We were all aghast last week when Christopher “Bubba” Padgett escaped from his ankle monitor and fled during the middle of his murder trial in Chattanooga. About 95 percent of us could have predicted that Padgett, who stayed in jail for almost an entire year before coming up with $350,000 for bond on the eve of his trial, would turn rabbit.
Sure enough, one day before he was found guilty of murder in absentia, he escaped from his monitor and is listed today among the Top 10 fugitives on the TBI's 10 Most Wanted List. Sadly, he was able to take advantage of the greatest criminal justice system the free world has ever known. Worse, those who try to place blame and spread half-truths are actually mocking the Constitution and what The Bill of Rights affords every American citizen.
Sure, it never should have been allowed to happen but the truth is the response by the Hamilton County District Attorney General, the Hamilton County Sheriff’s Department and the Chattanooga Police Department, and the Hamilton County Department of Corrections was absolutely exemplary. And as a broad net is being spread for the capture of Padgett, it also appears the truth needs to catch up to fiction in certain areas of our city.
Today between 900 and 1,000 people in Hamilton County are under court-ordered supervision. Of that number, 200 to 250 are wearing radio-type monitors that are monitored 24 hours a day by a reputable private contractor. No, it isn’t a 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. job where the watchmen go home. The monitors are electronically watched in a constant manner and have proven to be overwhelmingly successful.
Understand, there aren’t 35 technicians watching a huge grid of blinking lights. Instead the advent of computers and modern technology is part of a program that has been used in Hamilton County and almost every other city for the last 30 years and has saved the taxpayers millions upon millions instead of keeping those awaiting trial in jail, being monitored for alcohol, or for whatever reason.
In America every person charged with a criminal act is eligible to make bond until they are given a hearing. By federal law, Christopher Padgett – with no known priors before he was found guilty of first-degree murder and armed robbery last week – was considered innocent until he was proven guilty last Friday. At the time of his arrest, bond was set pretty steep and a stipulation was that if he did indeed make bond, he would be among 24 other “high risk” prisoners required to wear a special monitor equipped with a GPS device.
Upon his release from jail, Padgett spent the entire weekend under house arrest at his mother’s home. On Monday of last week, he met with his lawyer, and attended trial on Tuesday and Wednesday. At 1:43 a.m. on Thursday, his monitoring device sent a signal it had been tampered with. When the county’s Director of Corrections Chris Jackson saw the alert at 6 a.m., he immediately called prosecutor Cameron Williams in the DA’s office, setting the necessary wheels in motion.
But, wait, at the time Padgett was still legally innocent. You don’t launch the SWAT team, send in police dogs, or attack anybody. That’s not legal. Instead, you try to contact the suspect to see if the device had malfunctioned or why it was sounding an alarm. If you get no reply, under the laws of the land you must obtain a bench warrant and, after it goes through the proper channels in the criminal clerk’s office, it is served in a decent fashion.
About 6:30 a.m. Padgett’s mother called confirming her son was on the run. Usually it takes law enforcement two to three days to get a bench warrant but, in this high profile case, Criminal Judge Tom Greenholtz signed it at precisely 8 a.m. on Thursday morning.
With members of the Chattanooga Police Department waiting, the criminal court clerk’s employees rushed what is customarily a three-day process into a well-anticipated hour. The Chattanooga Police served the warrant to Padgett’s badly-shaken mother by mid-morning, not eight hours after the monitor issued its first alarm. Every step was within the laws of the United States and violated not one of the now-criminal’s rights.
Is County Mayor Jim Coppinger embarrassed? “Not at all. I am sorry the story has been misrepresented. I feel badly for Chris Jackson and everyone else who responded in sensational fashion, only to be unjustly criticized. There is no one involved who did anything that wasn’t exactly by the book - except for the criminal of course.”
Better words were never spoken. I just wish they didn’t have to follow a questionable narrative or talk-show gibberish. It’s been said a lie can travel halfway around the world before the truth ever catches up with it.
royexum@aol.com