The civil trial sought by Greenwood attorney Lee Abraham against former oncologist Arnold Smith has been postponed again.
The trial, which had been scheduled to begin Aug. 7 in Lowndes County Circuit Court, is now set for Oct. 23 due to recent motions filed by both parties and the Leflore County Circuit Clerk Elmus Stockstill.
Meanwhile, attorneys for Abraham and Smith are combing through discovery that was released in mid-June from the Greenwood Police Department, collecting phone data and haggling over whether to allow certain expert witnesses in the lawsuit over the alleged 2012 assassination attempt.
The trial was moved out of Leflore County due to extensive local publicity about the case.
The lawsuit stems from events on and surrounding April 28, 2012, when a shooting at Abraham’s Market Street office left one man dead and resulted in charges against Smith for capital murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Abraham is seeking an unspecified amount in damages from Smith, alleging that the 75-year-old physician diminished the attorney’s quality of life as a result of a plot to kill him and the actions of that night.
The suit, which is one side of a legal argument, claims that Smith hired a hit man to kill Abraham and that investigators from the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office were brought in to protect Abraham and foil the plot.
When the alleged Greenwood hit men, Keaira Byrd and Derrick Lacy, arrived at Abraham’s office on April 28, two agents of the attorney general, Tony Green and Larry Ware, were waiting for them. Shooting erupted, and Byrd was killed.
Lacy was injured by a shot to the back.
Byrd reportedly was carrying a weapon that was not fired.
Abraham has said he was in a back office in the building. Smith was not present when the shooting occurred.
Lacy, along with Cordarious Robinson, also of Greenwood, remains incarcerated awaiting trial, while criminal charges against Smith have been on hold as he has repeatedly been found mentally unfit for criminal prosecution.
In early June, attorneys for Abraham in the civil trial filed for continuance, citing the need for time to analyze recent and remaining discovery in the case, and to avoid Smith appealing a trial verdict on grounds of insufficient opportunity to conduct discovery.
Some of the discovery in question appeared on duplicate hard drives provided to both parties by the Greenwood Police Department, containing all evidence collected by Lt. Larry Evans in his investigation.
A court document describes “a staggering amount of data” that must be carefully examined before the trial proceeds.
A mid-June hearing at the Leflore County Courthouse resulted in specially appointed Circuit Judge Larry Ford allowing testimony by expert witness Michael Levine for the defense. Levine has posited a theory that Byrd was not a professional hit man and that his death was the result of a botched sting operation orchestrated by the Attorney General’s Office and assisted by Abraham.
Smith’s attorneys, meanwhile, have attempted to quash the release of subpoenaed records from non-testifying expert witness, Dr. Gilbert S. MacVaugh.
MacVaugh was part of the mental health care team that evaluated Smith in 2016 to determine whether he could safely be removed from the Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield, where he was involuntarily committed in 2014, to community-based care.
Smith was released from the state mental facility late last year and is now living in Jackson under strict protective orders in custody of his wife, Mary.
The defense has argued that MacVaugh’s records should be protected because they contain information pertinent to any potential criminal prosecution of Smith in the future. In March, Smith was re-examined, found mentally unfit for criminal trial and “unrestorable.”
On June 26, a motion filed by Stockstill, requesting an extension of time to prepare the court record, was granted. Over five years, the records of hundreds of motions, hearings and court proceedings have grown to include thousands of pages.
At a June 28 hearing, Smith’s defense team moved to strike 12 expert witnesses called in the case, but the court found those experts may testify.
This month, Smith’s attorneys unsuccessfully attempted to quash a subpoena for all phone records, data, texts, photos and communications retrieved from Smith’s cellphone. The defendant’s counsel argued that the phone was illegally seized.
Meanwhile, Smith’s attorneys subpoenaed the telecommunications company Verizon for Abraham’s personal phone records from March 1 to April 30, 2012, and from two other time periods, one in 2016 and one in 2017.
Abraham’s attorneys have moved to quash the subpoena, arguing that the records are irrelevant and that asking for them constitutes harassment.
Smith’s attorneys have also moved for a full forensic examination of cellphones held by the Greenwood Police Department in an attempt to recover texts from the phones of Byrd, Lacy and Abraham.
As attorneys William Bell for Smith and Lawrence “Lucky” Tucker for Abraham continue to volley motions, the case moves in fits and starts toward trial. In late 2016, then-Judge Breland Hilburn declared there would be no more delays granted in the trial and ordered attorneys on both sides to work out their differences. But Hilburn, who was specially appointed by the state, was removed from the case a few months later, and Ford, the new judicial appointee, was faced with learning the intricacies of the case from scratch.
•Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
