Judge unduly yanked case, prosecutor says

An east Arkansas prosecutor said Tuesday that the judge who removed him from a Phillips County capital-murder case last week had no proof that the prosecutor’s office is a target in a federal public-corruption probe and no authority to replace him.

Fletcher Long, 1st Judicial District prosecuting attorney, said federal agents have never told him that he or Todd Murray, the deputy prosecutor in Phillips County, are being investigated for any purported illegal activity.

“I can tell you with certainty that no one’s given us any notice that we are targets of any investigation,” said Long,who prosecutes cases and appoints deputy prosecutors in the six counties that make up the 1st Judicial District.

In a telephone interview Tuesday, Long said Circuit Judge L.T. Simes misinterpreted legal precedents when he issued a 14-page order Friday that appointed a special prosecutor to try Tony Bernard Smith, a 25-year-old murder defendant.

Simes cited Arkansas law and a state Supreme Court case in the order, saying they gave him the authority to remove an elected prosecutor from a specific case when that prosecutor is “being investigated” for illegal activity.

To support the order, Simes referred to an Arkansas Democrat-Gazette series as well as statements made in federal court over the past two years that the judge said implicated the prosecutor’s office in Phillips County in an FBI investigation known as Operation Delta Blues.

When asked whether he had testified before a grand jury in connection with the investigation, Long said he hadn’t. He said he didn’t know whether Murray had.

A message left on Murray’s cellphone Tuesday wasn’t returned.

Federal officials have declined to say whether they are investigating Long or Murray, but FBI Supervisory Special Agent Kim Brunell in the Little Rock field office has confirmed that the Delta Blues investigation continues.

Long said he believes it’s likely federal agents have scrutinized his conduct, as well as several 1st Judicial District and Phillips County officials, in the past few years, but only in performing their due diligence as investigators.

In a written statement provided to the newspaper, Long said he believes that any federal scrutiny would have included Simes as well.

“I suspect that we were investigated in connection with that operation, and I suspect, as well, that so was every other deputy prosecutor in the district as well as all circuit judges and the two district judges in Phillips County,” Long wrote. “I hasten to point out that I have no proof or evidence that any of this is true. Whether this is true or not true, neither any of the circuit judges nor I, nor Mr. Murray, are disqualified by reasons of such investigation.”

Reached by email, Simes declined to comment on Long’s statement, saying he doesn’t discuss cases pending before him.

Long’s comments Tuesday are the latest development in the capital-murder case that already has been appealed to the state Supreme Court once this summer even though the case hasn’t yet gone to trial.

The appeal in part questioned Simes’ authority to appoint a special prosecutor in the case, creating an unusual legal conflict that had Smith’s defense attorneys arguing on the side of prosecutors against the judge, who had questioned the prosecutor’s motives and sought out a special prosecutor to independently review the case.

The appeal as well as Long’s latest comments revolve around the same facts.

Smith has been jailed since April 2011 when he was arrested and accused of killing Michael Campbell during a robbery in Helena-West Helena. At the time, prosecutors filed charges of capital murder and aggravated robbery and indicated that they would seek the death penalty in the case.

But in May, more than two years later, Long and Murray moved to drop the case against Smith, saying they couldn’t in “good conscience” proceed because they had “serious reservations” about Smith’s guilt.

On June 3, Simes denied the prosecutors’ motion and ordered the appointment of a special prosecutor to independently assess the case.

Days later, Smith’s attorneys appealed Simes’ decision, but the state Supreme Court declined to take up the matter, allowing it to proceed under the judge’s authority.

On Friday, Simes issued a second order formally removing the prosecutors, appointing a Little Rock lawyer in their place and setting a trial date of Sept. 16.

In his order, Simes singled out a series of newspaper articles last year in the Democrat-Gazette that revealed problems within the Phillips County justice system.

Those articles included the case of Sedrick Trice, one of the main drug traffickers targeted by the Delta Blues investigation. Trice should have been in state prison the whole time he was orchestrating the distribution of hundreds of pounds of cocaine, one article noted. Trice has since been sentenced to 40 years in federal prison for drug trafficking.

Simes also noted that the newspaper’s articles had exposed serious consequences that resulted from Murray dropping felony cases over the past few years in Phillips County. Simes cited the articles in combination with allegations made by Delta Blues defendants and an FBI informant that Murray had taken payoffs in exchange for assistance in avoiding felony charges.

In particular, the informant, Cornelious Coleman, testified in a federal trial last year that he had once paid Murray $30,000 in a cashier’s check in exchange for assistance with a drug charge.

Coleman, who is a felon, posed as a drug-trafficker at the FBI’s behest and gave bribes to a handful of law-enforcement officers in Phillips County.

The officers, who believed they were accepting the money in exchange for escorting shipments of cocaine, were arrested along with more than 60 others during the first phase of the Delta Blues investigation, which culminated on Oct. 11, 2011.

Since then, all of the law-enforcement officers arrested that day have either pleaded guilty or been convicted of various corruption charges and been sentenced to federal prison.

Murray, who has not been charged with any crimes, has denied the allegations, calling Coleman’s accusation a “baldfaced lie.”

In his order, Simes said the combination of the newspaper’s articles and the allegations that have surfaced during the Delta Blues investigation have led him to question the prosecutors’ reversal in Smith’s case.

Smith’s case was yet another example of Murray filing charges only to drop them months or years later, Simes wrote. The judge noted that the pattern of dropped cases had already led many residents in Phillips County to “question the integrity of the judicial system from top to bottom.”

In his written statement Tuesday, Long called much of the allegations in Simes’ order “innuendo” that had nothing to do with Smith’s case.

Long wrote that Murray had nothing to do with Trice’s avoidance of his state prison sentence.

And there is no proof that Murray ever accepted a payoff from Coleman, Long wrote.

“The interesting thing about that allegation is that Mr. Coleman alleges that he paid Todd in the form of a cashier’s check. If that were true, there would be a bank record of the cashier’s check and the proof would have been forthcoming,” he wrote. “It has not, and it will not.”

Long also argued that the judge has no proof that he or Murray committed any misconduct, particularly in handling Smith’s case.

“Todd Murray and I made the decision to dismiss a capital murder charge against a defendant because we could not in good conscience pursue it based on the evidence that we had at hand,” Long wrote, noting that the move was in accordance with their “consciences” as well as the prosecutorial standards of the American Bar Association.

In the interview Tuesday, Long said he couldn’t discuss why he made the decision to drop charges because Smith’s case is still open.

Regardless, he said, his decision should have been final.

“As far as I’m concerned, the Tony Smith case is over with,” he said.

Long said he is researching the judge’s order and plans to appeal it to the state Supreme Court.