Eighteen months after being arrested and charged with capital murder, Ben Meeks III still sits in the Leflore County Jail awaiting a mental health evaluation.
Since his arrest in the Feb. 10, 2015, slaying of 27-year-old girlfriend Reshunda Moore in Greenwood, Meeks’ attorneys have filed continuances in the case seven times, most recently last Tuesday.
Greenwood police have said Meeks, 47, confessed to slashing Moore’s throat after he was arrested.
A motion for a mental health evaluation at the Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield was filed on Sept. 28, 2015, and then amended in November 2015 because there were no beds available at the state facility.
In the amended order, Meeks was supposed to see Dr. Gilbert S. Macvaugh, a Greenville forensic psychologist. That order was continued again in January, stipulating that the mental health evaluation be paid for by Leflore County.
In March, attorney Vallrie Dorsey filed a motion to withdraw as counsel. Since then, continuances have been filed and granted in the case three more times.
If convicted, Meeks could receive the death penalty.
Meeks had previously pleaded guilty to two counts of manslaughter in the 1998 beating death of his pregnant girlfriend, 28-year old Donna Kinds, also in Greenwood. He was sentenced to 25 years and a five-year suspended sentence in that case, but he was released in 2011 after serving half the sentence.
Family members of Moore’s told the Commonwealth at the time of her death that they had urged Moore to leave Meeks because of a pattern of domestic violence and abuse in the relationship. Moore was the mother of three young sons.
Mississippi has been criticized for a history of trial delays. In June, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves, in an unrelated case, issued a scathing opinion in which he blamed the state Supreme Court for not monitoring and enforcing speedy trial rights. Reeves also criticized district attorneys’ offices, which control the docket, for not properly prioritizing cases in which defendants are being held without bond or cannot afford to post bond.
State court procedures call for a criminal trial date to be set within 60 days of indictment and a trial to be held within 270 days of an indictment unless good cause is given for a continuance.
Meanwhile, the Mississippi Department of Mental Health has said the mental evaluation of criminal defendants is being hampered by a shortage of space. It is requesting a new 60-bed Forensic Services facility at the Mississippi State Hospital. The proposal carries an estimated cost of $17.5 million.
“The replacement and expansion of the Forensic Services facility from a 35-bed to a 60-bed unit would ... decrease the time pre-trial defendants wait for a forensic evaluation,” a Department of Mental Health report said.
•Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
