Commonwealth’s Attorney changes hands amid high profile cases Story by Ashley Traylor, Editor-in-Chief Dennis Foust unseated Mark Blankenship for District 42 Commonwealth’s Attorney, with 59.19 percent of the total vote. District 42 includes Calloway County and Marshall County. Blankenship had the majority of the votes in Calloway County- 5,814 compared to Foust’s 4,492- but Foust Read More
Men’s basketball guard Zay Jackson was indicted on a charge of second-degree assault by a Calloway County grand jury Thursday. Jackson’s charges stem from an incident where he was accused of striking Jason Clement of Paducah, Ky., with his car in mid-September. He also received a charge of first-degree wanton endangerment for putting Jason’s wife Read More
Zaveral “Zay” Jackson has withdrawn his guilty plea, erasing two months of decision-making by the Calloway County court system. The men’s basketball guard originally pled guilty to two charges of wanton endangerment after striking two civilians with his car in the Murray Walmart parking lot in early September. Jackson appeared at a status hearing Nov. Read More
Jerry Wayne Walker Jr. pleaded guilty to six counts of tampering with physical evidence Tuesday morning in the Calloway County Circuit Court, marking the end to an almost 14-year-old battle over the Paducah man’s innocence in connection to the fatal Hester Hall fire of 1998. Walker was indicted twice for setting the early-morning blaze on Read More
Circuit Judge Dennis Foust issued a ruling on Oct. 12, refusing the motion to dismiss six tampering charges against Jerry Wayne Walker Jr. Walker, a Paducah man who was tried twice for the fatal Hester College dorm fire in 1998, has been charged with all six felony counts of tampering in that same investigation. Commonwealth Read More
William Elliot, resident of Murray, and Cheyanne Coleman, senior from Highland, Ill., were scheduled to appear Monday in Calloway County Circuit Court in connection with two burglaries in Calloway County. Elliot and Coleman were reportedly captured by officers after a report of burglary at a residence on Locust Grove Road was received on Sept. 2. Read More
Austin Ramsey News Editor Commonwealth Attorney Mark Blankenship may have a tough case ahead of him, according to an expert on cold cases at the University of Louisville. Blankenship is the main prosecuting attorney in the re-indictment of Jerry Wayne Walker, who faces charges related to the 1998 Hester College fire, which killed one student Read More