Here is why Lisa Tanner, an assistant attorney general with the prosecutor assistance division (I know they call it something else now, but we all know it by that title) couldn't be in Corpus Christi this week to receive the TDCAA C. Chris Marshall Award for excellence in training prosecutors:

Jury selected in 1983 KFC slayings trial 3:20 PM CT
03:18 PM CDT on Thursday, September 27, 2007

Associated Press
NEW BOSTON, Texas � A jury was seated Thursday in the capital murder trial of a man accused of killing five people abducted from a Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in 1983.

Opening arguments in the trial of Romeo Pinkerton, 49, are set to begin Oct 15. He could face the death penalty if convicted in the Sept. 23, 1983, slayings.

Rusk County District Judge J. Clay Gossett said a panel of seven men and eight women, which includes three alternates, will serve on the jury. The selection process took more than a month.

Pinkerton, of Tyler, will be the first defendant to go to trial in the deaths of Mary Tyler, 37; Opie Ann Hughes, 39; David Maxwell, 20; Joey Johnson, 20; and Monte Landers, 19. Pinkerton and his cousin, Darnell Hartsfield, also from Tyler, have been charged with capital murder in the killings.

The victims were abducted during a holdup of a KFC restaurant in Kilgore and found dead the next morning along a remote oilfield road about 15 miles away in rural Rusk County.

Gossett moved Pinkerton's trial about 90 miles north to Bowie County, in far northeast Texas, because of publicity in the area where the crime occurred.

[Congratulations on getting a jury and for the award, Lisa]

As someone who had the pleasure of working with Chris I can say without hesitation that Lisa is absolutely deserving of the award. I can't imagine the trial skills course without her demonstrative evidence talk! Congrats on the award Lisa!

Not only is Lisa a great trial prosecutor, great teacher and just generally impressive legally speaking, she is such a great person. Congrats!

Greg

Thanks guys. I appreciate your kind words.
I was really, really disappointed to miss the annual this year, even had the award not been in play.

On the other hand, it is a huge relief to have a jury in the box after 7 weeks of voir dire.

Your peers know you and Ms. Popps are working hard to bring justice to the victims in those cases. And those victims could not be in better prosecutorial hands, my friend.

Pinkerton pleads guilty to deaths of 5 in KFC killings
HENDERSON, Texas � David Maxwell said he felt a sense of relief mixed with sadness as Romeo Pinkerton pleaded guilty to the deaths of five people abducted from a restaurant in what became one of Texas' most notorious and longest-unsolved mass murder cases.

Maxwell's father was one of the five found dead on Sept. 24, 1983, along an East Texas oilfield road about 15 miles away from the Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant in Kilgore where they were abducted during a holdup the night before.

On Monday, Pinkerton, 49, admitted to the deaths as part of a plea bargain offered by the Texas Attorney General's Office. In exchange for the plea, he received a life sentence for each of the five deaths. He had faced a possible death penalty if convicted.

Killed were Mary Tyler, 37; Opie Ann Hughes, 39; David Maxwell, 20; Joey Johnson, 20; and Monte Landers, 19.

"We're glad we're finally moving on and hopefully this will help us all finish moving on," David Maxwell, 23, said in a story for Tuesday's Tyler Morning Telegraph. His father died before he was born.

"Knowing kind of what happened, maybe I can move past that. I think a lot of the anger comes from the fact that there was nothing for so long. Every time you thought you were at that point, you weren't."

Four of the victims worked at the KFC, about 25 miles east of Tyler and 115 miles east of Dallas. The fifth was a friend of one of the employees.

A second defendant in the slayings, Pinkerton's cousin Darnell Hartsfield, has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting trial early next year. A call to Hartsfield's attorney, Donald Killingsworth, went unanswered Monday night.

After he was sentenced, Pinkerton listened stoically as the victims' families addressed him with victim impact statements.

"I don't think you're really sorry for what you did, and there isn't any way for me to shame you into it," Lana Dunkerley told Pinkerton. An 18-year-old newlywed when her husband David Maxwell was killed, she wore her wedding ring Monday.

Her son told Pinkerton, "You were facing the death penalty, and you got to say no. You can't stand up and take your punishment like a man. You should be ashamed of yourself for wimping out."

Jack Hughes, husband of victim Opie Hughes, lashed out in anger at his wife's murderer.

"You had no right," he said. "No one has the right to be the animal that you are. I want you to think of me for the next 100 years. When you draw your last breath of life, that's when your punishment will begin."

Judge J. Clay Gossett said in a brief release that the families of the victims approved the plea bargain.

"Romeo Pinkerton's admission of guilt ends decades of uncertainty for the families of five innocent victims," Attorney General Greg Abbott said in a release.

"This guilty plea will not bring back the lives lost in 1983, but today marks a critical milestone on the path to justice," Abbott said.

George Kieny, a retired FBI agent who broke the case, said he couldn't comment in detail because a gag order remained in the case, but added that he was "extremely pleased with the results today."

In 2000, Kieny was hired by Rusk County Sheriff James Stroud to work on the case. Subsequent DNA testing of crime scene evidence allegedly linked the defendants to the murders.

"There are five dead people and it may have been a long time ago, but there are still five dead people," defense attorney Jeff Haas told the Morning Telegraph. "We pleaded guilty to five offenses of murder with no affirmation of finding use of a deadly weapon."

While the case was moved to Bowie County, about 100 miles from Kilgore, Pinkerton entered his plea Monday in Henderson.