HILL: Case smacks of injustice

Justice? After reading your article in Saturday's paper, I had to ask some questions and maybe open some eyes. "Mitchell considered the enormity of the thefts, the length of time during which the theft occurred, the impact on his partners and Hill's continued denial of responsibility for the crimes."

A jury found Jerry Hill guilty of three counts of grand theft, totaling about $7,000. But he has been sentenced for stealing $350,000. Even though he was neither tried nor convicted of taking that much money. Are we really innocent until proven guilty in this country?

If the taxpayers spent as much money defending Jerry Hill as they did prosecuting him, I believe the jury would have found him innocent. His public defender never hired a CPA to do an audit for the defense. Even though he kept saying he was going to. He never called former employees for the defense. Even though he said he was going to. He canceled appointment after appointment, and met with Jerry for less than 1 1/2 hours before trial. In a very complicated case needing an audit of your own, and time to review many books and figures, Jerry is provided neither.

The justice system will provide you with an attorney. Although he may be completely overwhelmed with his work load and unable to prepare a proper defense. I can only wonder how many people are in prison with the same story. If only they could have afforded a proper defense.

And $7,000 caused "Brad Jordan's company" to go bankrupt, with $5 million in liabilities? How did $7,000 cause a $5 million liability? Sounds like someone needs a scapegoat.

So you heard the story "according to a press release from the Kootenai County Prosecuting Attorney's office." And now you've heard another side to the story.

TED BALDWIN

Rathdrum