A prosecutor has asked an Anderson County judge to revoke or raise bond for a man charged with a robbery in Oak Ridge six years ago after he allegedly assaulted two deputies at the Anderson County jail in December.
Prosecutors have offered reasons for the delay in the robbery case, including the COVID-19 pandemic, several changes in attorneys, and a failure to appear.
Anthony Craighead, deputy district attorney general in Anderson County, has retired.
“This week marks the well-deserved but bittersweet retirement of my friend and crime fighting partner, Deputy District Attorney General Tony Craighead,” Seventh Judicial District Attorney General Dave Clark said on Saturday. “Tony has been fighting for justice and victims for 30 years in Tennessee, and for the last eight years, he has been our leading trial court prosecutor here in Anderson County.
“The job of being a chief law enforcement officer for a portion of our state is a great privilege and an awesome responsibility. The pressure, emotional, physical and psychological burden of the responsibility for resolving the homicides, child abuse, home burglaries and child pornography cases collectively wear on one’s soul. Tony has carried that load for all of us for a long time.”
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Bond has been reduced for a woman charged with murder for the death of her husband in Oak Ridge in 2014.
Bond for Samantha Anne Hendley, 36, was reduced from $1 million to $450,000 in an order issued November 7 by Senior Judge Don R. Ash. If Hendley is able to be released on bond, she is required to wear a global positioning system (GPS) monitoring device, the order said.
After a two-year probation, charges were dismissed this year against a former Oak Ridge Police Department officer who had agreed to plead guilty to statutory rape and official misconduct in 2017.
His attorney successfully asked for judicial diversion for Cassen Jackson-Garrison, 36, more than three years ago, although the state opposed it. The judicial diversion gave Jackson-Garrison, a former star football player, the opportunity to have the felony charges dismissed and expunged, or removed from his record, at the end of his probationary period. But he had to comply with the terms and conditions. The two-year supervised probation ended in December 2019.
The Tennessee Court of Criminal Appeals has upheld an attempted murder conviction against an Oak Ridge man who received the maximum 20-year prison sentence for a stabbing that injured a woman so severely that she reportedly would have died if she hadn’t received medical treatment.
McKinnley McGee was convicted of attempted second-degree murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and aggravated assault with serious bodily injury two years ago, after a one-day trial in Anderson County Criminal Court in July 2019. He was convicted of stabbing and trying to kill Machel Elaine Avery on Utica Circle in Oak Ridge on January 12, 2018.
CLINTON—An Oak Ridge man who has at least 15 criminal convictions was sentenced to the maximum 20 years in prison on Monday for an attempted murder during a stabbing last year that injured a woman so severely that she would have died if she hadn’t received medical treatment, a judge and prosecutor said.
Before he was sentenced Monday, McKinley Earl McGee, 51, had been convicted after a one-day trial in Anderson County Criminal Court in Clinton in July. At the end of that trial, the 12-person jury deliberated for about one hour before finding McGee guilty of attempted second-degree murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and aggravated assault that resulted in serious bodily injury.
An Oak Ridge man who had been accused of stabbing his girlfriend and trying to kill her last year was convicted of attempted murder this week.
McKinley Earl McGee, 50, was convicted after a jury trial that started Tuesday morning in Anderson County Criminal Court in Clinton. Seventh Judicial District Attorney General Dave Clark announced the conviction in a press release on Wednesday. The 12-person jury deliberated about 58 minutes before returning with its verdict, Clark said.
McGee was convicted of attempted second-degree murder, aggravated assault with a deadly weapon, and aggravated assault with serious bodily injury, Clark said.
McGee was convicted of stabbing and trying to kill Machel Elaine Avery on Utica Circle in Oak Ridge on January 12, 2018, Clark said.
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CLINTON—An Andersonville man was sentenced to 10 years in prison on Monday when he pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter in the shooting death of his girlfriend’s mother four years ago.
The charge against William James McMillan, 52, was reduced from second-degree murder, a Class A felony, to voluntary manslaughter, a Class C felony, as part of the plea deal.
The young granddaughter who died in Oak Ridge in 2011 was malnourished and had been smothered, District Attorney General Dave Clark said Friday, after the child’s grandmother pleaded guilty to second-degree murder last Tuesday.
Emergency workers and law enforcement officers responded to a 911 call at Teller Village Apartments around 1:30 p.m. Monday, April 11, 2011. The grandmother, Valerie Stenson, now 54, was trying to revive her granddaughter, Manhattan Inman, using cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or CPR, Clark said in a press release Friday.
“An autopsy reveled that the child was malnourished, and the cause of death was smothering,” said Clark, who is DA in the Seventh Judicial District (Anderson County).
Manhattan was two years and nine months old when she died, Clark said.
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William Antwon Mollette
Note: This story was last updated at 4:45 p.m.
CLINTON—An Oak Ridge man was sentenced to the maximum 30 years in prison in an attempted murder case as part of a plea agreement on Thursday after a shooting last year left a woman with life-threatening injuries.
William Antwon Mollette, 44, pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder and possession of a firearm during a dangerous felony in Anderson County Criminal Court in Clinton on Thursday.
Mollette, who has a prior felony conviction in Alabama, received the maximum 25 years on the attempted first-degree murder charge, a Class A felony, and he received the maximum five years on the firearm possession charge, a Class D felony. The two sentences are to be served consecutively for a total 30-year sentence.
The victim of the shooting, Cathy Griffin, was agreeable to the 30-year sentence, Tony Craighead, deputy district attorney general in Anderson County, told Criminal Court Judge Don Elledge.
Griffin read a statement in court during the plea agreement hearing. She described being shot and stalked by Mollette at a home on Walsh Lane last year, having her lungs collapse and blood stream from her abdomen, and knowing that she, a nurse, was dying. [Read more…]
William Brent James
Gordon Scott Katz
An Oak Ridge man who had been accused of shooting into the former Throttle Down Tavern while the business was occupied in July 2015 was convicted of reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon after a jury trial in Anderson County Criminal Court in Clinton on Thursday, authorities said.
A jury of 12 Anderson County residents found Gordon Scott Katz, 45, guilty after the one-day trial on Thursday and about 45 minutes of deliberation, Seventh Judicial District Attorney General Dave Clark said in a press release on Friday.
Katz is scheduled to be sentenced October 9 by Anderson County Criminal Court Judge Don Elledge, Clark said.
Witnesses testified that Katz and a companion had been asked to leave the Throttle Down Tavern on Warehouse Road on July 26, 2015, before Katz was accused of firing shots into it, Clark said. [Read more…]
