Feds nab Booher
Disbarred
attorney Kent Booher is in more legal trouble.
The indictment was unsealed on Friday, the same day Booher was arrested.
He was scheduled to appear in federal court in Knoxville later that day for his initial appearance and arraignment.
“Kent Lowery Booher, using a facility or means of interstate and foreign commerce, did knowingly attempt to persuade, induce, and entice an individual who had not attained the age of 18 years, to engage in sexual activity for which any person can be charged with a criminal offense, to wit, Tennessee Code Annotated Section 39-13-506(c) (aggravated statutory rape),” the federal indictment alleges.
Booher, 64, once had a law practice in Roane County.
He got indicted in state court in neighboring Loudon County in 2013 on three counts of aggravated statutory rape, one count of solicitation of a minor and one count of aggravated sexual exploitation of a minor. The victim in that case was 14 years old.
Booher later reached a deal with prosecutors and pleaded guilty to two counts of statutory rape.
The other charges were dismissed. He didn’t go to prison, but was required to register as a sex offender. The Tennessee Supreme Court also disbarred him.
Booher found himself back in trouble earlier this year when he was charged in Roane County General Sessions Court with violating the sexual offender registry and solicitation of aggravated statutory rape. That case is still pending.
According to one of the warrants, Booher allegedly chatted with an undercover law enforcement agent posing as a teenage girl.
“On March 3, 2019, Booher began chatting with a Facebook Messenger profile that he believed to be a 16-year-old female,” the warrant on the solicitation charge said.
“During that conversation, Booher solicited the profile for sexual activity by inviting who he believed to be a 16-year-old female to accompany him to a hotel and get in a jacuzzi naked.”
Two days before he was arrested on the charges filed against him in Sessions Court, a woman shot at Booher after he showed up at an apartment complex in Rockwood.
At the time of the shooting, he was sitting in a car with a 27-year-old woman identified as Sara Phillips.
It was Phillips’ mother, Linda Flanagan, who shot at him. None of the bullets hit Booher.
“Ms. Flanagan asked if Mr. Booher was shot, and told no that he thought he was OK,” the report said.
“Ms. Flanagan started crying and said, ‘I wish I would have hit him.’”
Flanagan is serving 90 days in the Roane County Jail for shooting at Booher.