Jane Doe Was Murdered Sunday Morning

Jane Doe lived in Lauderdale County, but worked in Tennessee. After a hectic night at work Saturday, she drove home and immediately took a shower. It was hot, and she was tired, so she lay down without donning PJs and immediately went to sleep. At approximately 1:15 Sunday morning, a drunk man began beating on her front door, demanding entrance.

Jane grabbed the nearest item of clothing she could find--a raincoat--and tried to call authorities, but her land line was unplugged--had it been cut? Jane was too frantic to think straight at that moment. She had no gun, so she reached for a cast iron cross with a base that would make a good weapon.

Looking through her front window, she saw the man had a gun. Her weapon was no match for a gun. She could easily die there, owing bills, leaving a cat with no home, and a man in Florence she thought wanted her. It wasn't a pleasant thought that her life would end in a pool of blood.

What of the killer? It seems he was a respected man of some local community who was the salt of the earth when not drinking. His defense team will argue Jane seduced him--after all, why was she naked under a raincoat at 1:30 in the morning? He has family in the area; Jane had none. There's no doubt he killed her, but he's looking at as little as ten years. Ten years for taking a life?

*****

The above tale is true...up to the point of the drunk man actually gaining entrance into Jane's home. It happened approximately 10 years ago. She managed to get a phone working, and the Lauderdale Sheriff's Deputies came. So did the man's very unhappy wife in, as the Butch Hancock song says, a big ol' Buick. Yes, after it was all over, Jane saw the humorous side and regaled her friends with the attack of the drunken night hunter who was half a mile from his intended destination and stuck in the mud in some untended field.

What if he had killed her? She was completely innocent in the matter, but that's not how the drunk's defense attorney would have portrayed her. And what if it was some woman who wasn't that innocent? What if it had been a woman who was having an affair with the drunk? Would she have deserved to have been murdered?

We want each of you to think about members of your family. If murdered, how would the defense portray them? Is a 10 year manslaughter sentence enough? Or a 20 year murder sentence? Tomorrow we'll be posting info on the sentencing phase of Hershel Dale Graham's Manslaughter conviction.

Related post: Who's a Throw-Away Person in the Shoals?



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