http://www.al.com/news/birminghamnews/index.ssf?/xml/story.ssf/html_standard.xsl?/base/news/9953613023482.xml Cherry not competent, judge rules 07/17/01 VAL WALTON and CHANDA TEMPLE News staff writers Bobby Frank Cherry is not mentally competent to face murder charges the 1963 Sixteenth Street Baptist Church bombing that killed four girls, a Jefferson County judge ruled Monday. Circuit Court Judge James Garrett ordered that Cherry, 72, undergo more testing by the Alabama Department of Mental Health and set an Aug. 10 hearing to decide how that evaluation will be done. Garrett, in a seven-page decision, found that Cherry's defense presented enough evidence that vascular dementia had made Cherry incompetent. The state, he wrote, failed to meet Alabama's demanding burden of proof for mental competence: "clear, convincing and unequivocal evidence." Rodger Bass, a defense attorney, said Cherry could not comprehend the ruling's significance. "You try to talk to him about the case, he talks about his grandchildren playing in the mud," Bass said. Former U.S. Attorney Doug Jones, handling the case as a special state prosecutor, said that Cherry likely will not be tried on murder charges: "The door is closing rapidly and there's not much left in this case." Jones said the ruling disappointed him, but did not surprise him. Alabama law, with its requirement for "unequivocal evidence" of competence is an "extraordinarily high burden" for the state, he said. "That is just next to an impossible burden, given the state of the professional experience and expertise and testimony that we had in this case," Jones said. Garrett's decision noted that the state standard is "substantially different" from the federal test: a "preponderance of the evidence." Jones said he hopes that the Legislature and a state judicial committee on which Garrett serves will review the rule. At Cherry's mental competency hearing last week, two psychologists and two psychiatrists testified. Two said Cherry could not help in his own defense, as the law requires. All four agreed Cherry had some form of dementia, a progressive disease. Garrett noted that Dr. Jack Modell, the psychiatrist appointed by the court, tested Cherry extensively. Modell said a brain scan showed Cherry had suffered small strokes and that tissue had started to die. He said Cherry was not faking his condition. Jones said the only determination left for the judge is to decide whether there is a "substantial probability" that Cherry could recover enough to stand trial. Cherry is one of four former Ku Klux Klansmen long suspected in the bombing that killed Denise McNair, 11, and 14-year-olds Cynthia Wesley, Carole Robertson and Addie Mae Collins. A jury on May 1 convicted Cherry's co-defendant, Thomas Blanton Jr., who is now serving a life sentence. Robert Chambliss died in prison after a jury convicted him of the bombing in 1977. Herman Cash, a fourth suspect, died without being charged. News of Garrett's decision disappointed some of the girls' relatives and civil rights leaders. Sarah Rudolph lost both an eye and her sister, Addie Mae Collins, in the blast. She sat through two days of testimony last week and concluded that Cherry was putting on an act. Monday evening, she had not changed her mind. The Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth, a Cincinnati minister instrumental in Birmingham's civil rights movement, said Cherry should be granted immunity and allowed to discuss anything he knows of the Klan's activities. "Somebody who was so dead set and fully competent to do evil deeds over a very long period of time is now being ruled incompetent to stand trial for his deeds," Shuttlesworth said. The Rev. John Cross of Decatur, Ga., Sixteenth Street's minister at the time of the bombing, said he was glad at least two others were held responsible for the killings that were among the most shocking of a violent era. "You can't always be a hundred percent in your trials and tribulations," he said. "Getting two out of three, that's good. It would have been better if we got three. If that's all we can get, we'll just have to settle." Didn't know if you all had seen this. I can't imagine Sarah Rudolph must feel. ------------------
When I heard about this, I became completely disgusted (again) with our legal system. If this b*stard was "competent" enough to commit the crime and kill those innocent young girls, then he is competent enough to fry as punishment. ------------------
