Hired Gun

Legal revenge in Kentucky

A night of drinking and arguing ended for Leonard Roberts and Robert Melton in a liquor-store parking lot outside the coal-mining town of Hazard, Ky., when Roberts pulled out his gun and fatally shot Melton. The incident was not unusual in the isolated, often violent hills of eastern Kentucky. Nor was the reaction of Melton's father Carl, 70. He wanted revenge, which is considered almost a family duty in a part of the world where blood feuds can last for generations. But instead of taking the old route of getting a gun and going outside the law to seek vengeance, Melton hired a lawyer. The attorney's job: to make sure the state put Roberts behind bars for as long as possible.

Known as "special prosecutors," private lawyers are widely used in Kentucky to assist state prosecutors, especially in murder cases. "There's a feeling in eastern Kentucky that if someone in your family is killed, you're not going to be shamed in the eyes of the rest of the community by not having your own attorney," says Charles Coy, a Richmond, Ky., lawyer who has been hired several times as a special prosecutor. The state prosecutors do not mind, since they are often hamstrung by a lack of resources. The commonwealth attorney for Perry County, where the Melton shooting took place a year and a half ago, has no investigators to interview witnesses or do any other legal legwork. The prosecutor must assent before a private lawyer can actually argue a criminal case in court, but some are willing just to make a statement of the case at the beginning of the trial and turn the rest over to the lawyer hired by the victim's family. Kentucky Attorney General Robert Stephens sees no legal or ethical barrier, but former U.S. Attorney General Edward Levi, now a law professor at the University of Chicago, has some doubts. He warns that the judge must be careful to see that the defendant is not getting railroaded.

Legal revenge is expensive; fees for special prosecutors in murder cases run from $5,000 to $10,000, and some lawyers speculate that Melton paid a private lawyer $25,000. He denies it, but whatever he paid, he was not satisfied with the result, a ten-year prison term for Roberts for manslaughter. Says Melton: "He should've gotten more."

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