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Lawyer says cult leader Tony Alamo should get new trial
Tony Alamo should get a new trial because sex with minors was “incidental” to his purpose for traveling across state lines, his lawyer argues in Alamo’s most recent appellate brief.
Alamo was convicted in July 2009 of 10 counts in a federal indictment accusing him of bringing five young girls he wed as children across state lines for sex in violation of the Mann Act.
Little Rock defense attorney John Wesley Hall Jr. argues the government got it wrong when the jury was told it had to find that a dominant purpose of travel for the victims was to provide Alamo access to them for sex.
[...]Hall’s brief also argues Alamo deserves to be resentenced by a different judge because of statements U.S. District Judge Harry Barnes made after imposing a 175-year term.
The brief accuses Barnes of imposing his “own sense of religiosity” when he “referenced a higher judge, God.”
At sentencing Barnes told Alamo that, “One day you will face a higher and greater judge than me. May he have mercy on your soul.”
Hall argues the 175-year sentence, the maximum, wasn’t necessary to ensure that a 75-year-Alamo would spend the rest of his life in prison and was imposed as “religious penance.”
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