John Russell Hall’s criminal record extends back to at least the mid 1990s, and includes two felony convictions, and a handful of misdemeanor convictions.
His record also includes the dismissal of several other cases, and all total, Hall’s record includes relatively little jail time. Some have expressed outrage that Hall’s criminal record has not been handled more harshly, but Pike County Attorney Howard Keith Hall told EKB News this week that even considering John Hall’s prior offenses, there was no way to predict that he would eventually kill a police officer.
According to the booking log at the Pike County Detention Center, John Russell Hall, the man accused of murdering Pikeville Police Officer Scotty Hamilton, has been booked into the jail 19 times since 1995. However, that does not mean Hall has 19 criminal cases in his court file.
According to court documents, since 1995, Hall has been arrested 7 times on misdemeanor charges; Two of those charges involved assault allegations stemming from private complaints. Pike County Attorney Howard Keith Hall said this week that those complaints were resolved to the complainant’s satisfaction, including one dismissal at the request of the complainant — John Hall’s wife, who filed the complaint seven months earlier on which he was arrested.
Of the other misdemeanor charges, they included two alcohol intoxication arrests, two DUI arrests, and a marijuana cultivation case in 1995 in which he was convicted. That case occurred before Howard Keith Hall was elected as county attorney.
All but but six of Hall’s other arrests were for either probation or parole violations, failure to appear in court or failure to pay fines, or contempt of court charges. No information was available on three arrests, and the final three were for felony charges that were prosecuted in circuit court, or, as in the case of Hamilton’s murder, are currently in circuit court. The county attorney’s office does not prosecute cases in Circuit Court.
County Attorney Howard Keith Hall said the charges John Hall has already faced in district court do not, and did not warrant long jail or prison sentences, as they were filed in relation to alleged misdemeanor offenses. He added, however, that those cases were prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
The County Attorney also said if he could have predicted where John Hall’s alleged criminal activity would lead, he would have done everything in his power to stop him.
John Russell Hall was indicted this week in Hamilton’s murder, and the case, as with most felony cases, will now be handled in Pike Circuit Court by Commonwealth’s Attorney’ Rick Bartley’s office.
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