Before the first day of an Adams County murder trial was in the books last week, anyone following the trial had to know it wasn’t going well for the prosecution.

The defense was methodically poking holes of doubt in the prosecution’s case, effectively putting the investigators on trial, rather than the defendant, Eddie Minor III.

Minor was on trial for the murder of 16-year-old Jessie Taylor. The prosecution placed the bulk of its case on the testimony of Minor’s co-defendant, Emanuel Latham, also a teenager, who is to be tried at a later date.

With what seemed like common sense questions, the defense made the Natchez Police Department’s investigative team seem like bumbling keystone cops at times. That’s not a fair assessment overall as the team has successfully investigated dozens and dozens of cases that resulted in convictions.

But how could they have looked so incredibly sloppy?

How did professional investigators not check the cell phones of all the parties involved? How could they have missed, perhaps, the phone number provided by the prosecution’s star witness may have been his mother’s number instead of his own?

The error provided a reasonable doubt for jurors when the gaffe indicated the story of their witness didn’t match what the phone records showed.

The defense pointed out to jurors that the murder weapon or weapons were never recovered and that, worse still, the NPD didn’t make much of an effort to find them.

Defense attorney Carmen Brooks said it was, “despicable,” that no search warrants for the weapon were issued.

In the end the jury was deadlocked, and the judge ruled it a mistrial.

The prosecution says the case will be retried.

The case was similar to another high profile case first tried in 2012. In that case, the same defense attorney successfully cast doubt in the minds of jurors because the attorney was able to put NPD’s investigation team on trial. In that case none of the evidence police collected was tested forensically.

To their credit, the police didn’t think they needed to do so since law enforcement officers chased the defendant from the crime scene into a gulley where he was apprehended. The defense however turned the tables on the prosecution by suggesting the defendant was actually a victim of the real bank robber who got away.

Eventually the man was retried and convicted.

The problem here isn’t the defense attorney’s fault. They are responsible for providing the defendant with an aggressive and thorough defense.

But after last week’s case, a thought occurred to me: Are we (as a community) simply handling this incorrectly?

The mistakes — some of which seem elementary in nature — may indicate that we simply don’t have the best possible investigative resources available.

Would combining the investigative resources of the City of Natchez and Adams County mean our prosecutors would be better equipped and have less “holes” to explain in trials?

For the most part, our community’s lack of consolidation of government services reeks of simple politics and ego. No one wants to give up his control over something.

Many years ago our community realized it made more sense to combine efforts to fight the drug trade in the area, thus forming the Natchez-Adams County Metro Narcotics Task Force.

It seemed to make logical sense, then and now.

So why not follow that same model to more adequately man and equip the investigative arm of local law enforcement?

Our community simply cannot afford to drop the ball on criminal investigations. Doing so can be costly in real public dollars, since incarcerating the suspects and retrying them can be expensive, but also costly in lives and property lost.

 

Kevin Cooper is publisher of The Natchez Democrat. He can be reached at 601-445-3539 or kevin.cooper@natchezdemocrat.com.