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| Potter Creek Graveyard |
On the topic of South County bar room deaths, Herbie McKay told me about serving on jury duty in 1998 to hear a court case involving a bar room murder in Ridge.
Herbie was on jury duty and the case heard involved a man accused of murdering someone at Robinson Barnes’ Bar in Ridge. It was a tragic case where the victim was killed by mistake as the shooter was trying to kill someone else.
Herbie described how, after hearing all of the evidence presented, he and 10 of his fellow jurors agreed that it was an open and shut case of the man committing second degree murder. However, they had a 12th juror who held out for conviction and wouldn’t budge. As a result it was declared a mistrial. (There would be a total of two mistrials before the gunman was eventually convicted.)
I managed to track the case down via the Enterprise archives.
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| http://stmalib.archivalweb.com |
Here too is the Enterprise description of one of the earlier mistrials where Herbie was a juror. (For the complete, behind the scenes story on this, buy Herbie a beer sometime and he will fill you in on “the rest of the story.”)
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| http://stmalib.archivalweb.com/imageViewer.php?i=1441470&v=r%3D1364%26in%3D2008%26w%3D1266 |
N.B. The Potter Creek Graveyard photo above has nothing to do with this story. I just thought that it was a cool picture to include in a post about death and dying.
