Criminal Court Judge Robert H. Montgomery should be commended for his caution in sending a complicated murder case to an appellate court for a review before allowing the prosecution to go forward.
But we wonder why it has taken seven months – and nearly 20 continuances – for Montgomery to put his verbal ruling into a written order. That order, a skimpy two pages no less, is required before the case against Willie Clyde Puckett can be sent to the Court of Criminal Appeals.
At 24 years, the case is the oldest untried murder on the Sullivan County docket, and it appears to lurch forward only when pressure is applied. Puckett, a mentally retarded defendant, has been held in Tennessee mental health institutions since his 1985 arrest on charges of killing his jail cellmate. Psychologists over the years repeatedly found Puckett, already in jail at the time on charges of raping a family member, incompetent to stand trial.
The prosecution against Puckett virtually slept until 2005, when state mental health officials announced their intention to transition him out of a secure setting into a community living arrangement, concluding that further rehabilitation was futile and that he would never attain competency.
That prompted Montgomery to appoint an independent psychologist who found Puckett fit to stand trial in 2006. A grand jury indicted Puckett in 2007, and Montgomery ruled the prosecution could go forward. But the case has slogged along at a glacial pace.
Despite ruling in October that the case should be reviewed by the appellate court before trial, Montgomery did not pen his order until May 18 – the day after this newspaper ran a story cataloguing the latest delay. The long-pending order came out to a whopping two pages with plenty of white space. Again, what took so long?
Prosecuting a man with mental disabilities 24 years after the fact raises complex and compelling questions about constitutional rights, and is far from a slam dunk for either side. Montgomery showed judicial prudence by granting the motion by Puckett’s public defender for a pretrial review by the appellate court – a move that may spare taxpayers an expensive litigation if the case went to trial and a guilty verdict was later reversed.
The 24-year lifespan of the prosecution is not our idea of a speedy trial. And taking seven months to produce a two-page order suggests that the case is low on Montgomery’s list of priorities.
We await the ruling by the Criminal Court of Appeals, and hope that however the court comes down, Montgomery and the parties get down to the facts without further delay.
Email
Facebook
Google
Twitter
Favorites
More
Advertisement