Feds Fire Back at Melton

Kate Medley

Federal prosecutors say it doesn't matter whether Frank Melton's motive was "evil" or not when he attacked a private home.

by Ward Schaefer
December 2, 2008

In a brief filed Monday, Dec. 1, federal prosecutors argued that the purity of Jackson Mayor Frank Melton’s motives has no bearing on his trial for civil-rights violations. Their motion(PDF) was a response to a defense brief(PDF) claiming that prosecutors must prove the mayor and his bodyguard Michael Recio acted with a “bad purpose or evil motive” when they allegedly ordered and participated in the 2006 destruction of a Ridgeway Street duplex.

During the mayor’s state trial for the Ridgeway incident, defense attorneys repeatedly argued that Melton had not acted with “evil intent” and that he was protecting the city from drugs and crime.

Prosecutors objected to this defense in their brief: “Throughout history, law-breakers have sought to escape conviction by arguing that their illegal actions … were undertaken for the greater good of human kind,” they wrote. Prosecutors maintained that the phrase “bad purpose or evil motive” is merely shorthand for the requirement that Melton and Recio’s actions were “conscious wrongdoing.”

“The reason the government objects to using this language—particularly the term ‘evil motiveҗis because a lay juror may associate such terms with their more colloquial definitions,” prosecutors wrote. “Using this term may misleadingly suggest that the jury may not convict unless it determines that a defendant’s conduct was completely wicked and his character wholly degenerate.”

Also on Dec. 1, prosecutors filed a request(PDF) that Judge Daniel Jordan restrict access to their three most recent motions because they contained “sensitive or inflammatory information.”

Two of those motions appear aimed at defending the credibility of the prosecution’s witnesses. One asks that Jordan prohibit reference to the misconduct of police officer witnesses when it has no bearing on those witnesses’ truthfulness. The other specifically asks Jordan to prohibit reference to “allegations of misconduct by Marcus Wright,” the mayor’s former bodyguard.

Marcus Wright is cooperating with prosecutors as part of a plea bargain. Defense attorneys signaled their intention to discredit Wright when they demanded that the government turn over JPD Internal Affairs documents on Wright. Those files investigated allegations made against Wright by a former male prostitute.

The third motion prosecutors filed under seal asks Jordan to reconsider his ruling on “certain statements” by Melton. While arguing for a separate trial for her client at a pre-trial hearing in November, Recio’s attorney, Cynthia Stewart, referred to public statements by the mayor that could be construed as admissions of guilt. Jordan denied Recio’s motion to sever his trial but made no official ruling on the mayor’s statements at the hearing.

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