According to WLBT, General Hood stated regarding his failure to prosecute certain indicted attorneys on state charges:

“There’s no statutory authority for any kind of special prosecutor,” he says. “We don’t need it, the Federal Government is doing a fine job, I’m satisfied with the job they’re doing. The FBI has all the assets in the world, they have the tools like wiretapping ability that we are asking for here.”

While most of us were transfixed on Oxford, seems Jackson Jamabalaya took a few minutes, did some legal research and was able to point out some interesting items contained in Mississippi law and jurisprudence that apparently the State’s top cop (1) didn’t know, (2) won’t admit exists or (3) couldn’t find on his own with a pack of bloodhounds. http://kingfish1935.blogspot.com/2008/02/jim-hood-liar.html
Whether or not JJ did his homework correctly I don’t know, but I thought it interesting, nonetheless.

However, when one is planning to go dig oneself a hole, one typically doesn’t wear a suit, so maybe I’m wrong.

My opinion only, but I think there is a cry for some action because this long-suspicious relationship of Hood and this bunch (not all trial lawyers if you include Patterson) is finally being revealed to what many of us has thought for quite some time. Hood has long denied that their hundreds of thousands of dollars have any influence over him whatsoever. Well, we see that is not the case, as he admitted yesterday. Hundreds of thousands of dollars of campaigns contributions have done exactly what they were intended to do—purchase access and favor with the Attorney General’s office and have a guy in the top spot who won’t touch them or allow them to be touched by anyone in his office. It is frustrating and repulsive to those of us who have claimed that this was the case and had those claims ridiculed as petty, among many less flattering terms. Why do we cry for action? Because we wanted the truth about this to come out. Do you really believe that Scruggs, Langston, Balducci, Patterson, et al… believed passionately in the leadership and legal skills of one Chickasaw county DA to pour their (not very hard-earned) cash into a campaign to elect him? You make the point that it would indeed be a conflict of interest for Hood to pursue them—and I agree—and pose this question: Don’t you think that was the point of their huge donations? Don’t you think this is exactly what was expected by them, donating large sums to have control over this guy and make a relationship that made it impossible for him to pursue them for anything? And if that’s not the case, but it is, Hood must then be thought of as staying silent to purchase THEIR silence. Just shut his mouth and the mouths of everyone in his office about this—don’t encourage any state investigation and not even admit that there has been any wrong-doing except “when pressed.” Why? Hood shuts up in the hopes that they will shut up as well—leave him out of their talks. He’s cowering in a corner at the Sillers building holding his breath.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but I didn’t wake up one day and decide that Jim Hood was evil incarnate and I would take this on. Nor have I decided that because Jim Hood is of a party that I vote less frequently for (though not always), he’ll be the guy I focus some sort of hatred upon. I don’t know about anyone else, but give me a little bit more credit than that, I would ask.

Coast victims do indeed deserve better. Mississippi does indeed deserve better. What in the hell could be wrong with people who believe both of those things and actually decide to demand it?

I’ve been in enough of these investigations to know that there are leads his people could be following that the federal agents and prosecutors do not have the time or resources to cover. But, I know they don’t want Hood or his people within two hundred miles of this investigation, because they don’t trust him, and them by association. Hood knows it, too.

And, the people of Mississippi do deserve better from their chief law officer.

I find Hood’s interview with the CL to be insulting as an attorney and a citizen. Since the Scruggs case first broke the closeness of Hood with the major players has been much discussed. But not really acknowledged by Hood. It has been something of an elephant in the living room that he seemed to not want to acknowledge. But when he finally does, he uses terms of “family” which raises yet another question of judgment in my mind.

Simply put, in my way of thinking, if Hood is too close to Scruggs et al to prosecute (which I agree with him by the way) then he is too close to Scruggs et al to make ANY decisions about prosecution, non prosecution, or the timing of prosecution. Unless he has just now become aware of this problem then it should have been acknowledged months ago and SOMEONE, and I don’t care if they are R or D, B or W, M or F, who is unbiased and can make honest decisions begin to make those decisions. It would have done much to help restore some sense of confidence in the legal system as a whole.

Simply put, if Hood feels that he cannot prosecute then he should withdraw completely rather than actually making all decisions about the Scruggs cases now while reserving the ultimate decision of to prosecute or not for some later date to be made by some unknown person. To me he is trying to jump in the pool but not get wet and then expects the public not to notice.

Stuck between bush, Barbour, hood and lampton, the katrina folks are in a world of hurt.

Sometimes, like everyone else, political parties, bar associations, judicial commissions, legislatures, and supreme courts just have to suck it up and take out the trash.

It’s long past time for ALL your institutions to form this habit, and lame-o Jim Hood is a good place for the MS Dems to start.