Mistrial declared in Sikes trial; case to be retried March 23

According to your editorial about the Sikes mistrial, the Arcade council members should've second-guessed Sikes' death threats as mere "venting?" What if Sikes had threatened to rape someone: would your counsel be the same? Many far more even-tempered people have committed tragic acts when they felt pressured, and some don't threaten beforehand. My inner Dr. Phil says that when someone is moved sufficiently to threaten to kill someone, then most experts would agree that they're probably thinking about killing someone.
The fact that you have a sitting Sheriff testifying as a character witness for the defendant, and discrediting a former local police chief as lacking credibility doesn't justify failing to prosecute Sikes for his crimes: that, along with the Sheriff's failure to recuse himself for campaigning for Donna Sikes simply means that Jackson County politics are deeply suspect.
Equally troubling is why this county organ chooses to persecute Jefferson police officers for getting a little rowdy off-duty, while at the same time advocating for letting someone like Sikes go free just because he's such a good ol' boy.
It's very reassuring to me that this case is being pursued from outside the local orbit.

Political payback for what? Trying to ramrod a biohazard down the throats of Arcade residents (when it ultimately took State-level involvement to prevail over local rubberstamping)? Continuing ordinance and state law violations with his leaking trucks?
If explosions and flying bodies in my neighborhood don't constitute "a serious threat to public order," followed by threats (of any kind) when city officials correctly step in to mitigate any further carnage, then I don't know what does.
You seem to think that my specific criticisms of certain law enforcement agencies translate into a blanket contempt, but they don't. I think that common sense needs to prevail in all scenarios, whether it be Glenn's masked officers playing ninja with guns & grenades in order to get federal 9/11 grants, or Bell's speed trap. Mouthing off is something all of us do when the occasion arises, but threatening to wipe out a city council goes way beyond mouthing off.
You've now aroused the Bill O'Reilly in me, and he's calling you out on your spin, bub. Sikes is no Andy Griffith: his careless, gruff way of doing business as Mayor gave no one any reason to presume he was bluffing about political payback of his own. But let's assume, for the sake of argument, that he was joking. "Everybody knows ol' Joe, if you look at him the wrong way ol' Joe'll threaten to kill ya, but pay him no nevermind--he don't mean nothing by it. That's just his way." That works great until, who knew?, one day he actually does it. It's happened several times in Jefferson alone with so-called "harmless drunks."
Then there's also this: are we supposed to check with Stan Evans any time someone threatens to kill us, to see if we should be concerned or not? Because if they're a friend of his, I suppose we now know better than to call the Sheriff's Dept.

It wasn't intended to be cruel, but when these kind of accidents are literally within spitting distance of your front yard, you tend to think of it more seriously than everyone else in the county does. And the bottom line is, it wouldn't have happened to begin with if Sikes had run a more professional, responsible operation. That's exactly why the Arcade council did what they did: they took meaningful action on a serious problem, and had their lives threatened for doing their jobs.
Let's let the law do its job in punishing belligerent behavior. And at the very least, let's have the local media differentiate between harmless venting by public servants, and belligerent bullying that crosses over the line of legality by the likes of Sikes.