OGDEN -- Some 75 recovering alcoholics and substance abusers took over the bowery at Lorin Farr Park Saturday evening for the 4th annual Ogden Drug Court Alumni Picnic. About 200 family members and friends joined the gathering with the alumni group, one of the stronger components of the 2nd District Court alternative program for drug abusers. When the first alumni group of drug court graduates gathered about 41/2 years ago to form the alumni committee, their number was about five. Typically it takes a year to get through the intensive therapies and testing of drug court to reach alumni status. [continues 375 words]
OGDEN -- A judge threw out a manslaughter charge Wednesday against a man accused of fueling an acquaintance's drug overdose. "The victim really caused his own death," 2nd District Judge Ernie Jones said. "The victim was the intervening factor. The defendant only provided the drug." The prosecution told the judge they would appeal his dismissal of the manslaughter charge against Harold Eugene Harmon, 55, in the death last year of Cheyenne Gordon, 33, from an overdose of methadone. Harmon is still charged with first-degree felony distribution, which carries a heavier penalty than the manslaughter charge would have. A status conference was set for Aug. 10. [continues 310 words]
First Class Receives Cheers Of Success, Hopes To Stay Clean OGDEN -- The party started with the words "Remain seated. Court is now in session," from 2nd District Judge Roger Dutson's bailiff. The occasion was the "graduation" of the first six former drug defendants from Dutson's 17-month old drug court, one of less than a dozen of the experimental attempts sometimes called therapeutic justice that have popped up in Utah in the last six years. After remarks from dignitaries, the graduates stood Tuesday with a prosecutor and a public defender who together made a motion to dismiss their charges. [continues 638 words]
They've Been Described As Both Theater And Therapeutic Justice Everybody says you really have to see one. Bailiffs hugging defendants. Tears, jeers and cheers from the gallery. Urged, even egged on -- by a judge. The first one was set up in 1989 in Miami by a then little-known prosecutor named Janet Reno. By 1995 Utah had its first and as of last month so did Ogden: drug courts. They've been described as theater, therapeutic justice, even a tent revival, turning the judge into a cheerleader with a club as the courtroom audience reacts like a pep rally to the goings on. [continues 837 words]
