Blackwood Says He Will Stay on Case for Retrials

Senior Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood today refused to step aside in the criminal cases involving Channon Christian and Christopher Newsom, the Knoxville News Sentinel reports. Assistant District Attorney General Leland Price argued that Blackwood's disgust with the misdeeds of disgraced former Judge Richard Baumgartner, who presided over the trials of the torture slaying defendants, had caused him to lose objectively in the case.