Alabama judge refuses dismissal in Confederate chair theft
Old Live Oak Cemetery, Selma, Alabama (Photo by Carol M. Highsmith/Buyenlarge/Getty Images)
SELMA, Ala. - An Alabama judge has refused to dismiss an indictment against a New Orleans tattoo artist accused in a bizarre theft in which a chair-shaped Confederate monument was taken from a cemetery and held for ransom.
Dallas County Circuit Judge Collins Pettaway Jr. refused to dismiss charges of theft and receiving stolen property against Jason Warnick, 33, in a brief decision released Thursday.
The judge rejected defense claims that there were problems with the indictment charging Warnick in the disappearance last year of a chair-shaped monument to Confederate President Jefferson Davis from 200-year-old Live Oak Cemetery in Selma. Warnick also claimed there wasn’t enough evidence to arrest him, but the judge refused to dismiss the charge.
Warnick was set to go on trial on Monday, but Pettaway delayed the case and scheduled a hearing for June 16.
Placed at the cemetery in 1893 by the United Daughters of the Confederacy, the chair vanished from its base last year in Selma, which was a Confederate arsenal during the Civil War and also is widely known as the site of voting rights demonstrations by Black activists in the 1960s.