same liability as a private employer. It protects government agencies from claims based on the performance or failure of performance of a discretionary function of the government, chiefly in the realm of policy.

The TVA issued a statement regarding its pursuit of a declaration of immunity. That statement outlined various efforts underway to clean up the spill but did not provide a legal justification for how the ash spill falls under the discretionary function exemption.

The TVA statement can be read at the link accompanying this article.

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.

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.

The Morgan County Sheriff's Department had a very busy week. They started by busting another meth lab in Deer Lodge. charged a Department employee with passing a school bus discharging passengers, and arrested a man for robbing the Rocky Top Market in Wartburg.

If you work as a bank teller, and you see what looks like a black man dressed as a woman enter - BEWARE!

This “man-in-drag” robbed a BB&T branch in Knoxville Wednesday, Dec. 3rd, and is believed to be the same robber who has held up banks in the Chattanooga area.

Drugs were often served at a Mexican restaurant as part of a network of marijuana and cocaine dealers that unraveled Dec. 3rd & 4th, authorities said.

Officers arrested 10 of 15 people named in indictments returned Monday by a special Roane County grand jury. The hunt for the other suspects continues, officials said.

Two people were injecting crack cocaine when officers arrived to arrest one suspect, DAG Russell Johnson said. Several of the indicted were under the influence of drugs or alcohol when they were arrested.

Johnson said the months-long undercover probe revealed that Los Primos Restaurant on South Roane Street in Harriman had been used frequently as a pickup point for illicit drugs.

He said alleged drug kingpin William Benton "Willie B." Jenkins, 68, would slip $2,000 in the menu, and a waiter would return with four ounces of cocaine.

Jenkins, a Spring City resident, was among those rounded up during Wednesday's cleanup of a covert undercover effort code-named Operation Snowman, Johnson said.

Also arrested was convicted murderer Monty Wade Jenkins, 53, of Spring City, indicted on a criminal conspiracy charge.

Two Knox County residents were also arrested in connection with the probe

The investigation, called "Operation Snowman," isn't over, said Steve Cook, deputy director of the 9th Judicial District's Drug Task Force. "This thing is going to go a lot further than it is right now," Cook said.