Dr. Arnold Smith has filed papers in state court asking that Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood be removed from office.
On Monday, the 74-year-old oncologist filed a complaint in Hinds County Circuit Court, arguing that the Mississippi Constitution places the attorney general under the judicial branch of government and that Hood cannot simultaneously serve in the executive branch and exercise police powers.
Smith, who formerly practiced in Greenwood, was indicted for capital murder in an unsuccessful plot to kill Greenwood attorney Lee Abraham in 2012. One of the hitmen allegedly hired by Smith was killed by a bullet fired by an investigator from the Attorney General’s Office during a confrontation at Abraham’s downtown law office on Market Street.
The criminal case against Smith was halted in 2013 by Judge Breland Hilburn, who found Smith mentally unfit for trial. Smith has resided at the state mental hospital at Whitfield since 2012.
Abraham brought civil charges against Smith in 2012 for the alleged murder-for-hire scheme, and that case has continued to creep through the courts. The case had been sent to federal court at one point when Smith declared bankruptcy, listing Abraham as one of his creditors, but it was sent back down to state court in March of this year.
In his latest legal maneuver, Smith’s actions recall arguments made in his defense back in 2012, claiming that the case against him was tainted because Hood was a member of the judicial branch rather than the executive. According to that line of reasoning, Hood’s investigators were conducting an illegal police action that violated the separation-of-powers doctrine of the state constitution.
At that time, Deputy Attorney General Mike Lanford told the Commonwealth that the constitutional placement of the Attorney General’s Office in the judiciary section didn’t necessarily mean that it placed the attorney general in the judicial branch of government.
Smith’s complaint demands that Hood relinquish his office because he illegally participated in executive branch duties.
The complaint goes on to claim that because agents of Hood’s office present themselves as law enforcement officers and investigators, the separation-of-powers doctrine demands that the arrest warrant last week against Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith is “null and void.”
The Hinds County prosecutor has been accused by the attorney general of providing information to assist criminal defendants.
Robert Shuler Smith and Arnold Smith are unrelated.
• Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
