Trial date set for Murray, Travis

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March 1, 2009

Attorneys work on their release from detention

By LISA SIMPSON STRANGE The Glasgow Daily Times Sun Mar 01, 2009, 04:28 PM CST

GLASGOW — Things are moving quickly in the federal case against two Glasgow Police Department majors.

Louisville attorney Steven R. Romines has requested a speedy trial for his client, Maj. Maxie C. Murray.

“We asked for a quick trial,” Romines said following a telephone hearing with U.S. District Judge Thomas Russell at 9 a.m. Friday. “That’s a very quick turnaround for trial. That was at my request.”

Russell has obliged. He has set a March 10 hearing date to rule on defense attorneys’ motions to revoke detention orders. The trial date is set for March 30. This is less than two months after they were initially taken into custody.

Maj. Johnny L. Travis’ attorney, B. Alan Simpson, agreed with Romines’ motion.

“The reason for the speedy trial request is because we’ve got two guys in jail and we want to get them out,” he said.

There’s a possibility there might be a delay in the trial date if the two are released during the March 10 hearing, but that will be up to the judge, he added.

Simpson took issue with the recent publication of disciplinary paperwork against his client.

Simpson said the disciplinary complaint discovered in Travis’ personnel file following an open records request by the Glasgow Daily Times should have been purged after one year and should not still have been in his file. The complaint dealt with infractions of the department’s standard procedures manual including insubordination.

There are no plans at this time to make a motion to separate the trials, Simpson said.

Murray and Travis have been in federal custody since their arrests Feb. 4 for possession of hydrocodone without prescription and threatening witnesses.

District Magistrate Judge E. Robert Goebel ruled on Feb. 6 that the two should remain in detention throughout trial proceedings because they had threatened witnesses in the case. They are lodged in the Warren County Regional Jail.

Attorneys for the two defendants filed the motions of revocation against Goebel’s orders of detention within a week to 10 days of the action that left their clients in jail – Simpson for Travis on Feb. 16 and Romines for Murray on Feb. 10.

Assistant United States Attorney David Weiser, responded on Feb. 23 to the defendants’ motions to revoke the detentions by reiterating statements from taped evidence presented at the original detention hearing in Owensboro on Feb. 6. The statements contained threats and intimidation from Travis and Murray.

Romines filed a response Feb. 26 saying Weiser was just rehashing the charges and didn’t cite any case law in support of the government’s position to keep the two officers in custody.

“The government’s opposition to the defendants motion is nothing more that a repeated recitation of the recorded statements made in this case,” Romines wrote. “Those statements are ... transcribed in the opposition (not) once, not twice, but three times.

“Why does the the government feel the need to include three repetitions of these recordings? Because that is all they have in support of their opposition to the defendant’s motion (to revoke the order of detention).”

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