Two Carroll County deputies charged in a 21-count indictment in neighboring Holmes County will argue they acted in self-defense, the Jackson Clarion-Ledger reported today.
“It’s overkill to charge these two deputies with 21 counts,” James Powell, an attorney for the deputies and a former district attorney for Holmes County, told the newspaper Tuesday. “Our position is that no crime occurred.”
Last month, a Holmes County grand jury indicted Carroll County Deputies Curtis Alford and John Beck on nine counts of aggravated assault, nine counts of shooting into an occupied vehicle, one count of obstruction of justice, one count of kidnapping and one count of conspiracy.
If convicted of all the charges, the deputies could face up to several hundred years in prison.
District Attorney Akillie Malone-Oliver said Tuesday she didn’t want to comment about the pending case at this time.
However, state Rep. Ed Blackmon, an attorney for Odessa Williams and Albert Coffee, the two men the deputies are accused of assaulting, questions how the deputies can claim self-defense when his clients had no weapons and one of his clients’ vehicles was riddled with bullets from the rear.
“I guess they are trying to accuse my clients of threatening them,” Blackmon said Tuesday.
Carroll County Sheriff Jerry Carver has previously said the deputies saw a driver turn around to avoid a roadblock on Mississippi 17 near the Holmes County line on March 9. Deputies pursued as the driver and a passenger drove into Holmes County, eventually wrecking and escaping on foot.
Deputies determined the car was stolen from Hinds County and found a small amount of drugs inside it.
Carver said the car driven by Williams came toward the deputies shortly after the incident, and Beck said he believed the car to be involved with the escaped men. Shots were fired into the back of the car, but no one was hit.
Powell said the shots were fired after deputies approached a car and the vehicle sped off.
“I don’t see how you can get a 21-count indictment when no one was shot and no one was harmed,” Powell said.
But Williams and Coffee have said they were simply sitting in their vehicles along Mississippi 17 talking and had already told a Highway Patrolman that everything was OK before being indiscriminately shot at by the deputies.
They’ve filed an intent-to-sue notice with the county.
The grand jury indictment said the deputies obstructed justice by removing shell casings from the scene and had Williams’ vehicle towed from Holmes County to Carroll County.
Powell said he didn’t know the work status of the deputies following their indictment. Alford and Beck each posted a $10,000 bond.
