I finally heard on the news today about what happened with the woman we convicted when I served on jury duty last month...
From the Knoxville News-Sentinel...
Woman gets jail time for trying to hit boy
Judge says reckless endangerment case was racially motivated
By JAMIE SATTERFIELD, satterfield@knews.com April 4, 2006
She called them stupid.
She said they weren't welcome in her West Knox County neighborhood. She labeled them with a word the young boys, ages 6 and 9, had never before heard.
Harold A. Hall confronted her. She rebuffed him. He turned the other cheek.
She sped toward the youngest as if to strike him with her Jeep Cherokee, veering away at the last second.
Hall wanted revenge. He sought justice instead.
On Monday, Hall came to Knox County Criminal Court with his sons in tow and asked Judge Richard Baumgartner to prove the lesson he had tried to instill in his boys: People of character seek help from the law. They do not take it into their own hands.
"I could have responded and did evil to her, but that was not what I wanted to do," Hall told the judge.
Baumgartner answered Hall's plea by ordering 58-year-old Sharon Kay Martin jailed for 90 days for a reckless endangerment conviction in a case the judge said was racially motivated.
"I remember this case very well," Baumgartner said. "It was a troubling case. There certainly was raised an issue of whether this act by Mrs. Martin was a racially motivated act. She denied that.
"I'm convinced ... that there were racial overtones," Baumgartner said. "I think the fact that (the Halls) were African-Americans and they were in her neighborhood was an issue in this case."
A jury convicted Martin last month of endangering Hall's 6-year-old son, Terrell Hall, in July 2004 in an incident on Tyrone Drive near Carlton Circle that came after a series of encounters between Martin and the Hall sons.
Assistant District Attorney General Takisha Fitzgerald said Martin, who is white, was upset that the Halls had moved into the neighborhood.
"That's the driving force in this case," Fitzgerald argued at Martin's sentencing hearing Monday. "She was mad because this black family has enough money to live in her neighborhood."
She said trial testimony showed that Martin twice confronted Terrell and his 9-year-old brother, Terrance, while the boys rode their bicycles on the street near her Tyrone Drive home in June 2004.
The boys' mother, Te'Retta Hall, testified at the trial that Martin called the boys stupid in one encounter and later used the n-word to describe them, a term she said the boys were unfamiliar with.
On July 19, 2004, testimony showed, Martin drove past the boys as they played outside, turned the vehicle around, revved the engine, swerved toward Terrell and then veered away.
Martin admitted warning the boys to stay out of the road near her home but insisted her words had been "twisted," according to a pre-sentence report. She denied at trial using a racial slur. She blamed medication for her faulty driving, according to defense attorney Jake Werner.
Martin said nothing at Monday's hearing.
Baumgartner is allowing Martin to remain free on bond pending an appeal.
