Dr. Arnold Smith has asked the Mississippi Supreme Court to reconsider its decision shooting down his claim that Attorney General Jim Hood illegally conducted a police action that led to the former Greenwood oncologist’s arrest in an alleged murder-for-hire plot.
Last week, the justices upheld a Hinds County Circuit Court decision that found the Attorney General’s Office is part of the executive branch and thus is empowered to carry out law-enforcement duties. Smith and his attorneys have argued that Hood’s office is part of the judicial branch under the state constitution and any law-enforcement activities conducted by the agency would violate the separation-of-powers doctrine.
Hood acted as an investigator in 2012 when his friend, Greenwood attorney Lee Abraham, asked him to look into threats against Abraham’s life allegedly made by Smith.
Two of Hood’s investigators were at Abraham’s office the night that Keaira Byrd, who allegedly was hired by Smith to assassinate Abraham, was shot to death.
The agents claimed they shot in self-defense and were not charged in the case. Smith was subsequently charged with capital murder and conspiracy to commit murder but was never prosecuted after being found mentally incompetent to withstand trial.
Smith’s most recent motion, filed this week by his attorney, William Bell of Ridgeland, argues that the Supreme Court is wrong in its claim that the executive-judicial argument has no legal standing. Further, it sets a dangerous precedent for the future in which, according to the motion, constitutional separation of powers could be rendered moot.
“The record illustrates why the separation of powers is in place to prevent despotism and tyranny, and from concentrating too much power in the hands of one official,” the motion says.
“The record shows that Jim Hood and others from the Attorney General’s Office personally participated in the staging of the police operation at Lee Abraham’s office that resulted in the execution style killing of Keaira Byrd.”
That police operation, the motion argues, is an executive branch function.
“Then, the Attorney General appears in trial courts and in federal and state courts to defend his unlawful actions, using his judicial branch authority as Attorney General. These are exactly the kinds of untoward acts that the separation of powers is in place to prevent.”
A civil suit filed by Abraham seeking damages from Smith, last scheduled to be heard in February, has been delayed numerous times over the last five years and remains on hold based on a continuance granted to the defense late last year.
•Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
