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Editor’s Note: Have you ever watched
an episode of Law & Order that started out as one case,
then minutes into the plot, veered into a totally different
storyline? The following article on the State’s case against former
Muscle Shoals police officer Greg Scoggins is similar to that. This
account may be long, but it’s worth reading. In fact, if you make
it to the end, there’s quite a bombshell. There will be more on
this at a later date:
The 23rd day of December, 2012, was a
warm, mild morning. A 200-pound monster buck was grazing in an open
field on Tennessee Valley Authority property situated at the
intersection of Wilson Dam Road and Second Street in Muscle Shoals.
Across Second Street stood a two-story structure, being the City of
Muscle Shoals Sewage Water Treatment Plant. The buck, with his harem
of six does, made it an everyday practice of grazing that field
in the mornings.
Little did the buck know its life would
be changed when it intersected with police officer Greg Scoggins of
the Muscle Shoals Police Department. Scoggins’ life had changed
dramatically in the past fifteen months. He had lost his home, filed
bankruptcy, lost every worldly possession including his family pets
in a fire at his rental home, and he didn’t have insurance to
replace any of his items. Three weeks previous to this encounter with
the monster buck, he was served with divorce papers by his wife,
kicking him out of his new rental house. Officer Scoggins, a
thirteen-year veteran of the Muscle Shoals Police Department, was an avid hunter
and had been eying this buck for some months.
It now represented meat on the table,
and respite from the mental sadness he had been going through.
Scoggins pulled off of Wilson Dam Road
into the field and pulled out a rifle that he had been carrying in
the back of the vehicle. A shot at 110 yards felled the buck who ran
about forty yards towards Second Street and expired near a fence line
which borders the roadway. Unbeknownst to Scoggins, David Moore was
working at the Muscle Shoals Sewage Water Treatment Plant and he had
watched everything from the boom of the gun to the buck expiring at
the fence line. David Moore then spent the next forty minutes on his
cell phone trying to get a Conservation Officer, Muscle Shoals
Police, Mayor, City Councilman, USA Federal Government Agent, Federal
Authorities, or their ABI Agent involved in what had happened.
Moore, who had worked for the City over
fifteen years, kept a pair of binoculars handy everyday so he could
watch that field daily. His job, extensively, was to watch gauges and
gadgets at the Waste Water Plant to make sure the sewage water was
treated properly. He had a unique schedule on this Sunday; one in
which he could leave the Sewage Waste Water Plant halfway through his
shift. He could go to church in Florence and sing in the choir. He
took this sabbatical opportunity to follow Scoggins in his patrol
car, who was following a red pickup truck. The driver of the red
truck had helped Scoggins load the buck into the back of it. The
convoy turned at Congress Street and Moore turned and went back to
the Waste Water Plant and called the Muscle Shoals Police Department.
He told them their police officer was somewhere on Congress Street.
Within ten minutes, Sgt. Cedric Morris and Capt. Clint Reck of the
Muscle Shoals Police Department showed up and ordered Scoggins back
to the station where he was told to turn in his badge and gun belt,
and he was put on a three-day administrative leave. While there, Chad
Holden, of the Alabama Conservation Department, gave Scoggins three
tickets for Reckless Endangerment, Hunting Without Permission, and
Hunting By Aid of A Motorized Vehicle.
Scoggins, needing legal representation,
hired Tuscumbia attorney Billy Underwood and Florence attorney
Johnnie Franks for his criminal and civil problems. He was later to
lose an appeal before the Muscle Shoals Civil Service Board to keep
his job and appealed that case to the Circuit Court of Colbert
County, Alabama.
Underwood and Franks immediately
attacked the fact that Scoggins was charged in the District Court of
Colbert County and not tried in a United States Federal District
Court. The Tennessee Valley Authority was federal property. His
attorneys did not know the State of Alabama, through Governor Fob
James in 1988, had entered into a strange agreement with the federal
government whereby Alabama supposedly accepted back jurisdiction over
TVA lands. The agreement would require the State to patrol and police
over 600,000 acres of property in North Alabama.
Underwood and Franks, in the criminal
cases, immediately filed briefs and requested the criminal cases be
dismissed and sent to Federal Court because it was on federal
property. Doug Evans, assistant District Attorney in Franklin County,
was appointed to prosecute this case. The local District Attorney’s
office in Colbert County had decided to opt-out of prosecuting
Scoggins. Evans, now with the aid of the Tennessee Valley Authority,
happened upon the 1988 agreement between Governor Fob James and the State of Alabama. The agreement
stated basically the State of Alabama would accept back, by a word
called cession, jurisdiction, rights, privileges, and franchises from
the Federal government on all 600,000 acres of property in the
northern tier of Alabama. The swath of land covers from Colbert
County, on the west state boundary, to Dekalb on the east. The
agreement stated the Tennessee Valley Authority shared all
jurisdictional powers with the State of Alabama. Years later the
Tennessee Valley Authority, in a cost cutting move, withdrew every
single TVA police officer in North Alabama from those properties
making them basically a bad lands due to the fact there would be no
police officers patrolling them.
Muscle Shoals Police and the Colbert
County Sheriff’s Department testified they never patrol Tennessee
Valley Authority property in Colbert County. During the criminal
trial the Honorable Chad Coker, District Judge of Colbert County,
Alabama, ruled the 1988 cession of jurisdiction between Governor Fob
James and the State of Alabama, was law and the criminal cases could
be tried in the District Court of Colbert County. He, however,
commented at trial his reluctance as a lowly sitting District Court
Judge to find an agreement between the federal government, the
Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Governor of the State of Alabama
null and void.
At the end of the trial, Judge Coker
found Scoggins not guilty of Reckless Endangerment and Hunting From a
Vehicle. He did find him guilty of Hunting on TVA property without
permission of the federal government. Underwood and Franks
immediately appealed the decision to the Alabama Court of Criminal
Appeals. The legal brief filed by Scoggins’ attorney argued the
1988 cession of land and jurisdiction by the United States government
between Governor Fob James and Tennessee Valley Authority was void.
His attorneys attacked the wording of the agreement. Even the State’s
Attorney General, Luther Strange, agreed the wording of the agreement
was incorrect. The State of Alabama, through the Attorney Generals
Office, argued “during the thirteen-year period since the agreement
was signed, the State of Alabama has exercised concurrent
jurisdiction over this property and neither the state nor the federal
government had complained.” The Attorney General seemed to say,
because there was no dispute between Alabama
and the Federal Government, Scoggins should be estopped from
nullifying the agreement. Scoggins’ attorneys argued the state
legislature had to vote to accept the land.
On the 7th day of March, 2014, the
Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals surprised everyone. It agreed with
Scoggins’ attorney that there wasn’t an agreement according to
the 1988 cession that Governor Fob James and TVA signed but went a
different route and stated there didn’t ever need to be an
agreement; that under the Code of Alabama the legislature had stated
specifically it will always accept land or jurisdiction of lands the
state had ceded to the United States government without any further
action of the legislature. It basically gives to the federal
government a blanket agreement to deed any properties it wished back to the State
of Alabama without the Alabama Legislature voting to accept those
lands back into the state. This raises the serious question of “what
if the Tennessee Valley Authority decides to deed back to the State
of Alabama all the coal ash ponds at their coal stream plants and
also decides to deed back from the Hollywood, Alabama Nuclear Plant
all its contaminated nuclear waste acreage?” The State of Alabama
does not have monies with which to handle and clean up these waste
dumps. The Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals incidentally does not
normally rule on civil matters, it being a court to entertain
criminal law appeals.
Enter former Court of Criminal Appeals
Judge Pamela Baschab, who now with Underwood has filed a Motion for a
Rehearing the 28th of March, 2014, requesting the Alabama Court of
Criminal Appeals reconsider the ruling in light of the fact that,
under Paragraph Five of the statute it was interpreting, stated the
State of Alabama Legislature had a right to vote on the 1988
agreement to accept or reject. Baschab has been a jurist on the
Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals for over twelve years and felt this
case was one she needed to help correct a wrong. There now is pending
in front of the Alabama Court of Criminal Appeals a Motion for
Rehearing with Scoggins’ lawyers stating they will appeal to the
Alabama Supreme Court if their motion is denied. As the law now
stands, the State of Alabama is at the mercy of the federal
government who could deed to the state any property it didn’t want
or give jurisdiction to the state properties it wants the state to
patrol without Alabama having any legal objection to their grants.
Worth reading, wasn’t it?
Shoalanda
