Since his arrest last April, Dr. Arnold Smith has repeatedly claimed there is no legal justification for charging him with the death of a gunman killed by a law enforcement officer.
On Friday, an attorney for the Greenwood oncologist filed a federal lawsuit to sharpen that contention.
The lawsuit claims it’s a violation of Smith’s civil rights to prosecute him for the death of Keaira Byrd, with whom the physician allegedly conspired in an unsuccessful plot to kill Greenwood attorney Lee Abraham.
Named as defendants in the lawsuit are Attorney General Jim Hood, District Attorney Dewayne Richardson and Assistant District Attorney Tim Jones. It was filed in U.S. District Court by William Bell, the Ridgeland attorney representing Smith.
The suit asks a federal judge to block prosecutors from further pursuing the capital murder charge.
Jan Schaefer, a spokeswoman in the Attorney General’s Office, said Friday that the agency does not comment on ongoing litigation. Jones could not be reached for comment.
Smith, 70, has been held without bond in the Leflore County Jail since his arrest on April 29, the morning after a shootout at Abraham’s Market Street law office that resulted in the death of Byrd and the critical wounding of a second alleged hitman, Derrick Lacy.
Although Byrd was killed by a shot to the head fired by an unnamed investigator with the Attorney General’s Office, Smith has been charged with capital murder for Byrd’s death.
If convicted, Smith could face the death penalty.
The lawsuit makes the same claim earlier rejected by state courts that Mississippi’s capital murder statute “requires that the killing of Keaira Byrd must have been by a person engaged in the commission of one of the enumerated felonies.”
Prosecutors have argued that burglary — gaining access to Abraham’s law office under false pretenses — is the underlying felony that supports the capital murder charge.
They have acknowledged, however, that the prosecution is novel in Mississippi and that case law is mixed elsewhere in the country. Even if the capital murder charge is dropped, though, Smith still faces two counts of conspiring to murder Abraham.
According to the police investigation, Smith offered to pay Byrd $20,000 to kill the attorney, toward whom the physician has had a longstanding animosity. Byrd and Lacy allegedly contacted Abraham and informed him of the plot. Having been tipped off, Abraham agreed to meet the two at his law office. He also contacted the Attorney General’s Office and requested investigators be present, according to authorities. Three were dispatched. In an exchange of gunfire inside the law office, one of those investigators killed Byrd.
The complaint filed Friday includes an autopsy report on Byrd, describing the six gunshot wounds he suffered.
Arnold Smith's federal lawsuit
