One month after Greg Newman was removed from office as district attorney in a rare court proceeding, he has been approved to work in Asheville and Buncombe County as a defense attorney for indigent clients – those who have been accused of a crime and can’t afford a private lawyer.
Buncombe County Chief Public Defender Sam Snead on May 24 approved Newman to be placed on a list of attorneys who serve as court-appointed counsel for indigent people.
These lawyers are paid by the state’s Office of Indigent Defense Services to represent those accused of crimes but the public defender’s office has a conflict and cannot take their cases, or is too overburdened to take a case, Snead said.
North Carolina mother s attempted murder charge dropped
June 3, 2021
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ASHEVILLE, N.C. (AP) An attempted murder charge has been dropped against a North Carolina woman who authorities accused of faking her infant daughter’s kidnapping and trying to kill her.
Krista Noelle Madden was charged with first-degree attempted murder after her infant daughter was found 30 feet down a steep, heavily forested ravine in Henderson County on May 9, 2019, the Asheville Citizen Times reported.
Sean Devereux, Madden s attorney, said this week that psychological evaluations showed Madden was going through acute postpartum depression, as well as sleep deprivation, that resulted in a psychotic episode. Madden believed someone was going to harm her baby, so she drove to a rural area of the county and placed the baby at the bottom of an embankment, Devereux said.
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The District Attorney s Office and Phillip Michael Stroupe II s attorneys are working toward a guilty plea rather than proceeding with a capital murder trial later this year, according to court documents.
Stroupe is charged with first-degree murder in the July 26, 2017, death of Mills River resident Tommy Bryson. He is also charged with first-degree kidnapping and robbery with a dangerous weapon.
After ruling in March that Stroupe could represent himself, Superior Court Judge W. Robert Bell of Mecklenburg County on May 25 ordered the attorneys Stroupe fired - Mark Melrose and Sarah Ziomek - to represent him.
The attorneys and medical experts questioned Stroupe s capacity to represent himself based on the results of psychological and neurological testing.