Prosecutor's Office Under Gaal's Leadership Lets Convicted Sex Offender Off the Hook!

Wednesday April 4th a local jury acquitted Terry Nelson of charges of child molestation and sexual misconduct with a minor. Nelson a registered sex offender with two prior convictions for child molestation walked free after deputy prosecutor Jeff Kehr failed to convince the jury of Nelson’s guilt in another similar crime. The jury returned their verdict after barely more than an hour of deliberations.

By letting Nelson go free Gaal has managed to keep one of his campaign promises of reducing the jail population, unfortunately I don’t think this is what the citizens of Monroe County had in mind. Gaal had promised to be tough on serious crimes and find ways to reduce recidivism with counseling and rehabilitating on crimes that he deemed less serious. Hopefully Mr. Gaal doesn’t consider heinous actions like child molestation and sexual misconduct with a minor to be categorized as non-serious offenses worthy of counseling and rehabilitation? If Gaal does consider these crimes to be serious offenses then it would leave but one conclusion, that his staff lacks the prosecution and trial experience to get a conviction. The latter is certainly more likely as Gaal did exactly what Sandy Newman did when she took over as Auditor, fired everyone that had any experience and replaced them with inexperienced cronies.

If this is what the citizen’s of Monroe County have to look forward to for the next four years then so much for having a safe and civil community. Furthermore if this is the “transparency” Gaal and other Democrat’s have been preaching that our government needs I would have to say that we have just been given a glimpse behind the curtain and it scares the hell out of me. What’s more if Mr. Gaal wants to persecute Carl Salzmann by parading his head around on a stick for running the Prosecutor’s office the way he saw fit then I would have to say to Mr. Gaal, at least Mr. Salzmann was able to put criminals like Nelson where they belong, in jail. If a good meal and a clean room at a nice hotel was what our former Prosecutor needed for him and his staff while seeking additional training to keep deviates like Terry Nelson off of the streets of our county then as a taxpayer I would be more than happy to pick up the tab for the next steak dinner!