Legal Proceedings
At his first court appearance, Adkisson waived his rights to the preliminary hearing and requested the case go directly to the grand jury. Adkisson was represented by public defender Mark Stephens. Stephens indicated that this move was taken to get the case to trial stage as quickly as possible so resources would become available for a mental health assessment of Adkisson, indicating a possible insanity defense.
According to a knoxnews.com article of August 21, 2008, Adkisson was arraigned that day on charges of murder and attempted murder and a trial date of March 16, 2009 was set. He remained in jail on a $1 million bond. Also according to that article, "authorities haven't said whether Adkisson might face federal charges in the shooting, but the FBI has opened a civil-rights probe."
On February 4, 2009 lawyers representing Adkisson announced that he would plead guilty to two counts of murder, accepting a life sentence without possibility of parole.
On February 9, 2009, Adkisson pleaded guilty to killing two people and wounding six others. "Yes, Ma'am, I am guilty as charged," he told Criminal Court Judge Mary Beth Leibowitz before she sentenced him to life in prison without parole. A mental health expert had determined that Adkisson was competent to make the plea, although public defender Mark Stephens was prepared to argue at the trial that his client was insane at the time the crime was committed.
Victims and church members wept as the prosecutor described the wounds that killed Greg McKendry and Linda Kraeger. The judge gave Adkisson a chance to address members of the congregation before sentencing him. "No, ma'am," he snapped. "I have nothing to say."
John Bohstedt, one of the church members who tackled Adkisson, said he didn't believe that Adkisson was insane, but that he had been manipulated by anti-liberal rhetoric. "Unbalanced, yes. Bitter, yes. Evil, yes. Insane, not in our ordinary use of the word," Bohstedt said.
Assistant District Attorney Leslie Nassios said Adkisson gave a statement to police, which showed that he planned the attack on the church because he believed that Democrats and the church's liberal politics "were responsible for his woes." Evidence showed that Adkisson bought the shotgun a month before the attack, sawed off the barrel at his home and carried the weapon into the church in a guitar case he had purchased two days before the shooting. He had written a suicide note and intended to keep firing until police officers arrived and killed him.
As of 2013 Adkisson, TOMIS ID 00450456, is incarcerated in the Northwest Correctional Complex (NWCX) prison of the Tennessee Department of Corrections. He has been incarcerated since July 27, 2008.
Read more about this topic: Knoxville Unitarian Universalist Church Shooting
Famous quotes containing the words legal and/or proceedings:
“The steps toward the emancipation of women are first intellectual, then industrial, lastly legal and political. Great strides in the first two of these stages already have been made of millions of women who do not yet perceive that it is surely carrying them towards the last.”
—Ellen Battelle Dietrick, U.S. suffragist. As quoted in History of Woman Suffrage, vol. 4, ch. 13, by Susan B. Anthony and Ida Husted Harper (1902)
“From his proceedings in Congress, he appears demented, and his actings and doings inspire my pity more than anger.”
—Andrew Jackson (1767–1845)