Elizabeth Erwin
News Editor
BENTON, Ky. – Gabriel Parker, the suspect in the Marshall County High School shooting, appeared in court Friday, Aug. 24 so his attorneys could ask the court for state funding.
Parker, is accused of killing two students and wounding 14 others after opening fire at the school on Jan. 23.
The state funding Parker’s attorneys requested will be used to hire an expert to aide with the case.
After the judge granted the request, the defense went on to ask that the court seal any records regarding the expert witnesses.
The request for state funding was passed as a 31 motion.
“Thirty-one applies to the indigent population- people who cannot afford a lawyer,” Commonwealth Attorney Mark Blankenship said. “Our legislature sets aside money to pay for their lawyers and they also set aside money to pay for their experts if they need an expert.”
Blankenship then said that the request for expert funds was conducted in private so that the prosecution could remain unaware about the defense’s strategies.
The law allows Parker to get funds to help build his defense, Blankenship said.
“So right now, they’re discussing what they want and we would just be guessing,” Blankenship said. “More than likely, I think they’re having trouble getting a mental expert.”
The defense never mentioned the specifics regarding the type of expert they were requesting. After the private hearing was conducted, Defense Attorney Tom Griffiths discussed the difficulties that they were having with finding an expert to take on the case.
“I have been doing this for more than 20 years but I’ve never had an expert say ‘sure I will help, I’m interested’ and then when I told them what case it was they said ‘sorry, I’m no longer interested – I can’t help you,” Griffiths said. “And actually, we’ve had that with multiple folks because the level of notoriety of this case is so high that one expert was pretty blunt, he said- ‘it could cost me my career.’ And that’s sobering. Because that’s an indication of not just of the level of publicity here, which you would expect in Marshall County, but frankly the level of publicity all over.”
The closer the expert is to Marshall County, the more likely it is that he or she won’t want to be associated with the case, Griffiths said.
Now that the defense will be allowed to seal records that relate to their request for expert funding, Griffiths thinks it will help ease the process of finding an expert to work on the case.
“I think it will help,” Griffiths said. “It will help at least in the preliminary stages because at least now I can tell folks that at least while we’re talking and they’re doing preliminary work, they’re not going to be publicly involved in the case.”
Blankenship, who represents the families of the victims, spoke about their emotions surrounding the case proceedings.
“They’re frustrated,” he said. “They’d like to see closure. They’d like for this to get done… But there isn’t any quick way. This is a murder case and it involves a lot of other assault victims and it’s in a public setting – a school. This is a really high profile, important case. Nobody wants to make a mistake and it’s just going to take some time.”
Blankenship said he reminds the families of the victims that Parker is still behind bars.
“He’s not going to the football game tonight,” he said. “He’s locked up. He’s in juvenile. His freedom has been curtailed. And so, we try to get them to think about that – that he’s not living the high life or anything.”
Even though Parker is being tried as an adult, Blankenship said that he wouldn’t be “put in adult prison until he is an adult.”
The January shooting was a “shock for everybody,” he said but pointed out the differences between this case and the 1997 Heath High School shooting case.
“In the Heath case it was so different that he came in and pled guilty at the very first court hearing and took the maximum punishment… They didn’t have to go through all what we’re having to go through,” Blankenship said. “They were the luckiest prosecutors on Earth to get a guilty plea during the first hearing.”
The next court hearing is scheduled for March 8, 2019.
