For some reason, this message continues to get under the skin of supporters of Tecumseh's Greg Wilson. Tonight I received E-mail purporting to be from Wilson himself, angrily denouncing the charges he faced in 2003, although in a completely angry-literate way, not like the angry-illiterate way of this note from a few weeks back.

At least this one made it through the mail OK because the sender entered an E-mail address correctly, but it's a Hotmail address, and I have no way of knowing if the sender is who he claims to be or not. He (?) did, however, want to know where my "follow-up opinion" was about the trial. He implied that he was acquitted, but managed not to actually state as much.

So I went to Google with "Tecumseh mayor acquitted" and found this in a year-in-review article covering 2003 in Pottawatomie County:

Not guilty.

It took a six-person Pottawatomie County jury precisely six minutes to return that verdict in the case of Tecumseh Mayor Greg Wilson and Bart Sigman, another Tecumseh resident. The two were accused of furnishing beer to minors after the Tecumseh Alumni Association banquet in May of 2002. It took nine months and a change of district attorneys to get the case to trial.

Wilson said he was prepared to move on to more positive things but Sigman was still upset after the quick acquittals.

So, there you go. But I had to look twice, as it looked like a false positive. This was where Wilson's name was first mentioned in the January section:

POLITICS - Charlie Laster, a lawyer from Shawnee, easily defeated Tecumseh Mayor Greg Wilson in the Democratic Primary to nominate a successor to Gov. Henry in the State Senate. Laster got 3,358 votes to only 1,352 for Wilson, who didn't even carry Tecumseh. The general election will be on Feb. 11 when Laster will square off against Kris Steele, a Republican state representative from Shawnee.

The March section also had this fascinating legal tidbit:

MISTRIAL MISUNDERSTOOD? - A Pottawatomie County prosecutor said she felt the jury misunderstood its options in a case which resulted in a light sentence for a Tecumseh couple accused of beating a ten-year-old girl to the point of blindness. The couple was convicted on charges of child neglect but acquitted on a charge of felony abuse. The sentence was two weeks in jail for both defendants. Deputy District Attorney Pattye High said she felt "a couple of the jurors" had "life experiences" and "just weren't going to get there" and the rest didn't understand what would happen if a mistrial resulted.

And from the same school board that went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court to win the right to perform random, supervised body-fluid drug tests on the very kids who show absolutely no signs of using drugs?

PADDLING APPROVAL - Patrons of the Tecumseh school system indicated support for reinstating corporal punishment under controlled conditions. The school board held a special meeting to weigh public support for the approval. Tecumseh has had a no-spanking policy for about a dozen years.

My follow-up opinion: Tecumseh is a strange place.