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Former judge agrees with Watson case dismissal
Friday, February 24, 2012
"This was a very unusual case," John Carroll said. Carroll, who is a judge, believes Thursday's decision by Judge Tommy Nail to throw out the Gabe Watson murder trial was the right one. "If there's not enough evidence then the jury can't make a decision," he said. He says trying a murder case in Alabama that happened in Australia is extremely difficult. "I think when it's all said and done the prosecution did the best that it could under the circumstances," Carroll said. But he says it wasn't enough. He says the state didn't put enough hard evidence in front of Judge Nail to convince him to send the case to a jury. It was a decision that now has the defense and prosecution not seeing eye to eye. "We all wanted justice," Defense Attorney, Brett Bloomston, said. "We all wanted the court to hear what little information was presented and the judge determined that it wasn't enough." "Tina did not get justice," Prosecutor Don Valeska said. Carroll also says Nail did the right thing by not allowing certain testimony into evidence. And the reason for that is hearsay, which is something Valeska disagreed with from day one. "The rule is...hearsay is not admissible unless it fits within a certain, narrow set of exceptions," Carroll said. And Carroll believes, as Nail did, that it didn't. He says like it or not this trial...is over. "There's nothing you can do...that's the way our legal system [works]," he said. "In some other countries, this sort of a ruling would have been appealable. But in ours, it's not."
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Keywords: Watson, judge, dismissal, case, murder, trial
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