by Kat Oliver

Created on: June 04, 2009

The courtroom was overflowing with locals and out-of-towners alike. Reporters from the surrounding towns and even nearby states were struggling for standing room within earshot of the Judge's bench. The buzzing voices were much like a swarm of mad bees flying through the room.

The early morning air was filled with the intoxicating scents of Confederate Jasmine and wild honeysuckle and it crept silently through the open windows of the rustic white courthouse like a snake surrounding its victim. The rich, warm scent had a slow, narcotic-like effect on each person it surrounded. Within minutes the courtroom was deafeningly quiet.

Today was the day. The jury would hand down its verdict this morning. The trial had lasted two weeks with witness after witness testifying with unbelievable stories of madness and mayhem between the beautiful young woman and the man she was accused of murdering. Todd Jenkins was dead. Cassie Blake had shot him - not once, but three times.

Todd wasn't from the South but he tried hard to make people believe he had a southern heritage. He was tall, broad shouldered and strikingly handsome. He had a way with words, a way that Southerners referred to as 'silver tongued'. And he chose the small community of Cotton as his home. No one ever really knew why Todd moved there or where he moved from; he just showed up one day in a red pick-up truck telling the locals he had purchased the old vacant Lewis farm.

Cassie's family was one of the original families who chose to settle here and make this small South Georgia town their home. They were hard working, Christian people and they gave as much to the county as they kept for themselves. Her great grandfather had donated land for the first county prison and had volunteered to work as the supervising warden without compensation until the county could afford to hire someone. He along with her grandfather farmed the acres of hard red clay to provide food and shelter for their families and gave without thought to those in need who had less than they. The inmates in that prison wouldn't have had food had it not been for her family sharing the crops they grew and harvested each year. They took care of their own and considered anyone in need to be one of their own. That's the way things were back then. If someone's child got into trouble, they tried to work it out among themselves. If someone broke the law, they got together, considered the circumstances leading up to the unlawful

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