Miscellaneous

OTR Dissent in Mississippi

By Anne Skove, Esq.

Can a dissent be off the record?

It can in Mississippi. Last week a majority of the state supreme court denied a fellow justice his dissent. He wrote it, but it was not made public or filed with court documents.

The case in question was a wrongful death suit filed by a court employee against the Mississippi State Veterans Affairs Board. The case is Mississippi State Veterans Affairs Board v. Beverly Pettigrew Kraft, Personal Representative of the Wrongful Death Beneficiaries and Heirs at Law of Billy L. Pettigrew, Deceased, etc., 2006-IA-00859-SCT.

Evidently, the court had granted an interlocutory appeal, then changed its mind. Justice Diaz disagreed. A FOIA request for the missing dissent was filed by the Daily Journal, which is the only place one can read it. Never have interlocutory appeals and statutes of limitation been so sexy!

See State Supreme Court Vote Bans One of Its Own from Dissent, Patsy R. Brumfield, Daily Journal (August 22, 2008); Mississippi Supreme Court Censors Dissenting Opinion, Adam Lynch, Jackson Free Press (August 22, 2008).

Fun facts: Ted Frank (who, unless it was Tom Frank, plastered Hyde Park with want ads for a date a few decades ago) wrote about Justice Diaz's indictment and subsequent leave of absence a few years back. Justice Diaz and his wife plead not guilty and, in 2005, all bribery charges against them were cleared by a jury. Other actors in the case were convicted.

Full post as published by court-o-rama.org on August 24, 2008 (boomark / email).