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Donna Ladd of the Jackson Free Press has added another installment to her series on Jackson mayor Frank Melton, Hinds County DA Robert Shuler Smith, and the prosecution of Sherrod Moore. The first thing you notice is the disappearance, without explanation, of her recent claim that murder victim Officer Robert J. Washington was found castrated:

Washington, then 37, was killed the evening of Nov. 14, 1995, while on patrol in Precinct 2. Police found his patrol car parked in front of an abandoned house at 2631 Clinton Ave. Early the next morning, an officer found his body 3.7 miles away in the lot of the old Showtime Drive-In Theater off Highway 80 and Whiting Road. He was lying with his head in a pool of blood; he had been shot in the head several times. The officer was found with his pants around his ankles, his underwear pulled down to his knees and a used condom, along with four Lifestyles condom packages, scattered around the body.

This time, Ladd focuses more on the problems both prosecution and defense are having getting enough information together to proceed with the trial of Sherrod Moore (or, as Ladd spells the name, Sharrod Moore) for the murder.

Both Moore’s appointed attorney, Chuck Mullins, and District Attorney Robert S. Smith say they can’t get the all the documents they are entitled to–Mullins from Smith, and Smith from the Jackson Police Department.

Mullins said Tuesday that he has been begging for all the evidence that the D.A. plans to use against his client–and the judge is going to hold off going to trial until all the evidence is where it should be. ‘We don’t know what’s going on,’ said Mullins, who believes the delay in discovery means the D.A. lacks a good case against his client, and perhaps went to the grand jury too hastily.

In an interview the same day, Smith responded that discovery issues are plaguing his side, too–mainly because law enforcement has not provided the full files on the controversial case. ‘First of all, I think there are a lot of people who have an interest in not seeing this case solved,’ Smith started out.

The DA then added: ‘We have enough evidence to convict. Sharrod Moore was the shooter of R.J. Washington. Over 12 years, things have been destroyed or hidden, and we’re just not finding it,’ he said, adding, ‘We didn’t indict Sharrod Moore just because we had a hunch that he did it.’

However:

… The district attorney is making no secret of his belief that powerful forces have conspired for years to keep the full truth about Washington’s murder from coming out. Some witnesses have even indicated police involvement–and it has long been rumored that the officer died because he had information that some people did not want him to share.

Smith said he did not start out looking for a conspiracy, but that the evidence points that direction. ‘There is no doubt in my mind that there has been a cover-up in the police department,’ Smith told the Jackson Free Press. ‘I will say, 12 years ago, the cover-up started then and continued for some time.’

As a result, Smith said, officers have been intimidated. ‘There have been career detectives on the cold-case unit years ago who got close to resolving the case, and were transferred to other departments.’ He added that Washington was known to keep a diary, but he has not been able to locate it.

Ladd writes that Smith, asked whether he’s investigating Melton’s connection to the case, said only, ‘When witnesses give us their statements, I’m going to examine the statement and corroborate it. … I can’t change that person’s testimony no matter whose name is involved. It’s not like I went out to find something on anybody.’

Make of that what you will, but it seems to me a pretty good further justification of Judge Swan Yerger’s recently naming two experienced special prosecutors to the case — a development that, note, the Clarion-Ledger still hasn’t mentioned.

Ladd, though, introduces other names, familiar and un-.

Another potential witness in the Washington case, Marcus Walker, was killed with three other men in an Aberdeen Street apartment five weeks after Moore was released on a $75,000 bond (PDF, 187 KB) granted Dec. 15, 1997, in a different capital murder case in which Moore was accused of killing Mary Donaldson and Samuel King at the Morocco Club alongside Walker, who was shot in the leg. Moore dropped Walker off at University Medical Center where Walker gave a hospital-bed statement to then-DA Ed Peters and then-Assistant District Attorney Bobby DeLaughter implicating Moore for the Morocco murders and as the killer of R.J. Washington.

Moore was initially denied bond in the Morocco case, but was then allowed to go free for $75,000 by then-Circuit Judge Robert Gibbs in a move agreed to by then-Assistant District Attorney Tommy Mayfield, who also worked under Peters, and who had taken over the case.

Mullins said Tuesday that not even Peters had believed Walker’s statement when he took it in the hospital, saying that Peters had cross-examined Walker like he was on the witness stand, even accusing Walker of lying to him.

Smith responded that Walker, in fact, later ended up dead just weeks after Moore was released on bond. Moore later pled to manslaughter in the Morocco case.

Peters’ successor, DA Faye Peterson, later indicted Moore for the Aberdeen shootings, including Walker’s murder, but had to release him late last year due to evidence missing from the police department.

The bottom-line question for Ladd is a good one: why was someone whose name is associated with as many murders as Moore’s allowed out on bond at all?  She quotes Smith, ‘I think it is highly unusual for a suspect with (Moore’s) criminal history, (accused of) several murders, and to have an eyewitness who was going to testify not only in the double homicide, but was going to give key information in the R.J. Washington case to be released on bond. … I can’t think of one articulatible reason to allow him to get bond.’ But Chuck Mullins, saying that’s just the way things went twelve years ago, suggests,

Mayfield had dropped the death penalty in the case and then approached him in response to his motion for bond (PDF, 64 KB). They agreed on $75,000, which Mullins said he did not believe Moore could pay. ‘There was nothing inappropriate,’ he said.

Mullins said Smith’s belief in a conspiracy in the Washington murder is hurting Moore, and perhaps influencing the jury pool. ‘He needs to leave the Oliver Stone stuff out and focus on this case,’ he said.

Smith had his own message for Mullins: ‘Maybe in the community where he lives, these things don’t happen. In this particular world, this is not a fairy tale.”

In a comment, Ladd promises

a timeline for this case, and the other murders Sharrod Moore was accused of (some people have mentioned how confusing all this is; damn right). Meantime, as far as the bond in the Morocco case, notice that the PDF posted today shows that it was requested in November; then attorney Mullins said ADA Mayfield called him to set the bond; Judge Gibbs approved it in December, and then in January, the Aberdeen murders (of Marcus Walker and three others) occurred, which I understand was right before the Morocco trial was set, but would need to confirm that with another source before I would state it as fact. Walker had given a statement, as I say above, implicating Moore in both the Washington and the Morocco Club murders.

But Moore got out on a $75,000 bond when he was in jail for two capital murders, not just a drug crime. So if people want to discuss how well our criminal-justice system works, there’s one to chew on for a while.

Yup, and I must say that I’m looking forward to that timeline even more than I’ll welcome definitive word on how Defendant Moore spells his first name.