McCracken King Poston Jr. (also known as McCracken Poston or "Ken" Poston; born October 24, 1959), is an American criminal defense attorney, former politician and part-time juvenile court judge. He gained national attention for several notable cases which were featured on TV series specials such as CNN Presents, Dateline NBC, A&E's American Justice and Forensic Files. Poston is a practicing defense attorney in Georgia and Tennessee. Poston was elected and served as a state representative in the Georgia House of Representatives from 1989 to 1997. In 2024, Poston's account of his representation of Alvin Ridley in the 1999 murder trial (where Ridley was accused of imprisoning his wife for decades before killing her) was published by Citadel Books (Kensington Publishing), titled "Zenith Man: Death, Love, and Redemption in a Georgia Courtroom."
Early life and education
McCracken Poston was born and raised in Northwest Georgia. After attending public schools in Catoosa County, Poston attended the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga for his undergraduate studies, and then he went on to receive his J.D. degree from the University of Georgia Law School where he was president of his class.
Career
Poston is a former Democratic state representative. Previously, Poston was an assistant district attorney for Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit and the former president of Catoosa Country Chamber of Commerce. He was also an adjunct professor of American government at University of Tennessee-Chattanooga.
Poston is an active juvenile court judge and practices criminal law.
Political career
In 1988, Poston was elected to the Georgia House of Representatives from a district in Catoosa County where remained for a tenure of eight years. During his term, Poston was a member of the Defense and Veterans Affairs, Education, and Judiciary committees. After four terms, Poston left the state legislature and ran for the United States Congress as the Democratic nominee in the 9th district. He was defeated in the general election by incumbent Republican Nathan Deal, a former Democrat and former state house speaker with whom he had served in the state house from 1989 to 1993. Poston even lost his own state house district. To date, he is the last Democrat to even win 30 percent of the vote in this district.
Legal career
In 1984 he interned in the office of Congressman George Darden. From 1985 to 1986 and from 1988 to 1989 he was in private practice. From 1986 to 1988 he was an assistant district attorney in the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit District Attorney's Office. Poston started a solo law firm in 1989 after briefly working for the Offices of Clifton Patty, and he has served as a juvenile court judge since 1997.
Throughout his career, Poston has had several high-profile cases, including the following:
Alvin Ridley
Poston represented Alvin "The Zenith Man" Ridley in an eight-day trial in January 1999. Ridley's wife, Virginia, had been found dead in their home after not being seen in public for nearly three decades. Virginia Gail Ridley () (April 18, 1948 – October 4, 1997) was a woman who lived with her husband on the outskirts of Ringgold, Georgia, in a dilapidated, cockroach-infested house—though, according to Ridley's lawyer, they made an effort to keep the house clean. Virginia's family claimed Alvin prevented all attempts by them to contact her. Eight months after her death, Ridley was arrested and later charged with murder, but claimed his epileptic wife died in her sleep. Ridley claimed that no one in Ringgold knew of her condition because of her family's opposition to their marriage, as well as Virginia's fear she would have a seizure in public, and therefore, she decided to live as a recluse. Ridley maintained he and Virginia were happy and he never harmed her. He shared with Poston Virginia's journal, an evidentiary treasure trove consisting of 10,000 pages written over three decades. During the trial, Poston presented the courtroom with hundreds of notes and scraps of paper that Virginia journaled on about their reclusive life together. After the testimony of defense witness Dr. Braxton Wannamaker, an expert on seizure disorders, and the lack of a motive from the prosecution, the jury acquitted Ridley of all charges.
The case was featured on the A&E network series American Justice episode "Death in a Small Town", as well as episodes of Extra and Forensic Files. The radio storytelling program Snap Judgment had Poston explaining how he defended Ridley and discovered Virginia's documents in the episode "Dirty Work" on November 27, 2015.