Ellington

The Mississippi Supreme Court is deliberating a rule change that would force the Hinds County Circuit Court to abandon a case assignment system that two black judges and some black lawyers criticized as discriminatory.

Last November, as reported earlier by the Jackson Free Press, Hinds County Senior Judge Swan Yerger divided the court's criminal cases into two categories. Category 1 includes homicides, assaults, robberies and property crimes, such as receiving stolen goods, grand larceny, motor vehicle theft and other felonies. Category 2 includes sex crimes, DUI, automotive crimes (including leaving the scene of an accident, altering vehicle identification numbers or operating chop shops) drug crimes, and white-collar crimes, including embezzlement and false pretense.

Yerger then assigned Category 1 cases to himself and Judge Bobby DeLaughter (who has since been removed from the court pending a federal corruption investigation) and Category 2 cases to black judges Tomie Green and Winston Kidd.

Jackson attorney Dennis Sweet charged in August that Yerger violated the U.S. Constitution when he essentially barred the county's black circuit court judges from hearing the more serious cases.

"White judges take the most serious issues, and black judges take the less serious criminal cases," Sweet said, arguing that voters had fairly elected the judges to handle all cases and that Yerger had deprived voters of their political voice.

Judge Kidd told the JFP that he had voiced his concern to Supreme Court Justice Jim Smith last year, who said Yerger had the authority to make those assignments and that he was unwilling to intercede.

Smith was voted out this year, however, toppled by Crystal Springs attorney Jim Kitchens, who vowed to bring balance to the lopsided, pro-plaintiff supreme court. Kitchens garnered the majority of the black vote in the state's central district.

Justice William Waller will be replacing Smith as chief justice in January. The House Judiciary A Committee was preparing to address the issue with Waller at the Monday meeting when Waller stole their thunder by telling the committee that the court was already considering stipulating the Hinds County court relegate case assignment through computer.

House Judiciary A Committee Chairman Ed Blackmon, of Canton, said he was relieved Waller was already considering the move.

"We had concerns over the current system because of the conflicts it seemed to have with our democratic government," Blackmon said. "Voters elected those judges to handle all kinds of cases and obviously thought them capable of doing so. But the system as it stands, limits the role certain judges can have in certain types of cases. I believe the incoming chief justice wants to do things a little differently, and we certainly support him in this."

U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson said he had been concerned about Yerger's system. Like Blackmon, Thompson feared it to be a constitutional violation.

"If you have four elected judges with the same power, and a senior judge takes it upon himself to limit the types of cases seen by those duly elected circuit judges, and the limit applies only to the two African American judges, you can reasonably conclude that the system was not fair and demonstrated an insensitivity on Yerger's part to the issue of their race," Thompson said. "Not only that, but that system also discriminated against those persons charged with crimes to have an objective individual hear their case. If I were a plaintiff's lawyer or defense counsel, I would object to the situation on its face as being discriminatory."

Thompson added that Smith's continued unwillingness to push Yerger into change may have turned some voters toward his opponent.

"The bottom line is there were four elected judges. They have the same salary; they serve the same terms. They ought to be able to hear the same type of cases, and I think Smith's insensitivity to that issue is one of the reasons the Jim Smith vote in Hinds County was so lopsided. A majority of the county felt the same way I do about it," Thompson said.

Kidd said the Supreme Court has not made any decisions yet on the matter, but said he believes the new computer-driven system advocated by Waller during the committee meeting would essentially solve the issue. He added that he was disappointed that Yerger was unwilling to act on the complaints of Hinds County black judges with anything less than a Supreme Court-issued order.

"I was hoping he would change that policy without having to have the Supreme Court compel them to do it, but obviously he had no intention of that," Kidd said.

Yerger did not return calls.