Experts say Baldwin prosecutors likely to try Stephen Nodine again on murder, stalking charges

Published: Wednesday, December 22, 2010, 5:30 AM

BAY MINETTE, Ala. — A Baldwin County judge Tuesday set a new trial date for former Mobile County Commissioner Stephen Nodine on murder and stalking charges, but it will be up to the new district attorney to decide if the state moves forward.

A jury on Monday convicted Nodine of a misdemeanor ethics violation but could not reach a unanimous verdict on charges that he stalked and killed his girlfriend, Angel Downs.

Circuit Judge Charles Partin scheduled the possible retrial for Feb. 28. Hallie Dixon, who defeated Baldwin County District Attorney Judy Newcomb in the Republican primary, will take office next month.

Newcomb said Monday that she believes the new administration should try the case again. Dixon said that she wants a chance to review the case and talk to Downs’ family before making a decision.

The Feb. 28 date keeps the case in the system but is not a hard date. Either side could request a delay. Since Newcomb prosecuted the case herself, several experts suggested, Dixon would need more than two months to put a new case together.

Jurors have said they split 9-3 in favor of conviction, which experts said is an important factor in a decision to retry a case.

“I’d say if it was a 9-3 split the other way, I’d go home,” said Mobile County District Attorney John Tyson Jr.

Tyson, who leaves office next month, said he believes it is likely Baldwin prosecutors will give it another try. The split, the strength of the evidence and the type of crime are all factors to consider, he said.

“The more serious the charge, the more seriously you have to take a look at the evidence, and the more seriously you have to think about the decision to do it or not,” he said.

Dixon said that deadlocked juries sometimes can spur plea bargains. But defense attorney Dennis Knizley said his client has maintained his innocence from the beginning and that a plea deal has been “off the table” from the start.

Dixon said that in any case that ends with a deadlocked jury, she will re-evaluate the entire case to gauge how likely it is that a second trial will end in conviction. How the first jury divided is a factor, she said.

“It’s not a mathematical equation by any means,” she said. “But in a general sense, I think it does affect the likelihood of success in the future.”

If there is a second trial, Knizley said Tuesday, he anticipates asking that it be moved to another jurisdiction. Although Knizley did not ask for a change of venue before the first trial, he said media coverage would make it extremely difficult to get a fair jury.

“There was absolute saturation during the trial, including the Twitter,” he said, referring to blow-by-blow accounts provided by TV reporters through the social networking site.

Since prosecutors are elected, outside influences sometimes can enter the decision to retry a high-profile case, some said.

“Politics can be a factor,” said. Deborah Young, a former federal prosecutor who followed the Nodine case. “And public opinion can be a factor.”

Young, who now teaches at Samford University’s Cumberland School of Law in Birmingham, said part of a prosecutor’s decision springs from how strong he or she feels the case is.

“Prosecutors always retry a case when they’re surprised by the result,” she said.

Experts said a second trial gives both sides an opportunity to address shortcomings exposed by the first trial. Which side benefits more? Experts said that depends on the case.

“Often, only the prosecutor puts on real evidence,” said Young.

Others said the prosecutors usually have less knowledge about the defense strategy than vice versa before the first trial, which means prosecutors have the upper hand in a retrial.

“Conventional wisdom is that a hung jury is a victory for the defense because there’s no conviction,” said Don Cochran, a Cumberland professor who previously worked as a state and federal prosecutor in Jefferson County. “I never really viewed it that way as a prosecutor.”

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Tomorrow's forecast today for coastal Alabama: Rain likely for Monday

Published: Sunday, November 28, 2010, 6:34 PM ??? Updated: Sunday, November 28, 2010, 6:34 PM

Today's low was 35. The record for Nov. 28 is 25, recorded in 1938.

Monday: Mostly cloudy, rain likely. Highs in the upper 60s to low 70s. Lows in the mid-50s to upper 60s. Chance of rain 50 percent, increasing to 70 percent Tuesday night.

Tuesday: Rain likely. Highs in the upper 60s. Lows in the mid- to upper 30s. Chance of rain 80 percent.

(For a complete forecast, see Monday's Press-Register. For other Alabama weather news, visit al.com/weather.)

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Market Meets New Wall of Worry Or More Likely Just Brief Profit-Taking On Way To Higher Highs

Stocks pulled back after a big advance and that can be good for bull markets

Most of the bricks in the previous wall of worry have been removed.?Economic reports have continued to improve over recent weeks; in manufacturing, the service sector, retail sales, durable goods orders, and even in the employment picture, where 151,000 new jobs were created in October, more than double the 70,000 that economists expected.

The uncertainty over the Federal Reserve’s QE2 decision has been resolved with the Fed adding to the stimulating atmosphere, providing another round of quantitative easing in spite of the already improving economy.

The major U.S. market indexes, including the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq rallied back to, and then above the potential resistance at their April peaks, before pulling back some this week.

Investors have become even more bullish and optimistic. This week’s poll of its members by the American Association of Individual Investors showed 57.6% bullish, the highest level in almost four years.

The good news apparently also reached Main Street. On Friday morning it was reported that the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index improved to 69.3 in early November (its highest level in five months) from 67.7 in October.

So what has been wrong with global markets this week?

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The U.S. market closed down roughly 2.5% for the week. Emerging markets, which many analysts projected would benefit the most from inflows of additional liquidity provided by the Fed’s decision, were down the most. Brazil, India, South Korea, closed down two to three percent for the week, while China closed down a big 5.5%. Meanwhile, Japan, a large developed country, which was not supposed to fare as well as emerging country markets, closed up 1.0% for the week.

A bet against emerging markets via the ProShares UltraShort Emerging Markets ETF, symbol EEV (designed to move up when emerging markets move down, and leveraged two to one) closed up almost 9.0% for the week.

Was it just that markets had become short-term overbought and ran into a brief bout of profit-taking, particularly since this was the week before the month’s options expirations week, and the week before tends to be negative?

If so, markets are likely to be back up next week since the decline this week took care of the short-term overbought condition, and next week is the week of the expirations, which tend to be positive.

Or was the decline the beginning of something more serious?

The market does seem to have a new wall of worry just a week after concerns about the economic recovery, and whether the Fed would or would not provide additional quantitative easing, faded away.

The bricks in the new wall of worry include:

• Concerns that the Fed’s additional stimulus may cause new problems rather than help the economy by encouraging home purchases or providing new jobs.
• Worries that commodity prices had spiked up into bubbles which may burst, a worry that struck Friday with the big $40 an ounce (3%) plunge in the price of gold, and equally large declines in the price of oil and other important commodities.
• Apprehensions about the activities of the Chinese government, including talk that it might hike interest rates to dramatically slow its globally important economy and ward off threatening excessive inflation in China.
• Anxiety about a potential currency or trade war if the decline in the U.S. dollar continues.

Via technical analysis there is also the U.S. market’s intermediate-term overbought condition above 20-week moving averages, and the high level of investor bullishness (which is at levels of complacency often seen at market tops).

The uncertainties have even extended to U.S. Treasury bonds, which investors have piled into as a perceived safe haven over the last two years. The safe haven over the last two months has actually been a bet against U.S. Treasury bonds. For instance, the ‘inverse’ ProShares Short 20-year bond etf, symbol TBF, designed to move up when bonds move down, has gained 11% since early September, while bonds have declined 11%.

There’s no doubt about it. We are still in a very fluid economic and investing period, not a time for investors to become so complacent as the investor sentiment readings seem to indicate, that they fall asleep at the switch.

(In the interest of full disclosure, we have positions in the U.S. market, the Japanese market, gold, and the ‘inverse’ bond ETF TBF, in our portfolio, at least at the moment).

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Market Meets New Wall of Worry Or More Likely Just Brief Profit-Taking On Way To Higher Highs

Stocks pulled back after a big advance and that can be good for bull markets

Most of the bricks in the previous wall of worry have been removed.?Economic reports have continued to improve over recent weeks; in manufacturing, the service sector, retail sales, durable goods orders, and even in the employment picture, where 151,000 new jobs were created in October, more than double the 70,000 that economists expected.

The uncertainty over the Federal Reserve’s QE2 decision has been resolved with the Fed adding to the stimulating atmosphere, providing another round of quantitative easing in spite of the already improving economy.

The major U.S. market indexes, including the Dow, S&P 500, and Nasdaq rallied back to, and then above the potential resistance at their April peaks, before pulling back some this week.

Investors have become even more bullish and optimistic. This week’s poll of its members by the American Association of Individual Investors showed 57.6% bullish, the highest level in almost four years.

The good news apparently also reached Main Street. On Friday morning it was reported that the Thomson Reuters/University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index improved to 69.3 in early November (its highest level in five months) from 67.7 in October.

So what has been wrong with global markets this week?

Special Offer: Jim Oberweis bought Baidu at $7.90, earning readers huge profits.? Click here for more recommended stocks in the?Oberweis Report.

The U.S. market closed down roughly 2.5% for the week. Emerging markets, which many analysts projected would benefit the most from inflows of additional liquidity provided by the Fed’s decision, were down the most. Brazil, India, South Korea, closed down two to three percent for the week, while China closed down a big 5.5%. Meanwhile, Japan, a large developed country, which was not supposed to fare as well as emerging country markets, closed up 1.0% for the week.

A bet against emerging markets via the ProShares UltraShort Emerging Markets ETF, symbol EEV (designed to move up when emerging markets move down, and leveraged two to one) closed up almost 9.0% for the week.

Was it just that markets had become short-term overbought and ran into a brief bout of profit-taking, particularly since this was the week before the month’s options expirations week, and the week before tends to be negative?

If so, markets are likely to be back up next week since the decline this week took care of the short-term overbought condition, and next week is the week of the expirations, which tend to be positive.

Or was the decline the beginning of something more serious?

The market does seem to have a new wall of worry just a week after concerns about the economic recovery, and whether the Fed would or would not provide additional quantitative easing, faded away.

The bricks in the new wall of worry include:

• Concerns that the Fed’s additional stimulus may cause new problems rather than help the economy by encouraging home purchases or providing new jobs.
• Worries that commodity prices had spiked up into bubbles which may burst, a worry that struck Friday with the big $40 an ounce (3%) plunge in the price of gold, and equally large declines in the price of oil and other important commodities.
• Apprehensions about the activities of the Chinese government, including talk that it might hike interest rates to dramatically slow its globally important economy and ward off threatening excessive inflation in China.
• Anxiety about a potential currency or trade war if the decline in the U.S. dollar continues.

Via technical analysis there is also the U.S. market’s intermediate-term overbought condition above 20-week moving averages, and the high level of investor bullishness (which is at levels of complacency often seen at market tops).

The uncertainties have even extended to U.S. Treasury bonds, which investors have piled into as a perceived safe haven over the last two years. The safe haven over the last two months has actually been a bet against U.S. Treasury bonds. For instance, the ‘inverse’ ProShares Short 20-year bond etf, symbol TBF, designed to move up when bonds move down, has gained 11% since early September, while bonds have declined 11%.

There’s no doubt about it. We are still in a very fluid economic and investing period, not a time for investors to become so complacent as the investor sentiment readings seem to indicate, that they fall asleep at the switch.

(In the interest of full disclosure, we have positions in the U.S. market, the Japanese market, gold, and the ‘inverse’ bond ETF TBF, in our portfolio, at least at the moment).

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