JACKSON - Prosecutors in a judicial bribery case on Thursday tried to link a wealthy Gulf Coast attorney's financial support of a state Supreme Court justice to decisions handed down by the high court.
Attorney Paul Minor, who has won several landmark cases, is accused of bribing state Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr., former Circuit Judge John Whitfield and former Chancery Judge Wes Teel. All have pleaded innocent to charges of bribery and fraud, and Minor has pleaded innocent to an additional count of racketeering.
Prosecutors used a multimedia presentation on Thursday to present documents that showed loan guarantees and payments from Minor to Diaz. The payments were made during the same timeframe that a lawsuit involving Minor's father - veteran journalist Bill Minor - was before the court.
Bill Minor was sued in 2000 for a column he wrote about Rex Armistead, a law enforcement officer who Bill Minor claimed was involved in several questionable encounters with civil rights workers and black students during the turbulent civil rights era. Armistead sued.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Dave Fulcher presented a notice of appeal in the Bill Minor case that was dated Oct. 27, 2000. He also presented records of a loan to Jennifer Diaz guaranteed by Paul Minor for $73,000 on the same day.
The payment of $25,793 from Paul Minor to Diaz was made Jan. 25, 2002 - three days after the Mississippi Supreme Court agreed to keep the case. Oliver Diaz was assigned to the three-judge panel to take it up, Fulcher said.
Fulcher tried to connect the court action and the payment.
Betty Sephton, a clerk for the Supreme Court, testified that Minor would have received the notice of appeal in the mail because he was listed as an "interested party" in his father's case.
Robert McDuff, Diaz's attorney, dismissed the correlation of the dates on the two documents.
McDuff said the notice of appeal was mailed on Oct. 27, so it would not have made it to Paul Minor in time for him to make a payment to Diaz on the same day.
McDuff said the money was a campaign contribution for Diaz's 2000 election.
During cross examination, Sephton testified that Paul Minor was not an active attorney on the Bill Minor case.
Under questioning from McDuff, Sephton testified that the outcome of the case against Bill Minor would have been the same even if Diaz did not vote. The court voted unanimously in favor of Bill Minor. Sephton later testified that Diaz did not participate in any of the six cases Paul Minor had before the court.
Also testifying Thursday was Gulfport attorney Karen Sawyer.
Sawyer represented a construction company that Minor sued on behalf of the family of a worker who was killed on the job.
Minor's attorney, Abbe Lowell, asserted that if Minor had the judges in his pocket, he would have filed the suit in Harrison County, where Whitfield was a Circuit judge.
However, Fulcher showed that Whitfield was not elected to the bench for nearly seven months after the case was filed.
Sawyer testified that when she appealed the $2 million verdict, Diaz, who was on the court of appeals at that time, voted against Minor's client but later changed his vote. Defense attorneys pointed out that four other judges on the court also changed their votes.
The Supreme Court ultimately upheld the $2 million award, but Diaz, who was on the high court by then, did not vote on the case.
Prosecutors have claimed that Minor funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars to the judges in exchange for multimillion-dollar decisions.
Defense attorneys say the case is a political witch hunt.
Testimony is scheduled to continue next week.
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