By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
The defense attorney for Cheryl Leighanne Bennett continues attempting to ensure that he has in his possession all the evidence that prosecutors are required to provide him in the case in which Bennett and her mother, Donna Cheryl Logsdon, are accused of murdering Michael “Mickey” O. Logsdon.
Mickey Logsdon was Bennett’s father and Logsdon’s husband of more than 50 years. He died July 9, 2022, after the machine he needed to breathe was turned off, according to court records.
Bennett’s defense attorney, John Olash, was in Barren Circuit Court for a pretrial conference on Monday and said he had filed a couple of motions with regard to obtaining evidence from the special prosecutor, Kori Beck Bumgarner, who said she had received them Friday afternoon and requested two weeks to review and consider them.
Bumgarner said she believes that in the interim she and Olash could come to an agreement as to what needs to happen and submit an agreed order for the judge’s approval.
Circuit Judge John T. Alexander said it would be preferable that the parties work out something on their own.
“There are going to be some details that have to get hashed out, and if I do it after a hearing, it’s like hitting it with a meat cleaver, but if you all do it, it’s like taking a scalpel to it, so it’s probably going to make more sense. Can you live with that?” he asked Olash who affirmed he could.
A new pretrial conference was set for Feb. 5.
Olash said he can withdraw one of the motions regarding a cell phone, because he has learned that the phone has been returned by the Glasgow Police Department to Bennett, but he is still seeking access to information from a Ring doorbell account.
He asked Bumgarner, who is the second special prosecutor appointed after the Kentucky Office of the Attorney General acted in that capacity but then withdrew, whether she was staying on the case. She said she is the attorney of record on the case and that she had contacted him recently to let him know she had COVID and would not be able to get with him as discussed at the last pretrial conference to provide him the opportunity to examine the BiPap – bilevel positive airway pressure – machine that Mickey Logsdon had used. She said she does believe they can get that done now before the next court date.
Olash then presented the judge with an order he wanted the judge to sign, saying that the case was based on the idea that the machine had been manipulated in the six hours prior to the death. He said the machine has usage records for every day since Logsdon started using it in February 2022, but he had only received the record for only the day of the death and a monthly summary.
“These usage records show breaths per minute, leakage and other graphs which I don’t understand,” he said.
Olash said the data is uploaded remotely to a monitoring company, and the records he has received so far show, “it was turned off a lot the night that Michael Logsdon died.” He said the machine also has an SD card where the data is stored and from which the information can be downloaded, and the data is also sent remotely to another, larger company in Pennsylvania that would also have the records. So, the order he submitted would compel the Pennsylvania office to send its records to the prosecutor and defense attorney at the same time.
Alexander asked Olash whether, now that he had explained what he was seeking to Bumgarner, he would be willing to “put a pin it” until they meet again Feb. 5, to see whether it can be addressed with the other evidentiary matter in the interim, because he hasn’t received a written motion regarding that and Bumgarner had not received anything either.
Donna Cheryl Logsdon also appeared before the judge in person Monday; Bumgarner and Bennett appeared via the streaming service Zoom.
Rob Eggert was named as the defense attorney for Logsdon last fall around the same time that Olash became Bennett’s attorney, but if he was present via Zoom Monday, he did not speak. Olash has typically been the only defense attorney participating in court proceedings, essentially covering for both, since the two defendants hired separate attorneys instead of having local attorney Johnny Bell represent them both.
Olash also asked whether the judge would be willing to reconsider the bond amount of $500,000 cash for Bennett, which came after she violated her previous bond conditions multiple times by using drugs and was placed back in custody in October. He suggested adding a new condition of outpatient treatment with LifeSkills and random and weekly drug testing by LifeSkills as well as You Turn monitoring service
, which was doing it previously.
Bumgarner reiterated Bennett’s record of violating the conditions and said she felt the current bond was appropriate and commensurate with the charges.
Alexander said he has given some thought to other options and had not decided to do anything different at this point, but he would think about it more before the next court date.
Olash asked whether they could set aside a court date at a time separate from the full Monday dockets, because if his client continues to stay in jail, he wants to present some exculpatory proof he thinks the court should hear. He said that would include information about “motive of prosecution” and that “this machine had some history of defects.”
Alexander said that if they needed to have any type of extensive hearing, that would be set for a different date and time, and Olash said he would file a motion.
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