Tuesday, January 02, 2007

On the retirement of assistant U.S. attorney in Northeast Tennessee

The Knoxville paper has this delightful story on the career of retiring AUSA Guy Blackwell, who is retiring.

Among the highlights:

Blackwell was the lawyer who would have tried the Butcher bank fraud cases - "When we showed (Butcher and his lawyers) the exhibit list, that's when they started talking about a plea agreement."

He prosecuted a case involving an Indian burial site in the national forest, and afterward, "out of respect for Native American burial customs and beliefs, Blackwell went to Cherokee, N.C., and took part in a Cherokee purification ceremony because it had been necessary for him to handle the remains and artifacts as exhibits in the trial."

The article also says, somewhat inscrutably, "One of his first cases in Greeneville was the very last moonshine case ever brought in a federal court." That statement is almost surely in error, the last moonshine case has not yet been brought, has it?

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