Portraits of Four Scumbag Losers, One of Whom is Dead

Owens Cross Roads Homeowner Kills 1 During Home Invasion, 3 Accomplices Charged with Murder

By Crystal Bonvillian | cbonvillian@al.com
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on February 11, 2015 at 2:24 PM, updated February 12, 2015 at 11:46 AM

DECEASED – Richard William Taylor, 42, was killed by a homeowner when, earlier in the day, under a ruse to use the homeowner’s telephone, he and three accomplices later broke into the home at night… and was then shot & killed by the homeowner as they broke into the home. May the shithead rot in HADES, and may his grave be urinated upon by mangy coyotes. Scumbag Piece Of Shit

Richard William Taylor was slain Monday as he attempted a home invasion in Owens Cross Roads, according to investigators, and his three accomplices have been charged with murder in his death.

Audra Anderson Ikard, 42, was the girlfriend of the DECEASED. Too bad she wasn’t killed, too. Ugly skank.

None of the three pulled the trigger of the gun that killed Taylor, 42, but they are all being held responsible for his slaying. Those arrested are Jeremy Floyd Jones, 29; Audra Lynn Anderson Ikard, 42; and Brandi Michelle Seagroves, 26.

Ikard was Taylor’s girlfriend, said Sgt. Brian Chaffin of the Madison County Sheriff’s Office.

All three are charged with murder, robbery, burglary and criminal mischief in the case. Jones is also charged with theft of property stemming from a similar incident the week before.

Chaffin said the foursome went to the home of the victim, located in the 100 block of Plainview Drive, earlier in the day on Monday asking to use her phone. She refused to let them inside.

100 block of Plainview Drive, Owens Cross Roads, AL – Approximate area of the break-in

They returned around 9:30 p.m. that night and forced their way in, Chaffin said.

Corruption in Alabama politics: Oh yeah… they’re Republican.

This is the same 57-year-old Jane Smith, Circuit Court Clerk for Madison County, Alabama who plead guilty to three federal misdemeanors in federal court recently for sharing her high-level password to the state’s judicial system computer records in 2009, avoided jail time, was fined $5000, and placed on one year probation.

She was first elected in 2000, and to her credit, is widely credited with modernizing the clerk’s office and making it among the most efficient in the state.

Jane Smith, Circuit Court Clerk, Madison County, Alabama

Madison County Circuit Clerk plans to stop processing passport applications, cites confusion over fees

Published: Friday, March 30, 2012, 7:08 AM

By Brian Lawson, The Huntsville Times

Madison County Circuit Clerk Jane Smith (Submitted photo)

HUNTSVILLE, Alabama — Madison County Circuit Clerk Jane Smith said Thursday she will soon stop collecting passport applications, which include a $25 processing fee she is personally allowed to keep.

Federal law sets the fee, and under Alabama law circuit clerks are allowed to keep passport handling fees. Smith said the law was in place before she was elected in 2001. The office began collecting the fees in 1977.

But Smith, who won a third term as clerk in the Republican primary March 13, said ongoing cuts to state court budgets and “continuing confusion over using these fees for official expenses” led her to decide to stop collecting the applications as of May 1.

The funds are not public, though they are collected as part of a public official‘s duties. Smith has said she deposits the collected fees into her bank account and

Alabama’s inept governor & legislature are clueless on how to remedy problems. And in other news…

Face it folks, Alabama MUST change its tax policy and law – something about which Alabamians have been warned for quite some time. It’s not as if we’ve never heard the idea or notion, for indeed, Alabama’s income tax assesses a heavier levy upon the poor than the wealthy, and many large corporate timberland-owners (Georgia Pacific, Weyerhauser, International Paper, Gulf States Paper, et al) pay little or nothing on their vast holdings by comparison to others.

As the issue of a potential shut-down of state services (the forensics lab in Huntsville) relates to criminal prosecution, I could imagine that a sharp attorney could move for dismissal of charges based upon delay of prosecution – which is a federal Constitutional issue – because the Sixth Amendment guarantees the accused the right to a speedy trial, among other aspects of prosecution.

And that issue – a violation of the Sixth Amendment – is one reason why I can imagine former UAH professor Amy Bishop – accused of murdering her colleagues – may have a federal case on her side, because the state of Alabama has virtually shut down all funding of public defense and defenders.

Just to remind the readers, the Sixth Amendment reads: “In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.”

And for those readers whom, for one reason or another, are not up to speed on the wranglings of Alabama politics, India Lynch vs. State of Alabama – the federal case in which Alabama’s tax policies were on trial – ended in October 2011, with a 854-page ruling in the state’s favor by His Honor, Judge Lynwood Smith in which existing tax structures & organization were found not to be unconstitutional. That story may be found here.

Alabama State Capitol Building, Montgomery, AL

The background: Alabama’s state income tax kicks in for families that earn as little a $4,600. Mississippi starts at over $19,000. Alabamians with incomes under $13,000 pay 10.9 percent of their incomes in state and local taxes, while those who make over $229,000 pay just 4.1 percent. Alabama relies heavily on state sales tax, which runs as high as 11 percent and applies even to groceries and infant formula.

A primary reason Alabama’s poor pay so much is that large timber companies and megafarms pay so little. The state allows big landowners to value their land using ”current use” rules, which significantly underestimate its value. Then individuals are allowed to fully deduct the federal income taxes they pay from their state taxes, something few states allow, which is a boon for those in the top income brackets.

So yeah.

We’re very fouled up here in the heart of Dixie.

And while the GOP controls the Governor’s Office, State House & Senate and most all high-level state offices, there are no signs of progress toward equity or justice.

But read on to learn why…

Potential cuts for state forensics: ‘It’s going to impact everybody’s lives’

Published: Saturday, March 10, 2012, 10:55 AM

By Paul Gattis, The Huntsville Times

Marijuana, cocaine, methamphetamines.

The evidence spans 18,000 different cases. And maybe by 2013, Lonnie Ginsberg hopes, the state will process most everything on those 12 shelves.

Maybe.

This is the uncertain world Ginsberg oversees in cash-strapped Alabama. The director of the Huntsville lab on Arcadia Circle, Ginsberg manages a complex he describes as overworked and understaffed – which is why some drugs confiscated by law enforcement may sit on a shelf for a year before being analyzed.

Given that scenario, Ginsberg is

Conservatives prepare demands for budget talks

Certainly, there’s little or no disagreement that much change is needed in the way that national politics works. At its heart however, politics is the art of compromise. And politics, first begins in the home – because neither daddy, mama, nor children always get their way; but on occasion, daddy gets his way, mama gets hers, and by mutual consent with mama & daddy, on occasion the children get theirs. Changing the tenor of political operation in this nation begins with a few points, the first of which is that that we all love this nation, and seek the best for the people. One thing I’d like to see – which others have similarly expressed – is Term Limitations in the House and Senate; perhaps five in the House (10 years) and two in the Senate (12 years), for a grand total of 22 years service.

House conservatives prepare strong demands to raise the debt-ceiling

By Erik Wasson – 05/07/11 09:55 AM ET

House conservatives appear comfortable with being unable to get Medicare reform in exchange for the debt ceiling being raised and are coalescing around other strong demands including enactment of a balanced budget amendment.

Tea Party-backed freshmen and the Republican Study Committee are

AL GOP Rep Mo Brooks, 5th, confesses incompetence

You’d never have imagined hearing the radical Madison county Republican cozying up to his favorite pork projects in North Alabama. But hey, any job is a good job in this economy, eh, Mo? And you sure as Hell don’t want to put folks out of work… now DO you, Mo? Seems like you’re caught between the proverbial “rock and a hard place,” old man.

Those “pork barrels” sure do look different when they belong to you, don’t they? (I think they’re called “JOBS” and they belong to those class of people you call your “constituents.”)

Let’s buy more waterproof coffee pots, HSNDDs, and HSBLDs – hard steel nail driving devices, and highly specialized bullet launching devices.

Instead, why don’t we spend some money to  improve (translation: INVEST in improving) our national infrastructure – roads, electrical power grid, waterways, schools and parks? Surely you remember GOP President, former 5 Star General Dwight David Eisenhower‘s warning about the “military industrial complex,” don’t you?

 

Congress will cut defense, Congressman Mo Brooks says, possibly programs in Huntsville

Published: Thursday, February 03, 2011, 5:30 AM     Updated: Thursday, February 03, 2011, 6:12 AM

HUNTSVILLE, AL – U.S. Rep. Mo Brooks, R-Huntsville, said here Wednesday that Congress will “probably” cut defense spending next year, possibly including R&D programs based in Huntsville, but, if he gets his way, it will boost