Public Defender

LANCASTER - Sentencing for Owen Ray Gadd, 49, of Richmond, will be held in Garrard Circuit Court at 9 a.m. on Oct. 21. Gadd was found guilty Tuesday of sodomizing a 7-year-old boy twice, in 2001 and 2002, while he resided in Lancaster. The jury convicted Gadd of two counts of first-degree sodomy and recommended two consecutive life sentences on Tuesday. Circuit Judge Hunter Daugherty will weigh the jury's recommendation but is not obliged to follow it when he imposes Gadd's sentence in October.

Carolyn Foley left Judge Jeffrey Burnett's circuit courtroom Friday with a smile on her face, but not because she was getting out of jail. Burnett declined to reduce Foley's $100,000 cash bond to the $50,000 property bond that Foley's public defender had suggested. Deputies returned Foley to the Lincoln County Regional Jail, where she has been since Nov. 23, when she allegedly drove the pickup that ran off highway 642 near Crab Orchard, hit a concrete bridge barrier and burst into flames.

Circuit Judge David Tapp cut Sharon Dale Greer off in mid-sentence: "You don't need to talk except for your attorney. Don't get yourself in trouble. " That admonition came in Lincoln Circuit Court Friday during Mr. Greer's arraignment when he interrupted as Judge Tapp cautioned him about making contact with the woman he is alleged to have shot. "No letters, bouquets, or e-mails," Judge Tapp said. Mr. Greer reportedly had sent a letter from the lockup to his estranged girlfriend, who suffered a shotgun wound to the chest Jan. 10. She spent several days at the University of Kentucky Hospital and was released in mid-January.

STANFORD - Seemingly without any public reaction, Sharon Dale Greer, convicted last month of shooting his ex-girlfriend, was sentenced to spend the rest of his life behind bars after a judge made a jury's recommendation official. As Greer, 73, entered the courtroom, only three people were gathered to witness the proceedings. All three were members of the media. On Sept. 10, a jury convicted Greer of shooting Sandy Mullins twice with a sawed-off shotgun and recommended life in prison plus 10 years for charges of first-degree assault and wanton endangerment.

STANFORD - Jamarkos Campbell will go it alone and be the first of four defendants to face trial for the 2002 murders of Ryan Shangraw and Bo Upton. Lincoln Circuit Judge Jeffrey Burdette on Tuesday granted Commonwealth's Attorney Eddy Montgomery's motion to separate Campbell from the other defendants and put him on trial first. The scheduled date for the trial is April 6. "Jamarkos Campbell has given numerous statements implicating the other defendants," Montgomery said in arguing his motion to split the trials.

STANFORD - A picture is worth a thousand words - in court documents. At least that's the case in Lincoln District Court where the public defender representing a suspect accused in the 2002 murders of two Lincoln County men has filed a criminal complaint against the editor of The Interior-Journal. The complaint alleges that editor George Lewis "violated the confidentiality of a juvenile court proceeding" in late April by taking her client's photo. Click here to see the motion filed to dismiss complaint.

Although he's 22 years old, one of the suspects in a six-year-old double murder was arraigned Tuesday in juvenile court, where proceedings are secret and the identities of the accused are withheld. The suspect was 16 when Ryan Shangraw and Bo Upton were shot to death in Shangraw's rented mobile home in the Hubble community on Feb. 1, 2002. He was arrested Sunday when he turned himself in to Kentucky State Police in Richmond after learning of a warrant for his arrest. More arrests are expected, say state police, who are seeking DNA from at least one other suspect.

LANCASTER - A Richmond man serving two life sentences for sodomy was denied a new trial Friday after a judge rejected his allegations of jury tampering. Owen Ray Gadd, 52, formerly of Garrard County, was convicted in 2005 of sodomizing a boy younger than 12 and was given the two consecutive life sentences recommended by the jury. The state Court of Appeals had previously denied Gadd's argument that he should have a new trial because his attorney, public defender Susanne McCullough, had provided ineffective counsel.