Ellington

The Magnolia Bar agrees that Assistant District Attorney Timothy Jones lied to Circuit Judge Dale Harkey in order to remove a black juror, Chauncey Thompson, and facilitate a guilty plea against Anthony Booker. Booker is serving life in prison after a May 2004 conviction for kidnapping, robbing and killing Dorian Johnson.

Booker claims he deserves a second trial based on how prosecutors excluded blacks from serving at his jury trial.

Court records show that Harkey demanded verification from prosecutors that they were not being discriminatory when they moved to exclude four out of five black jurors. The prosecutors said Thompson had a driver's license and seat belt violation as well as a Feb. 5, 2003, marijuana conviction, despite city clerk Rhonda Diehl informing the prosecution's investigator, Scott McIlrath, that the charges against Thompson had been dropped.

Harkey was slow to call a state prosecutor a liar, even after the defense told the judge the truth during an Aug. 14, 2004, post-conviction hearing.

"Your subsequent investigation as evidenced by these affidavits that you've submitted as exhibits don't indicate to me any basis for believing ... that these were lies told by the state of Mississippi," Harkey said.

The defense appealed the case to the Mississippi Supreme Court, which rendered an October decision to uphold the lower court conviction with a 5-4 vote. The Magnolia Bar strongly disagrees with the Supreme Court's decision, and filed an amicus brief last week.

"If this court condones prosecutors … lying about why they have struck certain jurors, there would be no need for our legal system," the Magnolia Bar states.

Justice James Graves, who dissented in the decision, along with Associate Justice Jess Dickerson, Presiding Justice William L. Waller and outgoing Presiding Justice Oliver Diaz Jr., wrote that he could not "ignore or condone a prosecutor's blatant misrepresentation of facts to the trial court."

Associate Justice Michael Randolph in the majority opinion wrote that he believed Harkey "found no evident untruths or dishonesty at all on the part of the state of Mississippi," even though Jones specifically assured Harkey during the Booker trial that "we're not making (Thompson's conviction) up.