Jackson Free Press

The Folo folks are still doing a great job digging out documents related to Dickie Scruggs controversy, and most compelling and relevant to us here in Hinds County, cases related to former District Attorney Ed Peters, who still has his fingerprints all over more recent, shall we say, situations here in Jackson. This stuff today, on the Keith Shelton case, is being called "explosive" in some quarters. The first bullet points state:

1. Former Hinds County District Attorney Ed Peters initiated, and for many years his office maintained, the prosecution of criminal charges against an attorney and the attorney's client when Peters knew that he lacked probable cause to do so (just as did North Carolina's ex-prosecutor — indeed, now ex-attorney and current convict – Mike Nifong, in the Duke Lacrosse case).

2. Peters' senior assistant, disturbed by what had happened, prepared for the file a memorandum (one-page pdf) stating that – despite the fact that Peters, Tommy Mayfield, and another prosecutor had reviewed the cases against the attorney and his client and determined that "there was no case" against either of them – "for reasons which were unclear to me, and will never be clear, the case against [them] is presented to the Grand Jury with the recommendation of this office that True Bills be returned as to both defendants for Conspiracy and Bribery. This was in fact done. … This case lacks, and never has had any prosecutive merit."

3. In nudging the DA's office to that point, Hinds County Judge Houston J. Patton seems to have withheld clearly exculpatory evidence (84-page pdf) and almost certainly lied to law enforcement investigators.

The JFP takes no position on this information at this point, as we're just seeing it there for the first time. However, we urge our readers to read through and led us know directly (not on the site) any further information you have on this or related cases. There are many links to PDFs of documents and several posts to click through on this. The Ed Peters well seems to go very deep.

Hat tip to Folo.

Previous Commentsshow

Fair warning: this story is more outrageous than any you’ve yet had from folo. There’s more than one version of it, but the version I’ve accepted to pass along to you comes straight from the Mississippi Bar. It tells of an attorney whose life and livelihood were wrecked by Ed Peters’ decision to “indict on a dare.” Part of that original Folo post on this, fyi.

DonnaLadd

Feb 4 2008

I'm still reading and digesting, but one thing that intrigues me, if I'm reading it right, is how Tomie Green keeps ending up in the position of trying to clean up a mess seemingly made by Ed Peters and friends. (Like in the Cedric Willis case.) And this sure does begin to make one wonder (even more) about the Mississippi Supreme Court and where (and with whom) the interests of its members lie.

DonnaLadd

Feb 4 2008

This ends their final post over on Folo on this mess: With that, Adam B. Kilgore, General Counsel of the Bar, sent Reinstatement of Shelton to the Supreme Court of Mississippi for the last necessary action to right the tremendous wrongs done Keith Shelton by what passes for Mississippi’s justice system. SCOM releases its opinions every Thursday. Eight Thursdays have passed since the justices received Kilgore’s statement of the Bar’s response. A few more Thursdays and it will be eleven years since a wrongful arrest and bogus “indictment on a dare” signaled the beginning of Keith Shelton’s and his family’s nightmare. Indeed. Twelve years for Cedric; 11 years in this case. What other surprises are out there? What can we believe? Where is the Supreme Court? And let us not all forget how quickly they acted to help Frank Melton (Ed Peters' friend, coincidentally) on so many occasions in the last year or so. Danks asked; the Supremes jumped. What is the delay here? We've asked for a long time what the deal is with the Mississippi Supremes. Let's all keep asking.

DonnaLadd

Feb 4 2008

MS Supreme Court Chief Justice Jim Smith is an unabashedly conservative, political activist/jurist who seems hell bent on not only following, but implementing, the party line from the bench. Remember, after Peterson lost the DA's race, he immediately announced that he was appointing special judges to help with the backlog of criminal cases. Now, he's poised to rule in favor of Barbour and set the date of the special election for US Senate in November. What chaps my a$$ is that the neo-conservative Republicans, Smith included, talk about having US Supreme Court judges who "don't legislate from the bench" but they have no problem in doing the same thing themselves.

Kacy

Feb 4 2008

What chaps my a$$ is that the neo-conservative Republicans, Smith included, talk about having US Supreme Court judges who "don't legislate from the bench" but they have no problem in doing the same thing themselves. Well, that is always an Orwellian statement when you hear it, considering that many of the people who utter it are always the very ones who want to use the bench for political purposes. It's a sound bite, perfected by the Barbour-Atwater-Delay-Scalia and so on GOP back when people (nationally) gave a damn about what they thought. They've held the country hostage with those kinds of memes for years. Now, of course, the nation is wising up, but alas Mississippi is likely to take a little longer, thanks in no small part to our provincial media and simplistic blabosphere here that can't see past partisanship and the partisans they fear angering no matter what they do (or don't do). Hopefully, we'll get there, but this judicial disaster in our state is deep-rooted, it would seem, and may well affect, well, just about everything. SO many things are starting to make more sense i.e. suspicions crystallizing of late. We're in for quite the ride, I'd say, locally and statewide.

DonnaLadd

Feb 4 2008

People say "strict constructionist" because "narrow interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment and Commerce Clause" is less catchy, but I don't know of any judges who don't both read and read into the text of the Constitution. I actually like Scalia, and he's done some fantastic rulings over the years (see his dissent in Hamdi, for example, or his majority ruling in Kyllo), but I only want one of him on the Court at a given time. Really, if there's one thing the recent slate of prosecutions have told me, it's that we need appointed courts with legislative advise-and-consent rather than elected courts. Too much possibility of corruption. As for Tomie Green, she kicked 'em and took 'em when she was in the Mississippi State Legislature getting the marital rape bill passed--and Kimberly Campbell, who is already impressing the hell out of me, is now occupying her old seat in District 72. I can't really speak (pro or con) to her performance as a judge, but when they're writing a history of 20th and 21st century Mississippi feminism, she'll be in it.

Tom Head

Feb 5 2008

Donna, Is it possible we could see a print article regarding this as who knows if the mainstream media will report on it? I dare say this could be bigger than the Scruggs saga. It's one thing to bribe judges, it is expoentially greater to railroad innocent men.

iratetoday

Feb 6 2008

We're definitely looking at it, irate. Remember that journalistic pieces take longer than posting blog entries (which I like, too), so bear with us. Anyone with any information on this to add, or about related cases, please contact Adam Lynch here at 601.362.6121 ext. 8.

DonnaLadd

Feb 6 2008