5/08/09 – Judge Moves Tony Alamo Trial To July
Today’sTHV
May 8, 2009
The Associated Press
Judge Moves Tony Alamo Trial To July
A federal judge has delayed the trial for jailed evangelist Tony Alamo until July.
U.S. District Judge Harry Barnes granted Alamo’s attorney’s request to delay the trial, which had been set to begin May 18. In a one-page order issued Friday, Barnes said that the “ends of justice served by the granting of the continuance outweighs the best interests of the public and the defendant in a speedy trial.”
The trial is now set for 9 a.m. July 13.
A 10-count indictment against Alamo accuses him of sexually abusing five girls on separate occasions beginning in 1994, including a period when he was serving time at a halfway house in Texarkana. Alamo, who is 74, was arrested last September in Flagstaff, Arizona, five days after FBI agents and state police raided his church’s compound in southwest Arkansas.