At a next-day press conference following the arrest last year of a local realtor charged with fatally shooting her live-in boyfriend, Sheriff Eric Flowers depicted her as a cold-blooded murderer.
Flowers not only convicted Donna Smith in the local news media, but – in a reckless rush to judgment – he also inflamed the community by saying she was “lying in wait” to gun down Jeffrey Simmons after a domestic disturbance at Vista Royale.
Last week, 18 months later, Circuit Judge Robert Meadows rejected the sheriff’s flawed account…