THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, July 23, 1994 TAG: 9407230169
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B3 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: COX NEWS SERVICE
DATELINE: LUMBERTON LENGTH: Medium: 87 lines
If Daniel Green and Larry Demery, two teens accused of killing Michael Jordan's father nearly a year ago, want to see speedy justice, they should find a television in the Robeson County jail and tune in to O.J. Simpson's arraignment.
It will be Simpson's third court hearing since his arrest five weeks ago in the slaying of his wife and a friend. The retired pro football star and ex-Hertz pitchman is arguably more famous now than ever, as millions of TV viewers watched his desperate flight from justice on a Los Angeles highway and his subsequent courtroom appearances.
``This case is moving forward with the speed of light,'' said Sandi Gibbons of the Los Angeles County District Attorney's Office, which expects Simpson's trial to open within 60 days.
By contrast, the James Jordan case is moving through Robeson County's jampacked, bogged-down Superior Court as slowly as the black water through Gum Swamp, the desolate snaky spot near McColl, S.C., where Jordan's body was discovered last Aug. 3.
The reasons, lawyers say, include the deep backlog of murder cases in violence-steeped Robeson County, and the complexity of the investigation involving law officers from several counties, North Carolina, South Carolina and the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
In contrast to the Simpson case, defense lawyers in the Jordan slaying did not get early access to the prosecutor's evidence, so they have not pushed for a speedy trial. Nor has the county's lame-duck district attorney, J. Richard Townsend, put the case on the fast track.
Green and Demery, who claim they are innocent, have appeared in court once, back on Aug. 16. That was a day after police charged them with shooting Jordan while he napped in his red Lexus along U.S. 74, just southwest of Lumberton.
A judge denied Green and Demery bail at the hearing, and they later were indicted by a county grand jury. Since then, Green and Demery have been waiting in the county jail to be arraigned, a typically short procedure during which a defendant hears the charges against him and pleads guilty or not guilty. An arraignment usually signals the start of a trial is near.
Few people seem concerned about the pace of the Jordan case that, for a furious few days last August, focused media attention on this poor, largely rural county, one of the most violent places in North Carolina.
``A year does not offend me or surprise me,'' said Donald Jacobs, president of the North Carolina Conference of District Attorneys. He is also district attorney for Wayne, Lenoir and Green counties. ``All capital cases take time to get right for trial.''
Hugh Rogers, a Lumberton lawyer representing Demery, said a dozen or more murder cases are pending in Robeson County older than Jordan's.
In one case, Rogers said he is defending a suspect who has been waiting two years for arraignment.
Legal maneuvering in the Jordan case has picked up lately. Rogers has asked the court to compel Townsend to disclose the theory the state plans to use to seek a first-degree murder conviction.
Angus Thompson, the county's public defender who represents Green, has requested a pre-trial conference with Townsend to determine whether the state has enough evidence to seek the death penalty against his client.
During the first half of the year, the defense lawyers avoided filing motions on behalf of their clients, Rogers says, partly because they didn't want to tangle with the presiding Superior Court judge, Joe Freeman Britt. A former Robeson County's district attorney, he made the Guinness Book of Records as the ``deadliest prosecutor'' during the 1970s, when 4 percent of the nation's death row inmates had been convicted by his office.
Recently there has been talk among lawyers in Lumberton that Townsend has picked up the pace of the Jordan case and might arraign Green and Demery as soon as Aug. 8 in preparation for bringing one of them to trial in October.
Townsend, who declined to be interviewed, is working against a tight schedule because he goes out of office Dec. 31.
He lost the Democratic primary last spring to Johnson Britt (a distant relation to the judge), who faces no Republican opponent in the November election.
``I know when I go to work in January I'm going to have my hands full,'' said Britt, who during the campaign criticized Townsend for the speed at which his office disposed of cases.
Despite the allure of immediately trying a case as high profile as Jordan's, Britt says he will be reluctant to ``leapfrog'' older murder cases.
``There are families of victims in crimes that have been waiting years to be solved,'' he said. ``I think they are due equal consideration.'' by CNB