Prosecutor Craves Publicity- Taxpayers Lose (Update)

We had a post a couple of months ago about about the tendency of the current Prosecutor to want to get himself on television and in the newspaper for anything and everything. Even not filing child support charges for years to pull an election year stunt. Now we see the results. In a recent article in the Corydon Republican (aka Corydon Democrat), we see the incumbent Prosecutor made this quote:

"Based on the fact that the victims were well known and established in the community, it's very likely that a jury pool here would have heard something on the news at some point," Schalk said. "Seeking a fair trial is important for the state and the defendant."

We all want to see a fair trial, both for the victims and the defendants. Make that very clear. If things need to be done to ensure that, we are all for it. We will never know, but one has to wonder whether Otto Schalk constantly holding press conferences, talking to the television stations, and to newspapers about details in the case, helped to have to cause a change of venue in this case. Make no mistake about it, it will cost Harrison County a lot of money to move the case out of the county, as we have seen in the David Camm cases. According to previous articles, only one case in the past 18 years had been granted a change of venue, including several other murder cases. Perhaps previous Prosecutors might have mastered the art of two magic words- "no comment". But maybe they did not crave seeing themselves on the morning, noon, five, six, seven, and eleven o'clock news. Also, previous Prosecutors may not have tried to let on that no death penalty case had ever been filed in Harrison County, as this article seems to show the current Prosecutor intimates. Even a former Republican Prosecutor had to help set the record straight on that one. Then again, as we will show very soon, his credibility on other cases and issues are not that stellar either, or perhaps it is just ignorance given the very short time he has lived here. Let's just hope that one person's constant need to publicity does not cause problems for this case and for our county, and that everyone sees a just end.

And remember this: Whenever someone thinks they have to get themselves attention for the few things they do, it may be to cover for doing virtually nothing on most things. Then again, Rachael Armstrong will have a few things to share about that in the next couple of months.

Our Prosecutor's way of running things?