The civil trial sought by Greenwood attorney Lee Abraham against former oncologist Arnold Smith has been delayed again.
It is not clear when the trial, most recently set to start Oct. 23, will now begin.
Instead of a trial, specially appointed Judge Larry Ford will hear on Oct. 23 from both sides on four motions recently filed by Smith’s attorneys in Leflore County Circuit Court.
Abraham seeks damages from Smith for allegedly plotting to kill him in 2012 and thereby diminishing the quality of the attorney’s life.
Nearly a year has passed since the former judge in the case, Breland Hilburn, declared there would be no more delays and ordered lawyers on both sides to wrap up discovery and tie up all loose ends. Since then, Hilburn was removed from the case and the Mississippi Supreme Court appointed Ford to succeed him.
It was agreed that the trial be moved to Lowndes County due to extensive pre-trial publicity about the case in Leflore County. It appeared as if the trial might actually go to court some 5½ years after the event that launched the lawsuit.
The lawsuit stems from events on and surrounding April 28, 2012, when a shooting at Abraham’s Market Street law office left one man dead and resulted in criminal charges against Smith for capital murder and conspiracy to commit murder.
Abraham was present in a back room at his office but was not injured the night of the shooting. Investigators from the Attorney General’s Office, sent to Greenwood by Jim Hood to look into the alleged plot to kill Abraham, claimed responsibility for shooting Keaira Byrd, the accused hit man, in self-defense.
Smith’s attorneys tried to get the murder charge dropped at his preliminary hearing, arguing that a murder hadn’t occurred and agreeing that the investigators had shot in self-defense, but the charge stuck.
Another alleged conspirator, Derrick Lacy, who was injured the night of the shooting, was also charged with capital murder and conspiracy to commit murder. Lacy is still awaiting trial.
Smith has twice been found mentally incompetent to stand a criminal trial. In between, he was involuntarily committed to the Mississippi State Hospital at Whitfield for almost two years. He was released for outpatient treatment in late 2016 and now lives in Jackson.
Meanwhile, motions have been filed in courtrooms across Mississippi in an attempt by Smith’s attorneys to quash the civil suit while Abraham’s attorneys have tried to move it forward.
Among the motions to be heard by Ford on Oct. 23 is one to transmit the entire case record to the state Supreme Court, unsealed.
Lawyers have disagreed on what types of materials should have been included in the case record, including documents pertaining to an expert witness hired by Smith’s team.
Michael Levine, an expert in criminal conspiracy cases, has pushed a theory that the attorney general’s investigators and Abraham were involved in a sting operation that went badly and thus were responsible for Byrd’s death, not Smith.
Abraham’s attorneys, in turn, moved to seal allegations against their client that they consider to be salacious, inflammatory and irrelevant to civil proceedings. Ultimately, Hilburn imposed sanctions against Smith’s team for using the disputed materials. Smith’s team appealed those sanctions to the Supreme Court. Now the question remains: What should be made public and what should go under seal.
Another motion filed by Smith’s defense team requests that it be given the opportunity to fully depose expert witnesses added to the witness list by Abraham’s team in June.
A third motion seeks to limit information drawn from Smith’s cellphone records.
A fourth motion asks that physical evidence collected at the time of the shooting be made available to a ballistic and forensic expert in Phoenix for a complete review.
That evidence includes weapons, projectiles, bullet casings and other evidence collected by Greenwood police at the time of the crime, most of it related to the fatal shooting of Byrd.
•Contact Kathryn Eastburn at 581-7235 or keastburn@gwcommonwealth.com.
