Jess H. Dickinson

This case concerned the Mississippi Bar's motion to disbar attorney Walter W. Teel following his federal felony convictions in the Southern District of Mississippi. Teel had been indefinitely suspended pending appeal, during which the Fifth Circuit reversed one conviction for federal program bribery but affirmed the others, and the U.S. Supreme Court later denied certiorari. The Bar then sought permanent disbarment under Rule 6 of the Mississippi Rules of Discipline, which the court granted after finding the appeals concluded. The court ordered Teel permanently disbarred, required him to notify clients and courts, and assessed costs against him based on the final convictions.

criminal lawprocedure

In Foxworth v. State, Weldon Foxworth pleaded guilty in the trial court and was sentenced on August 21, 2007. He filed a notice of appeal with the Mississippi Supreme Court on August 12, 2008. The court dismissed the appeal because it was untimely under Rule 4 of the Rules of Appellate Procedure, which requires the notice to be filed within 30 days after entry of the judgment. The dismissal was without prejudice, allowing Foxworth to pursue post-conviction collateral relief as an original civil action in the trial court.

criminal lawprocedure

This case involves the Mississippi Bar's petition to the Mississippi Supreme Court to accept the irrevocable resignation of attorney Edward J. Peters pursuant to Mississippi Rule of Discipline 10. The court decided to accept the resignation and permanently disbar Peters from practicing law in the state. Peters had submitted a notice acknowledging a pending disciplinary matter, indicating he did not wish to defend against it, and requesting to resign with prejudice. The core reasoning is that all procedural requirements under Rule 10.5 were satisfied, granting the court authority to terminate the proceedings and enter an order of disbarment, which is considered tantamount to proof of guilt on the charged matters.

procedure

The case involved the Mississippi Bar seeking reciprocal discipline against attorney Rodney E. Rexrode, who had been disbarred in Pennsylvania for engaging in improper business transactions with clients that harmed their interests and failing to fulfill professional obligations. The Supreme Court of Mississippi, applying Rule 13 of the Mississippi Rules of Discipline, determined that the Pennsylvania disbarment conclusively established Rexrode's misconduct, including violations of rules on conflicts of interest and diligence in two client matters involving a payroll advance and a limousine business venture. The court decided to disbar Rexrode from practicing law in Mississippi, require him to notify clients and courts, and pay costs, reasoning that the extreme sanction was appropriate given the circumstances.

procedurecriminal law

This case involves multiple petitions for writs of mandamus filed by attorney Stuart Robinson, Jr., and his clients requesting that Circuit Judge Tomie T. Green be recused from seven pending civil cases and all future cases involving Robinson, based on allegations of bias and lack of impartiality. The claims arose from events in one underlying trial concerning the availability and live testimony of an expert witness, where the judge and Robinson engaged in pointed exchanges about the attorney's knowledge and representations regarding the witness's schedule. The court reviewed the factual record of these interactions, including the judge's statements questioning Robinson's handling of the matter, and analyzed whether they established grounds for recusal under applicable standards. The petitions were consolidated for decision by the Supreme Court of Mississippi.

procedure

This case involves Sherwood Brown, who was convicted of two counts of murder and one count of capital murder and sentenced to death. Brown filed a successive application for post-conviction relief claiming he is mentally retarded and therefore exempt from execution under the U.S. Supreme Court's 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia. The Mississippi Supreme Court granted Brown leave to seek relief in the trial court, finding that Atkins constituted an intervening decision and that Brown had submitted a qualifying expert affidavit stating his IQ was in the lower 70s with a reasonable basis to conclude he is mentally retarded. The ruling applied the standards from the court's recent decision in Chase v. State for evaluating such claims on post-conviction review.

criminal lawprocedure

This case concerned whether defendants in a civil action were entitled to additional time to appeal a partial summary judgment under Mississippi Rule of Appellate Procedure 4(h) after claiming they never received notice of the order's entry. The trial court denied the motion, relying on the circuit clerk's records indicating that notice had been sent. The Mississippi Supreme Court reversed and remanded, holding that the defendants' specific factual denial of receipt, backed by affidavits from their law firms, rebutted and terminated the presumption of notice from the clerk's records. The court explained that the trial judge had incorrectly treated the presumption as irrebuttable and that the announcement of a ruling does not trigger the appeal deadline, which instead runs from entry of the judgment with proper notice.

procedure

In Chase v. State, a Mississippi death row inmate convicted of capital murder in 1990 filed a successive application for post-conviction relief, claiming he was mentally retarded and thus exempt from execution under the U.S. Supreme Court's 2002 decision in Atkins v. Virginia. The court examined deficiencies in the inmate's filings, including incomplete evidence on IQ scores, adaptive functioning, and expert evaluations, and established procedural standards requiring an evidentiary hearing in the trial court with specific tests for malingering and mental retardation (IQ cutoff of 75 plus deficits in adaptive behavior). The court granted leave to proceed with the motion in the trial court rather than ruling on the merits itself, applying an exception to the successive-petition bar due to the intervening Atkins ruling and clarifying that defendants with IQs of 76 or above do not qualify for exemption.

criminal lawprocedure

Odis Emery was tried and convicted of burglary of a dwelling house after police officers identified him as the suspect who fled the scene. At trial, Emery testified but did not address his location on direct examination; on cross-examination the prosecutor asked where he had been and, over objection, why he had not told that story to police or others before trial. The Mississippi Supreme Court reversed the conviction and remanded for a new trial, holding that the cross-examination improperly commented on Emery's post-arrest silence in violation of due process. The court explained that the questions were fundamentally unfair under established Supreme Court precedent and that the remaining identification evidence was not so strong as to render the error harmless.

criminal lawprocedure