The Martin Firm - selected case information

LEDGER-ENQUIRER

LOCAL

Friday, November 19, 1999

Judge drops arson charges from 1992 fire

Glenda Hope Goodwin was arrested in 1998 for home blaze, but judge refused to override 4-year statute of limitations

By Eileen Zaffiro Staff Writer

Saying that prosecutors had failed "woefully" to show an exception should me made, a Columbus judge decided Thursday to drop the charges against a woman who was arrested for arson nearly three years after the statute of limitations for the crime passed.

Chief Assistant District Attorney Mel Hyde didn't produce solid evidence that Glenda Hope Goodwin absconded from Georgia more than five years ago and tried to conceal her identity and whereabouts because she feared being arrested for the 1992 fire that destroyed her home, Muscogee Superior Court Judge John Allen said in the six-page written order he completed Thursday.

Goodwin, 44, and now living in Wewahitchka, Fla., under the name Jordan Abbey Miles, came back to Columbus too frequently and lived too openly for the past seven years to suggest she was trying to hide, Allen said.

Goodwin "... has openly maintained a legal proceeding in the Probate Court of this county in her indicted name six to seven years since the date of the alleged crime!" Allen wrote in his order.

Georgia's four-year statute of limitations for arson expired in March of 1996 for the Lynch Road home fire. Goodwin wasn't arrested until December 1998, but Hyde has been trying to pursue the case under a provision in state law that overrides the statute of limitations when suspects purposely disappear and try to hamper investigations.

Goodwin's attorneys, Hyde, District Attorney Gray Conger and arson investigators could not be reached for comment after the order was filed late Thursday afternoon.

Goodwin's former sister-in-law, 49-year-old Connie Hubbard of Atlanta, hopes Hyde will appeal Allen's ruling. If Hyde does appeal and prevails throughout the appeals process, Goodwin could still face prosecution.

Hubbard believes Goodwin was involved in the arson.

"She broke the law, and now she's hiding behind it," Hubbard said. "Never once did they say she didn't do it. She's getting off on a legal technicality."

Hubbard said she believes her brother, Grady Morris Goodwin, was shot to death in 1992 outside the Gabby's restaurant on Veterans Parkway because the morning after his death he had an appointment to discuss the fire under oath with insurance company officials. Howard Dwight Woodham, Goodwin's boyfriend at the time of the shooting, was convicted of the murder and is now serving a life sentence.

During a 4 1/2-hour hearing Monday, attorney Frank Martin produced a string of evidence showing that since Goodwin moved to Florida she has frequently been to Columbus for dental, legal and hair appointments, signed checks and legal documents under Glenda Goodwin and sometimes listed her new name as well and apparently asked few if any people to keep her whereabouts and identity under wraps.

Goodwin testified during Monday's hearing that she only changed her name because her former in-laws insisted on it and moved because she claims they were harassing her and she feared for her safety.

Goodwin moving to Florida and legally changing her name a few weeks after investigators wanted to question her constituted circumstantial evidence she might have been trying to flee; Allen said. But the judge added that the fear she claimed to have of the in-laws offered a "reasonable hypothesis" why she moved.

Hyde, however, pointed out that Goodwin rarely gave out her street addresses in Florida, and usually communicated through post office boxes and cell phone numbers. Goodwin was a suspect in the arson "almost immediately," Allen said in the order. But investigators could have put their case together more quickly if Goodwin hadn't left and kept aspects of her life hidden, Hyde argued.