An open letter to Alan Norton

This week, the child molestation trial of James Combs is set to begin in Catoosa County, and if what I have seen of the interviews that Tim "Dirty" Deal did with the accusing children, we have another farce on the dishonesty magnitude of Tonya Craft. If there is anything we CAN know before the trial begins, it is that Combs is innocent of the charges and that if you, Mr. Alan Norton, prosecute this case, you will have to suborn perjury to do it.

So, I ask you, sir, the following question: Is it worth it to sell your soul in order to follow Buzz Franklin's orders? Before I go into the Combs case, let me remind you that Buzz already demanded that you suborn perjury in the failed Higgenbottom case in which you were supposed to depend upon a "jailhouse snitch" that you knew from the start was lying.

Do you remember Eric Echols? Yes, you were supposed to lead that trial, too, and you had video evidence of his being assaulted by "Mommie Dearest" Sandra Lamb, who called him a "black bastard" on camera. Yet, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary, you were going to try him for felonies you knew he had not committed.

Mr. Norton, what is it about the LMJC that leads someone to sell his soul? What is it about the influence of Buzz Franklin and Chris Arnt and Len Gregor and Tim Deal and Phil Summers and Brian House that would lead a man to knowingly suborn perjured testimony?

I have no idea of you believe in God, Mr. Norton, but prosecutors who lie to juries and coach witnesses to lie are not going to be entering the Pearly Gates, sir. I hate to tell you, but the Georgia State Bar does not control the entry roster for Heaven, and while they have your back in Atlanta when it comes to committing felonies while acting as an officer of the court, God is not particularly impressed with the state of "justice" in Georgia and is likely to mete out some justice of His own.

Is it really worth it to work for these people, sir? I can tell you that they would sell you down the river with smiles on their faces if they thought they could get away with it. I also know enough about one of your LMJC colleagues to know that you don't want to leave him alone with either your wife or your daughter (should you have either or both). True, those who are employed by the LMJC are permitted to commit sexual assault and worse and not face any prosecution or even arrest, but nonetheless I doubt you would be much pleased if one of those LMJC employees were to do such a number on one of your family members.

You really do have a choice; you can get out, resign, leave the LMJC altogether. I have no idea if you have a conscience or even one shred of decency in you, but if the answer to either is "yes," then you cannot afford to stay a minute longer in that employ unless you want your final dwelling place to be Hell itself.

Even if you have a conscience, the people who are your LMJC colleagues do not. When Len Gregor managed to bamboozle a jury to convict Brad Wade -- whom all of you know was and is innocent of the charges against him -- do you think the man lost a minute of sleep? When Chris Arnt, Gregor, and House were having secret (and illegal) meetings to plan how they would try to railroad Tonya Craft into prison, do you think any of them were concerned that they were breaking the law and engaging in the worst kind of unethical conduct?

When Arnt lied to jurors in the Tonya Craft closing arguments in which he made an open and obvious dishonest statement about the testimony of Dr. Nancy Fajman, do you think it bothered him even a whit that he was lying? When Brian House desperately was trying to keep Craft's lawyers at bay by granting 90 percent of the prosecution's objections during the trial, do you think he worried that maybe the appellate courts would criticize him?

Let me be honest (since no one else in the LMJC seems to want to tell the truth). You can work in this job for a long as you want, and you can lie, coach others to lie under oath, help convict innocent people, and generally live a life of crime, and nothing will happen to you. That's right, nothing. No one from the State of Georgia will intervene, and the U.S. Department of Justice will whistle right past you, no matter how egregious your conduct.

But if you stay in that office as a prosecutor, you will be selling your soul and destroying whatever conscience you might have, and a man without a conscience is nothing more than a psychopath. I hate to say it, but you already work with sociopaths and their influence upon you only can make things worse.

Let me ask you this question: If you had a relative or loved one on trial, would you want to see Chris Arnt and the prosecutor, Brian House in the judge's seat, and Tim Deal testifying on the stand? Could you trust any of them? If the answer to any of these questions is "no," then you also have to understand that every day you work among these people brings you one step closer to Hell.

Yes, leaving a job and one's home is difficult, especially in this time of an uncertain economy. Having to earn a living as a private attorney can be unsettling and there is no guarantee of a regular paycheck as there is when you are in Buzz's employ.

However, if you continue to stay, you will be destroyed from within. You will have to sell your soul and one day the Devil himself will come to collect.

It is too late for Arnt, Gregor, Buzz, Deal, and House. They are beyond hope and beyond redemption. Pharaoh after the Ninth Plague had a softer heart than do these men. I hope it is not too later for you, but you need to ask yourself if you spent all of those tough years in law school so that you could take orders from some of the most unethical and dishonest people on this planet.

Gregor once wrote on a blog that he went to law school so that he could be a prosecutor and be (in his words) "the man." I have no idea if the guy is a "man" at all; I do know he is a bully, a coward, and a liar, and while he apparently thought his bombast and bullying during the Craft trial was impressing the jurors, it turned out that they thought he was a bully and a creep.

Why would you work with someone like that? You don't have to do it, and you do not have to hang around so that you can share a condo in Hell with "the man."

Indeed, if you resign and leave the employ of the LMJC, you really will be a man because you will have done something that people like Buzz, Gregor, Deal, House, and Arnt are not capable of doing: engage in an act of real integrity.

The LMJC Perjury Machine

It supposedly is a crime in the State of Georgia for a prosecutor to knowingly suborn perjured testimony, but laws don't matter in the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit, especially when one it its prosecutors is committing the crime. And while the latest news from the LMJC -- that Buzz Franklin's office is dropping charges against Dale Higgenbottom for an alleged 19-year-old murder.

I never thought the charges made sense, but the kicker is seen in the following paragraph:

Prosecutors' key witness was William Morgan, an inmate who had told investigators that Higgenbottom had confessed to the murder while in jail. But the evidence filed in court on Feb. 28 showed Morgan had written a letter to Higgenbottom's family in 2007, saying he could "clear [Higgenbottom] of the [murder] charges" if they would pay his bail money to free him from jail.

Understand that Morgan was going to give the classic "jailhouse snitch" testimony, and I can guarantee you -- gurantee you -- that Higgenbottom never "confessed" anything to Morgan. What was going on was that Morgan was playing the "jumping on the bus" game in which he was offered something if he gave the testimony that prosecutor Alan Norton wanted to hear.

Now, Norton was slick enough to know that the letter utterly discredited his beloved witness and he was not stupid enough to put Morgan on the stand, where he would have been shredded on cross-examination. Wrote Norton:

"If the letters had come to light prior to the indictment in this case, it is unlikely this case would have been presented to the Catoosa County grand jury."

And Buzz followed with:

"Clearly, we couldn't rely on his credibility."

Uh, no sh*t, Sherlock.

Here is the problem, dear readers. Norton and Franklin knew all along that Morgan was unreliable and that his testimony would be total perjury, but until they saw the letter, they figured that a jury just might believe him. Unfortunately, that was not the only aspect of the prosecution that was questionable, but it clearly was the most illegal.

Morgan was someone whose testimony was for sale, and throughout the country, prosecutors every day use the proverbial "jailhouse snitch" to gain wrongful convictions. While I cannot vouch for the details of what happened in Catoosa County, I can tell readers what often happens.

Police put someone in a cell with a person who just has been arrested (and the police don't have any good evidence but want SOMETHING). The "snitch" has been fed details of the crime (or alleged crime), details that only someone close to the action can know.

In return for either money or a reduced sentence, the "snitch" then testifies that the accused "confessed" the crime to him in great detail. The noted attorney Harvey Silverglate told me that when one of his clients is arrested, he tries to get him out of jail immediately because of the "jailhouse snitch" problem.

I don't know if this happened in the Higgenbottom case, but I can tell you that the whole thing reeks of it. I have my doubts that Morgan is regarded as truthful by anyone, and especially the LMJC officers of the court. However, a guy like Morgan is USEFUL because he can deliver goods for prosecutors who might have no evidence or, worse, actually have someone charged who is innocent.

Norton and Franklin knew exactly what they had in Morgan. I don't know the details of the letter, but I cannot imagine that they were unaware of it before going to the grand jury. Maybe they were and maybe they really believed Higgenbottom murdered a baby, but when they have to rely on forensic evidence that conveniently was changed along with a "jailhouse snitch," one has to wonder if these people have any integrity at all.

New evidence for murder? Why do I have my doubts?

It seems as though the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit is gearing up for yet another trial in which prosecutors try to "prove" what they cannot prove honestly. They did it with Tonya Craft in 2010, they want to do it with James Combs, and now Dale Higgenbottom is in the dock.

The December 11 story in the Times-Free Press lays out the actual case in which Catoosa County authorities now are claiming that Higgenbottom murdered an infant named Christopher Breazeale in 1992. While I cannot claim to know if the charges are true, nonetheless the fact that Buzz Franklin's office is bringing them without revealing any new evidence is beyond troubling.

The first question I have, however, is this: Why does Vickie Scoggins have any say in this at all? This is the same Vickie Scoggins who swore up and down that the charges against Tonya Craft absolutely were true, the same Vickie Scoggins who worked closely with prosecutors Chris Arnt and Len Gregor and helped them to suborn perjury and went along with their lies.

Given the reprehensible and utterly dishonest conduct of Franklin's office all during the Craft case -- from before and during the trial -- one should question ANYTHING that these people do. Arnt could not even keep himself from lying to jurors in closing arguments, telling the Craft jury that Dr. Nancy Fajman had diagnosed injuries to one of the girls that had been caused by sexual abuse.

That Dr. Fajman had said exactly the opposite -- something that Arnt knew -- should tell us what we need to know about Buzz Franklin and people who work for him. Arnt and Gregor should have been disbarred for what they did during that trial and criminal charges filed against both of them. However, given that the "justice" system in the State of Georgia is run by, well, criminals, I guess that the Criminals In Charge decided to let criminal activity of their own get a free pass out of professional courtesy.

Now, neither Arnt nor Gregor will be prosecuting the Higgenbottom case. No, that has fallen to Alan Norton, who also is prosecuting the bogus case against James Combs. Because Norton works for Franklin and because he was the prosecutor against Eric Echols in which Norton was prepared to lie to jurors about what actually had occurred when Mr. Echols delivered some court papers to Sandra "Mommie Dearest" Lamb, I am not prepared to give him any benefit of the doubt. Which leads to my second question: Just what is this "new evidence" that Norton claims to have?

Let us keep some things in perspective here. First, "new evidence" with Franklin's people generally consists of those things the ancients once called lies. Remember the "new evidence" that Joal and Sarah Henke brought to the Craft trial? Yeah, both of them "just remembered" stuff that was 180 degrees from testimony they had given under oath a year before.

Gregor and Arnt were quick to use this "I just remembered" and "judge" brian outhouse was quick to give it his stamp of approval, even though all of them knew that the Henkes were lying. Observers in the courtroom were able to witness Arnt, Gregor, and outhouse commit a number of felonies by their bringing in the Henkes and their transparently dishonest testimony. Yes, suborning perjury in Georgia is a crime, although the authorities don't pursue it because if they did, there would be no prosecutors left to bring cases to trial in Georgia. Furthermore, because Gregor, Arnt, and outhouse had a number of illegal secret meetings before and during the trial to plan strategy, they participated in criminal conspiracy.

From what I can tell, Norton is going to have to fabricate something in the Higgenbottom case or suborn perjury. However, given that he works with Arnt and Gregor, I am sure that they have given him plenty of pointers on how to lie and break the law -- and not indict himself. According to the article in the TFP:

Alan Norton, a prosecutor from the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit, said prosecutors are going to have to build their case by explaining what new evidence justifies bringing charges 19 years after the fact.

But he wouldn't say what new evidence they have.

Court documents filed by Higgenbottom's attorney say the state didn't preserve vital evidence -- X-ray photographs, original autopsy photographs and physical specimens -- and that the case is too cold to prosecute.

They also want to know why, if a caseworker had such strong suspicions about Christopher's death, the state waited 192 months to do anything about it.

Indeed, I also am suspicious. First, there are no "Perry Mason moments" in criminal court, even though outhouse tried to pull off something by letting in Joal Henke's "I just remembered" testimony and also allowing an obviously-fabricated document to be entered into evidence. If the prosecution has something, by law it MUST be shared with the defense, and that includes "new evidence."

Second, we are dealing with prosecutors and judges in North Georgia that long ago decided that they could make up the law as they go along, and that they had absolute power. Grand juries in that circuit will indict anything, as I doubt that anyone serving on those bodies actually has a clue about the law.

I have no idea what happened in the death of Christopher Breazeale -- and neither do Vickie Scoggins nor Alan Norton. That is why I have no doubt that unless there really is "new evidence" and a real-live smoking gun, Norton and his people will make it up as they go along and hope that jurors in the case are not as wise to their tactics as were the Tonya Craft jurors.