The Great Smoky Mountain Journal
Source: Fox News
Posted: Tuesday, January 01, 2019 02:24 PM
Former Knox County Criminal Court Judge Richard Baumgartner Found Dead In Home Tuesday
KCSO said the 70-year-old was found unresponsive by his family around 4:15 p.m. Tuesday.
A patrol unit from the Knox County Sheriff's Office was dispatched to the scene, as well as a Major Crimes detective. Responding units determined there were no signs of foul play in the death.
Baumgartner was transported to the Regional Forensic Center, where the Knox County Medical Examiner will determine the cause of death.
Baumgartner was previously arrested and charged in 2011 after he admitted to trying to buy prescription painkillers from a felon under his legal supervision between November 2009 and September 2010.
When allegations of drug use and abuse against Baumgartner came to light in 2011, those within the criminal justice system said they were shocked.
"I couldn't believe it, but anymore there's such an opioid epidemic," T. Scott Jones, Esq. told Local 8 News. "It was one of almost shock, that it could strike someone in such an elevated position and bring him down to a level of deprivation."
Baumgartner handled some of Knox County's most high-profile trials, including the murders of Channon Christian and Christopher Newsome.
The judge's addiction to prescription painkillers was behind the retrial for several high-profile cases, including that of Raynella Dossett Leath, convicted in 2010 of first degree murder in the 2003 shooting death of David Leath.