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Columnist Sid Salter takes a take a look at the fifth U.S. Circuit Courtroom of Appeals case stemming from the 2014 GOP Senate Major scandal.
The fifth U.S. Circuit Courtroom of Appeals on July 27 declined to think about the attraction by the household of a Mississippi legal professional implicated in a 2014 GOP major Senate race scandal who later took his personal life. The ruling was a cut up determination with one notable dissent from Decide James C. Ho.
Ho argued that the case ought to have gone to trial and that the fifth Circuit’s ruling would have a chilling impact on First Modification rights. He wrote in his dissent: “There’s not a lot left to freedom of speech if it’s important to fear about being jailed for arguing with public officers.”
Extra about Decide Ho’s dissent later. The fifth Circuit determination got here final week after the 2021 determination of U.S. District Decide Carlton Reeves which dismissed the case.
The lengthy wake of the largely unsuccessful Tea Social gathering insurgence into Mississippi Republican politics by State Sen. Chris McDaniel of Jones County over the past decade is plagued by collateral injury – none sadder or extra tragic than within the case of the late Ridgeland legal professional Mark Mayfield, whose household was behind the attraction made to the fifth Circuit Courtroom of Appeals that the complete courtroom declined to think about.
Reeves dominated Mayfield’s household did not show their rivalry in a 2017 lawsuit that Mayfield was pushed to suicide by a conspiracy of Madison officers together with longtime Mayor Mary Hawkins-Butler and others. The lawsuit claimed that Mayfield took his personal life underneath private {and professional} stress from a felony cost of conspiracy to take advantage of a susceptible grownup as retaliation for Mayfield’s political actions on behalf of McDaniel in his race towards Cochran.
The cost towards Mayfield got here after an investigation into his alleged function in a scheme to {photograph} the late Rose Clayton Cochran, a affected person lengthy bothered with dementia who was residing within the Alzheimer’s Unit at Madison’s St. Catherine’s Village. The {photograph} surfaced in a video circulated in the course of the McDaniel-Cochran race.
The Cochran camp denounced the photograph as an appalling invasion of privateness and a disgusting assault on a helpless particular person. McDaniel denied prior information or involvement. However Mayfield, whose mom was additionally a resident affected person at St. Catherine’s Village, was accused of steering the one that photographed Mrs. Cochran to her room.
Mayfield died June 27, 2014 – his physique found by his spouse on the ground of a storage room of their storage. She known as authorities, who discovered Mayfield lifeless on the scene with a single gunshot wound to the top and a “massive caliber revolver” close to the physique. A word was recovered, and Mayfield’s loss of life was dominated a suicide.
I knew Mayfield earlier than his loss of life. Throughout my tenure at The Clarion-Ledger, he was a prolific author of letters to the editor. He was a comparatively low-key, likable fellow who might eloquently and forcefully specific his beliefs and opinions. Mayfield had the braveness of his convictions and appeared a pleasant, steady man.
Now, again to Decide Ho’s dissent from the fifth Circuit’s majority ruling. In February, in a Texas case involving a metropolis council dispute, Ho issued a scathing dissent from the standpoint of First Modification rights: “The chance for public officers to weaponize the prison justice system towards their political adversaries has by no means been better. So, it’s as much as the judiciary to ensure that those that maintain positions of energy keep of their lane.”
In a well-known chorus, Ho argues that the dismissal of the Mayfield household’s case towards Madison officers is in some way an assault on the First Modification rights of Mayfield within the political area. That argument ignores a strong revealed file of Mark Mayfield’s public advocacy on behalf of the Tea Social gathering and Tea Social gathering rules in Mississippi earlier than the 2014 GOP Senate major. It additionally ignores Mayfield’s advocacy on McDaniel’s behalf in that marketing campaign.
Extra importantly, it ignores the obligation of Madison officers to guard the privateness and security rights of individuals residing in services like St. Catherine’s Village throughout the metropolis.
Critics of Decide Ho declare he’s preening for appointment to the Supreme Courtroom by the following Republican president. Possibly. Possibly not.
However the unhappy, tragic saga of Mayfield’s loss of life was not dictated by an assault on his First Modification rights. Scheming to {photograph} a susceptible, impaired girl in her robe in a nursing house for perceived political benefit is fallacious. At his core, I consider Mark Mayfield knew that.
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