By MELINDA J. OVERSTREET
for Glasgow News 1
Cheryl Leighanne Bennett, who, along with her mother, is charged with murder in relation to the death of Michael “Mickey” O. Logsdon, Bennett’s father, continues to remain out of jail on bond after a hearing on the matter in Barren Circuit Court on Friday.
Bennett has repeatedly – by testing positive for methamphetamine use – violated the terms of the bond that has allowed her, for most of the nearly two years since her father’s death, to avoid incarceration in lieu of being mostly confined to the home of her mother, Donna Cheryl Logsdon.
Circuit Judge John T. Alexander has thus far imposed a series of progressively restrictive consequences, attempting to balance Bennett’s need to get help for her addiction issues and the need to be clear that bond conditions are not imposed, essentially, just for the heck of it.
After her late 2022 arrest on the murder charge, Bennett’s bond was set at $500,000, but it was later reduced for her to only have to actually produce 10 percent of that, and she was on “house arrest,” with an ankle monitor, random drug testing and other conditions.
Logsdon’s bond was also set at $500,000/10 percent, and she has remained out of jail since roughly two weeks after her arrest in January 2023.
In October, it was determined that for the third time last year, Bennett had a drug test that came back positive for methamphetamine. The first time, in April, Alexander had her stay in jail for 30 days before allowing her release. In June, her attorneys and the prosecutors worked out an agreement for her to go to an out-of-state treatment facility, where she stayed for 10 weeks before returning to Kentucky. A third preliminary test took place Oct. 9, with lab results returned a few days later to confirm the presence of methamphetamine, and she was re-arrested on Oct. 13 with the full $500,000 as the bond again.
After a March 8 during which her attorney, John Olash, sought to have her bond reduced and she expressed an interest in getting intensive outpatient therapy, she was released again March 13 from the Barren County Detention Center, this time in lieu of a $100,000 bond of which she was required to produce 10 percent in surety.
In early May, she had two urine tests, six days apart, that indicated she had been using methamphetamine, according to testimony at Friday’s hearing from William Fuller, owner of You Turn Court Monitoring Service.
Blake Chambers, special prosecutor for both the murder case and a pre-existing 2022 case in which Bennett is charged with first-degree possession of methamphetamine, third or more offense; buying or possessing drug paraphernalia; and public intoxication from a controlled substance other than alcohol, said the commonwealth had made an offer on her drug case that would have placed her on probation for those charges. Had she taken the offer, the motion to revoke bond would have been withdrawn, he said, but it was his understanding that she was rejecting the offer.
Olash confirmed that he had conveyed the offer to her and she declined it.
Fuller’s company had provided the reports to the court about the drug testing, and he testified upon questioning from Chambers that they indicated bond violations.
The urine samples in question were collected May 1 and May 7 by the outpatient treatment center Bennett has been using, though, rather than at You Turn, and sent directly to the lab used to verify initial field testing, Fuller said. Up to that point, since she last got out of jail, her other tests had not been dirty, nor have any of the tests since then.
Olash asked a series of questions, including some about who had been provided with a list of Bennett’s prescription medications and when, that were clearly designed to imply that Bennett was taking a prescription medication that metabolizes in such a way that it could yield a false-positive test result. Fuller acknowledged that some substances – even use of a Vicks inhaler – could produce a test result that indicates meth use. He also testified that false positives may occur with the initial field testing. You Turn does with field strips, but You Turn didn’t check these samples because they weren’t collected there, and the lab he uses also tests for isomers that would indicate whether any other substance could be producing the result to rule out such false positives.
Olash questioned Fuller’s ability to accurately interpret the report the lab sent. While Fuller acknowledged he is not a lab technician and could not speak the specific types of testing the lab uses, he could understand it to the extent any typical person could, and he read an example of the language provided in the report.
Olash had indicated at a previous pretrial conference that he may have an expert witness to discuss the possibility of a prescription drug’s creating a positive result, but he produced no such witness Friday.
After Olash began to be somewhat redundant with his questioning and Chambers objected, Alexander paused the testimony and essentially, with Fuller’s confirmations, explained the process based on his experience with it.
While he aimed to provide the opposing attorneys the opportunity to make their arguments, he told them outright that he didn’t want them to spend a lot of time talking about whether the results were valid, because he believed, based on the testimony, that methamphetamine use was indicated.
Olash said that meant they should focus on what an appropriate sanction should be, but he urged the judge to consider the entirety of the case, and, because her drug tests had been negative since early May, he felt that additional incarceration would be “unduly punitive.”
Chambers said they were there because the defendant “can’t stop using meth,” and anytime there is meth use, there is a felony involved because it had to be obtained somehow. He added that he’s ready to try the 2022 possession case, but the judge said he doesn’t want them to lose sight of the larger case by diverting their resources to the other one.
He added, “I’m not ignoring it. I’m not leaving it. I’m triaging it.”
By definition, Alexander said, a felony is a serious crime, so he wasn’t saying the possession case wasn’t serious.
Alexander said Bennett may have had a “slip up,” because these results were isolated within the overall time period since her release from jail in mid-March.
“I think it would cause more problems than it would solve if I say, ‘You’re going to jail today,’” the judge said.
Ultimately, the judge said that he intended for this time to simply record a finding that bond violations had occurred, but moving forward, if he got another report from You Turn with a dirty test result, he would have Bennett taken into custody then, and they would deal with any arguments after that.
Looking at Bennett, he said that if he ends up in a position where this bond issue was “using up too much air,” then his only option may become taking the issue off the table and letting her remain in jail.
She nodded.
Some additional matters related to medical reports Olash wanted were discussed, along with getting a clarification established that Bennett could be in her yard – technically 50 feet from the foundation of the house – before the hearing of more than an hour concluded.
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