Senior judge appointed to Facebook murder case, March 2017 hearing set on claim of new evidence

The Tennessee Supreme Court has appointed a senior judge to hear arguments about possible new evidence in the so-called Facebook murders case revealed in the lead prosecutor's true-crime book on the case.Chief Justice Sharon G. Lee issued the order appointing Senior Judge Don R. Ash to preside over Jenelle Potter and Barbara Potter's cases. The mother and daughter's conviction on two counts of first-degree murder were on appeal when their attorneys filed writs of coram nobis for each one after discovering what they say is evidence Assistant District Attorney Dennis Brooks never turned over to them under the Brady rule.That rule requires prosecutors to give the defense all evidence, harmful or exculpatory, before trial.Ash has set three days aside next year for the hearing. It's scheduled for March 13-15 in Jonesborough.After the Potters were sentenced and shipped off to prison, Brooks published the book "Too Pretty to Die." It's his true-crime account of the case and his experience investigating and prosecuting it.Defense attorneys Randy Fallin and Tate Davis, who represent Barbara Potter, filed an extensive writ in July detailing passages from Brooks' book they say prove he withheld evidence.A writ of corm nobis is a legal avenue to correct an error that, if it hadn't happened, would have resulted in a different conclusion.Jenelle Potter and her parents, Marvin 'Buddy" and Barbara Potter, were all convicted of two counts of first-degree murder in the Jan. 31, 2012, shooting deaths of Bill Payne, 36, and Billie Jean Hayworth, 23, inside that couple's Johnson County home.Marvin Potter's trial was held in 2013. His wife and daughter were tried last year. Jamie Curd was set to stand trial with the women, but he struck a deal with prosecutors and testified against them in exchange for a 25-year sentence for pleading guilty to facilitation to second-degree murder. The evidence attorneys say wasn't turned over to them includes statements made by Curd and footage from a video trail camera placed outside the Potter home in an attempt to catch anyone vandalizing the property. Barbara Potter made several reports to the sheriff's office that people were driving by their home to harass them and causing damage to their property.Before the slayings, Payne had befriended Jenelle Potter, and through Payne, Jenelle Potter met Curd, who was Payne's cousin. Prosecutors said Jenelle Potter had a crush on Payne, but he began dating Hayworth and she developed a hatred for Hayworth and her friends.Jenelle also developed a crush on Curd, a self-taught computer fix-it guy who often worked on the Potters' computer as well as Payne's.During Jenelle and Barbara's trial last year, defense attorneys said Curd could have easily manipulated both computers to show emails were sent from one or the other. That was to refute the state computer expert's testimony, which unequivocally said thousands of emails from Jenelle and Barbara to a mysterious man named Chris — supposedly a CIA agent who was in Mountain City watching all that was going on but couldn't get involved — originated from the Potter computer.The petition for a writ of coram nobis Jenelle Potter filed Aug. 1 is not as detailed as her mother's and is handwritten by Jenelle. It does state the basic claim that prosecutors never turned over footage from a video camera installed near the Potter home and statements Curd made to investigators the defense never knew about."There are several issues raised in the book written by Mr. Brooks that were not disclosed to my lawyer or me," Jenelle Potter wrote. She asked for a judge to appoint her trial attorney, Cameron Hyder, to represent her in the new petition. That request has been granted.Before Jenelle and Barbara Potter's trial, defense attorneys attempted to stop Brooks from writing the book, but the trial judge — Senior Judge Jon Kerry Blackwood, who has since retired from the bench entirely — said he had no control over what Brooks did in his free time. Brooks said at that time that he consulted with the Board of Professional Responsibility and was told there was nothing barring him from writing a book after the trial was over.The book was published about eight months after the trial."The book is not appropriate and is written by a prosecutor who hates me," Jenelle Potter wrote in her writ petition. "He violated the law." She went on to say that, "Mr. Brooks lied to make himself look good during an election year. Please give me a new trial."After filing the writ in July, Fallin said the newly discovered evidence would have changed the defense's approach to the case. "The whole tenor of the trial would have been different," Fallin said after filing the writ. "The book Dennis wrote, we read it and there was stuff in there we didn't know about."If a judge grants the defense's petitions, the Potter women could win a new trial.