Tennessee Judge Openly Seeks Conviction of Defendant

JUDGE AMY ARMSTRONG REEDY WORKS WITH OTHER COURT FUNCTIONARIES TO ASSEMBLE AND OPERATE A “JAUNDICED JURY” IN THE MURDER TRIAL OF MICHAEL DEWY ELLINGTON

by Walter Francis Fitzpatrick, III

(May 24, 2011) — “Thank you, Joe!” Reedy yells from the bench to the jaundiced juror, “Good to see someone is paying attention!”

This report records first-person observations regarding jury selection in the criminal trial of Mr. Michael Dewy Ellington. Additional first-hand accounts of epic corruption in Monroe County, Tennessee are reported and archived on these Post & Email and JAG HUNTER pages. They are the objects of uncounted criminal complaint properly reported to several state and federal law enforcement agencies.

A note regarding presiding Judge Amy Armstrong Reedy and Reedy’s partners in outlawry!

People in and around Monroe County, Tennessee widely quote Amy Reedy’s intention as a judge to log one million years in sentences before she steps down from the bench. One million years!

Tennessee State’s Judiciary is disconnected from the Tennessee State Constitution as well as the Constitution of these United States!

Amy Reedy, Jim Stutts, Martha Cook, R. Steve Bebb, Bill Bivens, Michael Morgan, Pat Henry and Travis Jones all suffered the burden of Tennessee State and federal criminal accusations before the commencement of Michael Ellington’s trial.

The outlaw escapades of this gang are presented before U.S. Attorney for Tennessee’s Eastern District William C. Killian and the two federal Grand Juries currently sitting in Knoxville, Tennessee.

Specific criminal accusations include Treason, direct punishment of citizens absent the participation or permission of a constitutionally recognized and constructed jury (Attainder), Jury-rigging, Human Trafficking, Extortion, Fraud and very much more.

Because law enforcement officials have yet to execute any arrests against those found in the operation of a judicial dictatorship, the dictatorship grows stronger.

Prelude: A meeting with three lawmen

Andy Corbitt and J.C. Parrott assert that every Tennessee State jury is rigged. Folks thinking otherwise are fools.

The two men made their assertions in the presence of Mike Harrell during a half-day meeting on Thursday, March 10, 2011.

Corbitt is a special agent with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI). Parrot is a senior trooper, Tennessee Highway Patrol and a member of the Highway Patrol Criminal Investigation Division. Special Agent Harrell works for the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

The three law enforcement officers are teammates on the FBI Joint Terrorist Task Force operating out of the FBI office in Knoxville, Tennessee.

The trio of lawmen went on to commiserate during the 10 March meeting how extremely stressful and frustrating it was for them to work in an environment wherein stacked juries are commonplace.

The meeting grew heated when J.C. Parrott described himself as born and raised Tennessean and proud to be.

Parrot became very heated just after I told the group of three lawmen Tennessee was ranked the most corrupt state in the fifty-states. Parrot, in the tone of voice and body language that attends to those heated moments just before a fistfight, condemned me for not being from Tennessee.

Parrott angrily and defensively asserted that stacked juries were nothing new, nothing necessarily unique to Tennessee State and that what I was reporting is what it is. “Live with it!”

Parrott asked two, maybe three times, “Why don’t you just move somewhere else?”

Observations assembled here are based upon Corbitt’s, Parrott and Harrell’s assertions from the 10 March meeting.

Taken together in the production of this report are the statements of Corbitt, Parrott and Harrell and the first-hand witnessed experiences over the past two years regarding the scope and operation of the criminal justice system in Monroe County, Tennessee and Tennessee’s 10^th Judicial District.

Said this way: Andy Corbitt, J.C. Parrott and Mike Harrell told me to look for a stacked and manipulated jury in Michael Ellington’s trial.

So I looked very hard!

COUNTERFEIT MONROE COUNTY

GRAND JURY

On the subject of juries, let’s begin with first things first.

Ellington’s case came first before Monroe County General Sessions Court Judge J. Reed Dixon during a June 2009 preliminary hearing.

A local newspaper, the The Monroe County Advocate & Democrat, reported the Monroe County Grand Jury formally accused Mr. Ellington on a first-degree murder charge during the Grand Jury’s Thursday, August 4, 2009 session.

Mr. Gary Pettway was the Grand Jury foreman in August 2009 and is since reported as illegally operating in that position.

Pettway’s Grand Jury was not lawfully authorized in August 2009 to give permission to assemble or operate any criminal trial jury.

Pettway’s 2009 Grand Jury was legally prohibited from breathing life into Michael Ellington’s jury that was illegally assembled and operated this last week.

Amy Reedy created her counterfeit trial jury in the Ellington case on May 17^th and disbanded it the next day, May 18^th, 2011.

During an unrelated court hearing that took place on Monday, June 28, 2010, Judge Carroll L. Ross named Amy Armstrong Reedy as the judge who illicitly appointed Mr. Pettway as the 2009 Monroe County Grand Jury foreman.

Amy Armstrong Reedy was the presiding judge in the Michael Ellington murder trial.

JAUNDICED JURY SELECTION IN THE MICHAEL ELLINGTON MURDER TRIAL – Tuesday May 17, 2011 (7:58 a.m. – 8:38 a.m.)

Amy Armstrong Reedy, as presiding judge, refused a Post & Email request made to her Monday afternoon, May 16^th, 2011 allowing the Michael Ellington trial to be digitally recorded.

The next day, May 17^th, this writer was the first audience member (as citizen reporter) to arrive at the Monroe County, Tennessee Courthouse, and then enter the criminal courtroom to observe jury selection.

I arrived to the Courthouse at 7:58 a.m. EDT. The courtroom was unlocked at 8:15 a.m.

Potential jurors began wandering into the courtroom at about 8:24 a.m.

The initial group began collecting on the left-hand side of the courtroom, behind and between backbenches of the audience seating area.*

Judge Amy Armstrong Reedy was sitting on the bench in civilian clothes (without robe), getting ready for the day ahead.

Amy Reedy recognized me.

The Court Clerk entered the courtroom from the judge’s chambers door on the left. Monroe County Sheriff Deputy T. J. McDaniel was the bailiff.

As the first 20 or so potential jurors were coming into the courtroom and gathering in the back, Amy Reedy told Cook and McDaniel to ask family members and witnesses to leave.

Bailiff McDaniel, joined by Bailiff Moses, approached the audience to convey Reedy’s directive.

A few people left.

The courtroom and jury selection were then otherwise open to the general public.

Reedy and Cook left the courtroom.

At about 8:30 a.m., two men took up a conversation, recognizing each other as members of the jury pool.

The men talked about how late it was the night before they’d finally received notice to come in today (this Tuesday).

Then the subject changed.

One man lamented to the other how “I expected I was going to be chosen for this trial. I saw it in the paper two months ago that a murder trial was set for 17 May. And I said, “Uh-oh, I’ve got jury duty on the 17 ^th.”

Throwing his hands up in mild exasperation the man exclaimed in an elevated tone, “I knew this would happen.”

The other man shot back in mild irritation, “I’ve already been on a criminal jury once this year.”

Other potential jurors were engaged in quiet murmurings amongst themselves. Their voices were low and conversations indiscernible.

McDaniel and Moses quietly confided with each other at a distance.

I was the only non-juror in the courtroom when the next episode took place.

Bailiff McDaniel approached at 8:35 a.m. McDaniel asked me to leave, giving no reason.

Bailiff Moses teamed up with McDaniel the moment I objected that I was part of an audience to an open public court proceeding.

The two bailiffs said “out,” telling me I could take up my protest with Reedy by way of clerks in the criminal court clerk’s office.

I encountered MCDS Detective Travis Jones standing in the clerk’s office. There were clerks around, but it was Jones who confronted me and took up the issue.

Jones said that the hearing was as an open public hearing, but closed to me.

Jones, acting on behalf of Amy Reedy, claimed overcrowding of the courtroom as justification. Jones said seven panels of potential jurors were coming in and there would be no room for me.

I shot back that the number of potential jurors did not represent a capacity courtroom crowd. There was plenty of room for me. To further defeat Jones’s lame reasoning, I offered I’d be happy to stand.**

Jones, knowing he had no legitimate reason to toss me from the public hearing, threateningly blurted out, “We’re not going to have any drama today. LEAVE!”

It was 8: 38 a.m. Detective Travis Jones, acting under the order of presiding Judge Amy Reedy, in an act of outlawry, closed to the public the jury selection for the Ellington trial.

Detective Jones, as it turned out, was in the clerk’s office waiting as a prosecution witness to take the witness stand.

REEDY REPOPENS THE COURTROOM (10:53 a.m.)

I waited on the first floor.

Michael Thomasson came in at 9:44 a.m. Thomasson is a reporter for the Monroe County Advocate & Democrat, a local newspaper.

MCSD Captain Benny Byrum allowed Thomasson to go right up once Thomasson cleared the metal-detector.

I challenged Byrum directly regarding Byrum’s preferential treatment of Thomasson.

Byrum went upstairs, then came right back downstairs to tell me that Thomasson was in the clerk’s office to get a record on a civil case unrelated to the Ellington trial.

Byrum told me Thomasson wasn’t in the Courthouse for the Ellington trial.

Byrum told me that reporter Thomasson would be back down in a minute to leave.

It was 10:53 a.m. before I was allowed to go back upstairs into the courtroom. I found reporter Thomasson sitting on one of the backbenches on the left hand side of the audience area.

Amy Reedy allowed Advocate & Democrat reporter Thomasson in to observe jury selection in the Ellington trial, but not The Post & Email. Thomasson’s reports are significant for reasons of comparison and will be discussed in a future P&E article.

The JAUNDICED JURY MAKES ITS APPEARANCE (10:54 a.m. – 12:03 p.m.)

Once Amy Reedy reopened the courtroom to the public I proceeded to the audience seat closest to the defense table.*

The jaundiced jury selection process was over, carried out in the dark behind doors, court-guarded by MCSD Bailiffs McDaniel and Moses.

Michael Thomasson was the only non-juror, non-court participant allowed to observe the jaundiced jury selection.

At 11:15 a.m., Amy Reedy summoned her counterfeit jury into public view. The bogus jury mustered fourteen people—eleven men, three women.

(I’ll write more about this group in a next report. I’ll narrate as well the first morning’s testimony in the days that follow.)

Martha M. “Marty Cook, Monroe County Circuit Court Clerk, was present with assistant, Darleen Moser.  Moser and Cook tag-teamed the Ellington trial throughout the rest of the day, in and out, sometimes solo, sometimes working the bench in tandem.

Jeanne Wiggins and Richard Hughes sat at the defense table.*

Each of the trio held up jury selection papers, the type and kind I’d seen on December 1, 2010. I saw these papers as they were held up under examination at the defense table and as they were laid face up on the defense table.

I saw the same illegal personnel database formats for two of the seven potential juror panels that Martha Cook had preselected and presented for examination.

I saw the 8½ by 14-inch document whereupon Cook wrote in her own hand Cook’s first 12 picks for jurors to be examined.

Martha Cook worked with Senior Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood and Jim Stutts to stack a criminal trial jury on December 1, 2010. Their criminal escape is aggressively reported.

It was the report of Cook and company’s criminal handiwork of December 1, 2010 in jury-rigging delivered to Corbitt, Harrell, and Parrott on March 10, 2011 that triggered the trio of lawmen to tell me they knew the December 1 jury was rigged.

Corbitt and Parrott told me they were in the courtroom on December 1, and that neither Corbitt nor Parrott nor I (nor Michael Ellington, for that matter) should expect any better.

Events observed last Tuesday morning, May 17, exhibit all the DNA markers of the jaundiced jury exposed on December 1, 2010.

The conversations of the two men in the morning betray that one man had already served on a criminal jury this year!

Tennessee State law prohibited that man from serving on any other Tennessee criminal jury for at least two more years. Still Martha Cook returned him to the jury pool within just two months.

It’s the recycling of tested and trusted neighbors that secures the certain verdict.

We learned something new about how juries are fixed in Monroe County from the other guy talking out loud Tuesday morning.

In assembling and tailoring the various jury panels, Circuit Court Clerk Cook specifically assigns the groomed panels to specific trials with specific dates.

Potential jurors know in advance what criminal trials they expect to be “assigned’ to hear and adjudicate.

There’s one more thing to talk about here in closing.

Seconds after Amy Reedy adjourned court for the day at 3:38 p.m.—without announcing the time court was to reconvene the next day (Wednesday)—a man in the forefront of the courtroom had the temerity to raise the question now swirling about the courtroom.

Suppressing embarrassment in her mistake, Reedy exclaimed “Wait, wait” to the jury just at the exit doors. “Come on back!” Reedy cried out.

The jurors froze in their tracks, half-turned to face the bench and stood very still.

Reedy asked the jurors if 8:30 a.m. was good for them to take up the trial next day.

All agreed. As the jurors turned back to exit, Reedy yelled from the bench, “Thank you, Joe. Good to see someone’s paying attention.”

It was “Joe” who had ventured to ask Reedy about a return time.

Joe, who stood right next to me as he did so, half-turned back to the bench in acknowledgment, raised his left hand in a motion to Reedy and said with a smile, “Sure.” Then Joe turned back and walked out.

Joe was one of the 14 jurors!

“Joe” and Amy Reedy knew each other is some sort of social network prior to the Ellington trial.  Jaundiced “Joe” the juror and “Judge” Reedy were at least as acquaintances on a level of two friends who—one recognizing the other—exchange pleasantries while unexpectedly bumping into one another out in town.

Reedy proclaims to the entire courtroom population that Reedy knew “Joe” as a friend she could address on a first name basis.

Amy Reedy, who is known in the community to be on a mission to log one million man-years in sentences.

Amy Reedy, who has been stacking the Grand Juries in East Tennessee for years.

Amy Reedy, who is publicly accused in the community as an integral actor in an out-of-control judicial dictatorship.

It was Amy Reedy who sat presiding in the Ellington trial.

Amy Reedy who knows “Joe” the jaundiced juror on a first-name basis relationship in some sort of preexisting social setting found somewhere in the community outside the courtroom.

At this point the audience was sensing that the trial has been in some way rigged. Then they went home for the night to ponder.

You’ve just got to wonder whether “Joe,” the guy Reedy publicly praised for “paying attention,” ended up as “Joe,” the foreman of the jaundiced jury?

More to follow. Stay with us.

~~~~~~~~~~

*All audience benches (think pews in a church setting) were empty and accessible. I positioned myself in the front row, right-hand side of the room facing the judge’s bench, farthest right seat on the bench/pew, facing directly in front of me the wood construction behind which would sit the defendant Michael Ellington and Ellington’s defense team.

The long axis of the wooden construction is built at a right angle to the audience benches. Individuals sitting at the defense table faced across the room to the prosecution table, their left sides to me, and their right sides to the judge’s bench.

On the courtroom’s left side (as an audience, participants face the bench) the prosecution table is also built at a right angle to the audience pews, facing across the room to the defense side. Individuals sitting at the prosecution table have their right sides to the audience and their left sides to the judge’s bench.

**Jury panels number between 12 and 16 people. Seven panels run a census of between 84 to 112 folks. I’d been alerted the Monday evening before jury selection was publicly scheduled that seven jury panels were on alert. I knew how many folks were contemplated to show up the next day. I knew the audience to the public hearing; jury selection in the Ellington trial would be on a first-come, first-served basis. With that, I made sure to be the first into the courtroom Tuesday morning. Reedy illegally closed the public hearing only because I’d shown up as an observer.