As there is some interest in the Perpetual War on (Some) Drugs among this board, I give you the following update from a drug raid in neighboring Clinton County, Indiana (Frankfort is the county seat).
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http://www.jconline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070824/NEWS09/70824017New trial in police shootout ordered
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
FRANKFORT - A judge ordered a new trial for a man sentenced to 22 years in prison for a shootout with police.
A jury in March convicted Shannon Hollars of attempted murder and dealing marijuana and he was sentenced in May by Clinton Superior Court Judge Kathy Smith.
The same judge wrote in an order filed Thursday that the prosecution failed to submit a piece of medical evidence that might have helped the defense's claim that Hollars shot at police in self-defense. That violated Hollars' right to due process, she ruled.
Smith also wrote that an instruction defining specific intent for attempted murder should have been read to jurors before they reached a verdict.
Hollars must be retried for attempted murder, but his conviction on five charges of dealing marijuana still stands, Smith wrote. Clinton County Prosecutor Anthony Sommer said he would appeal the order. Hollars' attorney Bradley Mohler was not available for comment until Monday, his office said.
Hollars, 44, and his wife were asleep when police burst into their Frankfort home about 1 a.m. on Dec. 16, 2004, with a search warrant as part of a drug investigation.
Hollars testified that he was not aware the intruders were police officers and that he was shooting in self-defense. No officers were injured, but Hollars was shot in the right arm, which later had to be amputated.
Contradictory information about whether a wound in Hollars' arm was where the bullet entered or exited was not presented, she said.
"The diagram at issue could tend to corroborate defendant's claim of self-defense that he was shot first while getting out bed," the judge wrote.
The question was not whether the evidence would have led jurors to a different verdict, but rather whether its absence affected whether Hollars received a fair trial, she wrote.
She said nothing suggests that prosecutors willfully withheld the evidence.
During Hollars' sentencing, Smith questioned officers' wisdom in serving a search warrant for drugs in the middle of the night.
"For the life of me, an empty house seems like a safer house to search," Smith said then.
