Joyce Gregory Murder Trial
Delayed Until May

DOVER, Tenn. - It will be well into spring before jurors hear opening arguments in the murder trial of school bus driver Joyce Gregory.

As legal haggling continues between prosecutors and the defense, Judge Andy

Brigham postponed the trial until May 1. The originally scheduled date was Jan. 30.

Jason Clinard, 15, is charged with shooting and killing Gregory on the morning of March 2 as she prepared to load students at a stop in front of his house. The attack was allegedly in retribution for the driver turning him and several other students into the high school principal for chewing smokeless tobacco.

Defense attorney Worth Lovett said Clinard, who was 14 at the time of the incident, remains in Montgomery County jail but separate from adult prisoners on $300,000 bond. Brigham ruled in December that jurors would be pooled from Cheatham County because of defense fears that local residents already had formed opinions on the case. The trial will remain in Dover, about 60 miles northwest of Nashville.

Eric Watkins, assistant transportation director at Stewart County, said district bus drivers simultaneously pulled off local roads on March 2 at 6:30 a.m. to commemorate Gregory's passing. All drivers attached a black ribbon to the front of their buses and later joined Gregory's family at her gravesite for a private memorial service.

"It was a pretty somber day," he said.

Source: School Transportation News, April 2006. All rights reserved.