Jackson Jambalaya

A Madison County court dismissed a Petition to Perpetuate Rule 27 Testimony filed by Stuart Irby. Circuit Judge William Chapman, III threw out the lawsuit yesterday after defendants Lee Bounds and Vickie Currie argued the petition did not meet the standards of Rule 27 and that the petition was a fishing expedition for evidence to use in Mr. Irby's criminal proceedings.

Conservators for Stuart M. Irby, Sr. filed a Notice of Verified Petition for Rule 27 depositions to file testimony, on August 5 in Madison County Circuit Court. The petition stated Mr. Irby will file a suit for malicious prosecution against Lee Bounds and Madison Police Officer Vickie Currie, after the cyberstalking case against him is "terminated". The petition states the indictment against him is still pending. Earlier post with copy of petition.

The petition states Mr. Bounds is the first husband of Karen Irby. It claims Mr. Irby took "Mr. Bounds and his entire family to lunch one Sunday to celebrate the birthday" of one of his daughters (Karen and Lee's child). "Mr. Irby took several photographs of the family. Later, Mr. Irby sent Mr. Bounds photographs of Mr. Bounds' seventeen year old daughter, which he had photo-shopped by putting pictures" her face "onto the body of an adult female wearing a swimsuit."

The petition refers to the email as a "sophomoric prank" and states it was "emailed to Mr. Bounds, not to his daughter". The petition then states Mr. Bounds "emailed Mr. Irby asking if he could use Mr. Irby's condominium in Destin, Florida during his daughter's Spring Break."

Everyone is pretty much familiar with that happened after these contacts. Cyberstalking charges were filed against Mr. Irby. Further contact with Mr. Bounds and a DUI arrest led to the placement of Mr. Irby on house arrest. Mr. Irby pleaded guilty to the DUI charge and served 48 hours in jail (How many first-time offenders serve two days in jail?) . A Madison County Grand Jury indicted Mr. Irby for the cyberstalking charges. The case is scheduled to go to trial in November.

Officer Currie argued in her response the petition assumed Mr. Irby would be found not guilty. Her lawyer argued Rule 27 indeed allows a party to obtain testimony before a suit is filed BUT the rule also states "if the court is satisfied that the perpetuation of the testimony may prevent a failure or delay of justice." Thus the burden for Mr. Irby to meet, and the Court agreed with this argument, is whether obtaining the testimony may prevent a failure or delay of justice. Both Ms. Currie and Mr. Bounds argued there was no evidence they would not be available at a later date for testimony or there testimony would be "lost prior to petitioners filing a yet to accrue malicious prosecution action." Ms. Currie further accused the estate of seeking "pre-suit discovery." Mr. Bounds made similar arguments in his motion to dismiss. Ms. Currie then posited the petition was a "disguised attempt to gather evidence for use in Mr. Irby's criminal proceeding."

The judge agreed with Ms. Currie and dismissed the suit. The dismissal does not bar Mr. Irby or his estate from filing a complaint for malicious prosecution at a later date.

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I will write up my post about the PERS Commission later today but here is the video of the entire hearing.

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Come honor Madison County Supervisor at this "reception":

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The Mississippi Center for Public Policy rolled out the updates to its Seethespending.org website. The new version provides readers with spending records from 62 counties in Mississippi. MCPP President Forest Thigpen pointed out that Hinds County was the only county that did not respond to the request. WAPT's Bulldog Simmons reported

"WAPT's Scott Simmons went to the Hinds County Chancery Clerk's office to find out why the county hadn't responded.

"I will accept some responsibility here, but I am not going to accept the total responsibility because I sent it to the board attorney," said Chancery Clerk Eddie Jean Carr.

Carr said she received the request from the center on July 16, 2010, and forwarded it to the board attorney three days later.

"After your questions, we have gotten a call from the county attorney," Thigpen told Simmons.

Thigpen said the nonprofit group had waited 14 months for a response. Crystal Martin, of the county attorney's office, said a response was made to the request, but the number called was disconnected. Martin said it was assumed that the public information request was withdrawn."

As my old friend TNT on Tigerroar.com would say, UH-HUH. This is typical behavior for Hinds County attorneys as they repeatedly play games with public records request. When Mr. Thigpen made these comments this morning, I immediately assumed Ms. Carr gave the request to Ms. Martin as Ms. Carr runs a pretty tight ship and has never been linked to the controversies produced by the Supervisors and their lawyers. Sure enough, WAPT confirmed what I thought. I considered it to be a typical experience when filing public records requests in Hinds County.

When this correspondent filed a public records request for a copy of the Motorola Settlement, Attorney Precious Martin sent me an answer via certified mail. Yup. Certified mail. Then there is one I filed in April. I submitted this request in person at the courthouse downtown. A copy was made, stamped, and initialed so it could be shown if needed at a later date it was indeed submitted on that date. Its a practice I follow after other agencies such as Medicaid and the City of Jackson have somehow lost my requests only to suddenly find them when I produced the receipt.

The response to my request was late by one week. When I pointed out they were a week late and the date I submitted them, I was told she "disagreed with the characterization" of when it was submitted. Yes, stating the date on the receipt is a "characterization", something to be manipulated, you know, fuzzy math. two plus two could be characterized as being four but it could be characterized as being three, or five, or whatever I say it is.

Then there is the change order provided to the FCC for one million dollars against Sprint/Nextel by Precious Martin. The change order was mentioned in the minutes. It was submitted to the FCC. It definitely exists yet when I submitted a public records request for it this year, Ms. Martin wrote in a response the county "was not in possession" of the change order. Got to love Hinds County sophistry. However, a case last year showed the lengths to which Hinds County will pursue to avoid complying with public records requests.

Motorola filed a public records request on April 13, 2010. Hinds County "failed to produce or deny access in writing along with a statement as to the specific reasons for the denial of access to such records within such time period." The records requested were board minutes, reports, emails, accounting reports regarding security for Hinds County circuit judges and their courtrooms. Hinds County replied nearly a month later that such information was..... attorney work product or related to litigation. yes, board minutes are exempt from public records law if you claim work product or lawsuits.

The lawsuit dragged on for over a year as Hinds County attorneys used every possible excuse to delay final judgment. Judge Zebert found for Motorola and awarded over $8,000 in attorney's fees to Motorola. Hinds naturally appealed the judgment but Motorola filed a satisfaction of judgment and release on April 28, 2011. About the same time it settled the civil lawsuit over the use of the radio system by Madison and Ridgeland with Motorola.

So today we get the "phone is disconnected" excuse. Given Hinds County's handling of other requests, one can only speculate why Ms. Martin suddenly forgot how to use the United States Post Office. While she is explaining that, perhaps she can explain why she did not inform the supervisors they needed to get permission from the Wireless Commission before purchasing over $100,000 in EF Johnson radios or why a contract with Derrick Johnson was legal when he was not a licensed attorney.

Just like the Energizer Bunny. It just keeps going and going and going...

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Taxpayers can now review spending by 62 counties on Seethespending.org operated by non-profit Mississippi Center for Public Policy. The Mississippi think tank announced the update to the website today at a press conference. Taxpayers can access county records by department, payee/vendor, or type of spending. The information was obtained through public records requests submitted to Chancery Clerks throughout Mississippi. President Forest Thigpen stated MCPP paid all required fees for the information (Press release and speech transcript by Mr. Thigpen are posted below.).

The updated website provides the spending records of sixty-two counties for the last six years. MCPP provided some data covered by the update:
-more than 50 departments per county
-more than 125 spending categories per county
-184,000 in all counties
-5.5 million total records.

Mr. Thigpen said future updates will include state contracts, school district spending, and county revenues.

Unfortunately, and this will come as little surprise to JJ readers, Hinds County thumbed its nose at Mr. Thigpen and his project as it did not even respond to the public records request. Hinds County did this even though Section 25-61-5(2) of the Mississippi Code states:

"Denial by a public body of a request for access to or copies of public records under this chapter shall be in writing and shall contain a statement of the specific reasons for the denial."

Of course, the Hinds County Board of Supervisors and their attorneys as usual think the law does not apply to them. Mr. Thigpen said:

"However, not all counties have complied with our requests for spending records. Hinds County, for example, has not responded in any way to our request. The taxpaeyrs of Hinds County should demand that their county officials release the data. While most other counties have recognized that the people's money is the people's business, Hinds County has so far said to their residents, "What we do with your money is none of your business." It raises the question, "What are they trying to hide?"

What are they trying to hide indeed. Mr. Thigpen said "If they (Hinds) don't respond by this Thursday, we have prepared a complaint we will file in court against Hinds County to require them to comply.

Here is the video of the press conference. Mr. Thigpen demonstrates how to use the system at 14:08. WAPT's Scott Simmons asked some good questions at 8:28.

Fox40's Courtney Ann Jackson interviews Stacey Pickering after the press conference at the offices of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy.

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The John Dennery campaign just released the following announcement:

Dennery Picked As GOP Nominee for Hinds County Supervisor District 1
Jackson, Mississippi –

On Monday, the Hinds County Republican Party chose John Dennery as its candidate for Supervisor in District 1. Last Friday, Republican nominee Roger Davis withdrew to focus on his business.

"I'm excited about the opportunity to restore the people's faith in our Board of Supervisors," said Dennery. "Our county suffers from a lack of transparency that has led to no-bid contracts and backroom deals. If I’m elected those deals will stop.”

John Dennery was the owner and operator of Dennery’s Restaurant for 33 years, until his retirement in 2008. John’s work in business earned him notoriety both in Mississippi and nationally. John was Restaurateur of the Year in 1987 and has served as a delegate to the White House Conference on Small Business.

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Here is the video of the meeting. Nothing exciting as most of the time was spent on housekeeping issues such as contracts, awards, and reports. There is one interesting discussion at the beginning of the fourth clip over the upgrading of radios and mobile units for the Sheriff's office. The radios are upgraded to Phase II. Such an upgrade makes them compatible with the statewide (MSWIN) radio system. The term used in the dicussion, "flash" means changing the internal parts for the upgrade. The contract is with Motorola and Supervisor Fisher had made sure Airwave or Northstar was not involved.

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