RICHLAND CO.—Online court records available through Judici (Illinois’ court system website) show that the man accused of murdering Michael Scott Earp in Olney November 20, Brandon Jenkins of Houston, has retained Belleville attorney John O’Gara as his defense counsel.
The guy on the left is O'Gara; on right is his law partner, James A. Gomric
Regular readers, and especially those in South Counties, will remember O’Gara from the Raymond Martin federal drug/weapons/murder-for-hire case dating back to the big trial September 2010.
There, O’Gara wasn’t the most well-thought-of individual, primarily because he was representing someone who was so obviously guilty—what with videos, audio, and plenty of paperwork to prove it, established right there in the courtroom—so the opinion of him wasn’t running exactly favorably.
Raymondo, Jackson County, c. March 2010
However, regardless of the fact that O’Gara was appointed to represent Martin (O’Gara is one of the attorneys in St. Clair that handles federal criminal cases as a public defender), who came across as a vile creature throughout the trial, that didn’t discount O’Gara’s performance….and throughout that, if an honest assessment could be made (and we did make that honest assessment, repeatedly, giving credit where it was due), O’Gara did a damn fine job handling the defense of a hopeless case.
Contrasting and comparing that to the Jenkins case, well…there really is no comparison. With Raymondo, O’Gara had nothing to work with. There was no defense. The most intelligent thing Raymondo could’ve done was to have taken a plea early on and roll on everybody he was dealing dope to, for, and with in Gallatin and surrounding counties, and, playing his cards right, he would’ve probably gotten to sit in a fed pen for five years as an ‘example’ for others, then get out to move far, far away from Shawneetown and its surrounds when he was done. Hell, he’d be more than halfway through it right now if he’d done that; instead, he’s going to grow old and die in the fed pen, serving two life sentences for threatening Jeremy Potts with a weapon during conversations about selling pot. What an idiotic thing to be serving life for.
But that’s not for lack of ability on O’Gara’s part.
O’Gara is a very highly intelligent, very capable attorney. He has handled other high-profile cases across the southern third of Illinois, specializing in death-penalty cases (when Illinois still had the death penalty). During arguments, he is extremely eloquent, and intense when necessary, subtle at other times. Overall, he’s a very qualified attorney to handle the Jenkins case….and he outclasses and out-lawyers the prosecutorial team of David Hyde/Todd Reitz/probably David Rands by a country mile.
Jenkins is set for a preliminary hearing this Friday at 3:30 pm. That time has already been altered from the one previously set. We have a sneaking suspicion that there won’t be a prelim at all…because sometimes—and these times are rare, but they happen—at preliminaries, the prosecution doesn’t have enough evidence to bind the accused over for trial, especially if the accused is charged with something deliberate when there was no deliberate action taken (in Jenkins’ case, it’s always appeared that he acted in self-defense against Earp). And if O’Gara can successfully argue that Jenkins did act in self-defense and not with intent, it’s entirely possible that Jenkins could walk out of the courtroom Friday a free man. And if anyone could pull off such a thing, O’Gara is the one who can.
Therefore we firmly believe Hyde is going to call a grand jury this week, and charge Jenkins with different levels of killing Earp, down to and including manslaughter, just so something can stick. This was his method with the last murder charged in Richland, Amanda Colclasure Fisher, who also didn’t intend to kill her boyfriend, but instead meant to fend him off when he came at her to beat her in a drunken rage. She was, however, initially charged with first-degree murder anyway; and Hyde, seeing the error he’d made, adjusted it to different ‘levels’ of murder, and the one that stuck was Second Degree when it was time to take a plea.
If Hyde does this with Jenkins, the prelim will be cancelled, as a grand jury indictment takes the place of a preliminary hearing.
We hope that’s not the case, because the prelim may be a crucial element of the whole ordeal, and we want to see it, if for nothing else, but to get to watch investigating officers get on the stand and squirm, having to tell the truth….but we can’t know yet which way it’s going to go. So keep checking the website, and as soon as we know anything, we’ll bring it to you.