JACKSON — Former Jackson Mayor Dale Danks Jr., the attorney for Assistant District Attorney Jamie McBride, is challenging the attorney general’s authority to ask a Hinds County grand jury to indict him and his boss, Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith. A Hinds County grand jury recently indicted Smith and McBride on felony charges for allegedly trying to help a Jackson man, Christopher Butler, beat wire-fraud and embezzlement charges.
“In the case at bar,” Danks wrote in his Oct. 5 motion, “(the) Hinds County District Attorney did not call for a Hinds County Grand Jury to be empanelled for the purpose of indicting himself and one of his legal assistants, Co-Defendant Jamie K. McBride. The only authority the Mississippi Attorney General has to empanel a grand jury, independent of the local district attorney, is proscribed under the Mississippi State Grand Jury Act.” Danks quotes that act in full, outlining two different categories under which the charges must qualify.
Mississippi Code 13-17-1 states that the attorney general may petition the senior circuit judge to empanel a state grand jury when “normal investigative or prosecutorial procedures are not adequate.” However, in the petition, the attorney general’s office must outline that the crime took place in more than one circuit-court district and confer with the local district attorney before moving forward…