GASTON COUNTY, N.C. — Leaders in Gaston County are working to address a backlog in murder trials.
At least 63 families who lost a loved one in a homicide case in Gaston County, are now waiting for justice.
Channel 9′s Ken Lemon was at the courthouse where the first murder trial since the pandemic was held.
Lemon said it took the jury less than an hour to return a guilty verdict in the murder of Vance Avery.
Kathy Avery, Vance Avery’s wife, stayed in court after the verdict to greet jurors who wanted to hug her.
“It means the world. It’s been going on now for seven years,” Kathy Avery said.
Lemon said you could hear the impact in her voice. He said she showed him a picture of her husband as she remembers him best from decades.
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Vance Avery was 61 years old when Eric Taylor crossed the center line in his vehicle and killed him in 2015.
“I lost the man that I love,” Kathy Avery said. “Nothing in my life was complete until I shared it with him.”
Unfortunately, the Avery family is not the only one waiting for justice.
Of the 63 suspects awaiting a trial for homicide in Gaston County, 33 of those are first-degree murder cases.
“The first thing we do is what the public expects us to do. We work,” District Attorney Travis Page said.
Page said he is organizing his office to aggressively clear the long list of open homicide cases.
Page said that means a new directive for prosecutors like David Franceschelli, who is working on four murder cases and picked up a fifth case this morning.
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“We are going to make sure if there is an empty courtroom, I expect my attorneys to be using that court time and that court space,” Page said.
Page said prior to the pandemic, most murder cases would take a year and a half to two years to go to trials. That’s the goal he hopes to get back to.
“Make ourselves more efficient. More productive. More focused on the cases,” Page said.
He said that was their approach in this trial and Kathy Avery was pleased with the outcome.
Page said he couldn’t say how quickly they can catch up and admitted that there are circumstances outside of their control, like waiting as much as a year for evidence to be tested at the state crime lab.
He said Gaston County should develop its own lab to help in these cases and others to come.
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