ALABAMA – An Anniston man arrested on federal firearms charges last month will stay in custody pending his trial, a federal magistrate judge ruled on Friday.
Jack David Stovall, 72, will remain in jail because “no condition or combination of conditions of release will reasonably assure the safety of any other person and the community,” U.S. Magistrate Judge John England wrote in a court order Friday.
Stovall was arrested for unlawful possession of a firearm as a convicted felon last month after a countywide raid on suspected gambling operations. Police seized 75 illegal gambling machines in those raids, along with guns and narcotics.
Stovall served a sentence in federal prison after pleading guilty in 1997 to the attempted murder-for-hire of Barry Jackson, a man Stovall said he suspected of burglarizing his house. At the time, Jackson said he had nothing to do with the burglary.
Before his April arrest, Stovall was awaiting trial on a capital murder charge stemming from the death of Floyd Roger Hurst. Investigators in 1997 told The Star that Hurst was also someone Stovall had suspected of burglarizing his house.
Stovall’s capital murder charge lingered in court for seven years without a trial. Shortly after his arrest last month, local prosecutors asked Circuit Judge Bud Turner to drop that charge. Turner did so earlier this month.
Stovall was free while awaiting trial on the capital murder charge. Then on April 9, various police agencies raided alleged illegal gambling sites around Calhoun County. According to a federal indictment, police discovered a .22 caliber Mossberg rifle and a .22 revolver in Stovall’s possession during the raid.
In a telephone interview Monday, Bill Broome, Stovall’s lawyer, disputed the assertion that the guns belonged to Stovall. He said he had argued in court that Stovall doesn’t need to be detained because there is little risk that he will flee. Broome noted that Stovall never fled while awaiting a capital murder trial.
“We may ask a district court judge to review the magistrate’s order of detention,” Broome said.
Court records show that the judge reviewed an application for a protection from abuse order filed last year by a woman who wrote that Stovall verbally threatened her on a daily basis.
In his order, England wrote that Stovall’s 17 past convictions and three past convictions on gun charges “weigh in favor of detention.”
Stovall is being held in the Pickens County Jail, Broome said.
Broome said he expects a trial to begin sometime this fall.
