| Gilmer County's prosecuting attorney Jerry Hough has told the Glenville Pathfinder that he was falsly accused of being too lenient by the Hur Herald.(See earlier Herald story )
Hough appeared to drop a case at the last minute against a person that a Gilmer County Grand Jury had indicted, while jurors were waiting to be seated.
Hough implied the Herald did not have all the facts, but the prosecutor does not respond to phone calls made to his office.
Hough was responding to a story about the incident published in the Hur Herald, which reported that Judge Jack Alsop was angry at the prosector for dropping the case at the last minute, with 40 petit jurors sitting in the courtroom to hear the case.
Alsop called Hough into his chambers with the accused's attorney, after there
appeared to be a problem. The angry Judge Alsop
asked Hough to explain to the waiting jurors what happened during the closed door discussion.
Hough told the jurors he would not present evidence against the indicted man.
Last week Hough told the Glenville Pathfinder he dropped the case to save the taxpayers money, because he felt he could not get a conviction.
"It costs the taxpayers money each time I take a case to trial, so if I think a person can't be convicted, it would be foolish to waste taxpayer's money," he told the paper.
Hough told the Glenville paper that Judge Alsop knew
in advance he was going to drop the case, but 40 jurors were still empaneled, which was described as an unnessary expense.
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