Former Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Bobby DeLaughter is out of prison and in a transitional facility finishing his 18-month prison term for lying to federal authorities. Since January 2010, authorities have held DeLaughter at federal prison in McCreary, Ky.
"He is in the halfway house as of (Dec. 28)," Traci Billingsley, a spokeswoman for the Bureau of Prisons, which oversees DeLaughter's sentence, told the Jackson Free Press today. Billingsley would not give the location of the facility, however, or describe the conditions.
Halfway house environments offer a wide spectrum of living situations containing different degrees of supervision and restrictions. The Federal Bureau of Prisons describes one potential setting for pre-release inmates as residential re-entry centers, where offenders can have jobs but still live under supervision. Prisoners usually prefer halfway houses because they offer less restrictions.
DeLaughter is slated for an April 2011 release date after pleading guilty to misleading authorities regarding his role in a bribery scandal involving convicted attorney Richard "Dickie" Scruggs. DeLaughter's former boss, ex-Hinds County District Attorney Ed Peters led investigators to push for corruption charges, but accepted DeLaughter's lesser plea. DeLaughter pled guilty to lying to the FBI in July 2009.
"That's justice for rich white guys," said Emily Maw, director of the Louisiana Innocence Project, which uses DNA evidence to clear people wrongly convicted and incarcerated for crimes.
Maw and the Innocence Project used DNA evidence to clear Jackson resident Cedric Willis of a 1997 murder and robbery conviction. DeLaughter, assistant district attorney working under Peters at the time, prosecuted Willis. Judge Breland Hilburn presided over Willis' case. DeLaughter and Peters pushed Hilburn to prohibit DNA evidence and witness testimony that could have proved Willis innocent.
Willis did not match the description witnesses offered of the perpetrator, who they described as 60 pounds heavier than Willis, shorter and with a different skin tone.
The perpetrator, who has never been identified, also used the same weapon in several robbery and rape incidents, but DNA evidence collected at the rape eliminated Willis as the suspect. Still, prosecutors pressed Hilburn to exclude the DNA evidence handing the jury an easy--and faulty--conviction.
Willis, who was released from prison in 2006 after his exoneration, said he harbors no hard feelings for DeLaughter's plush sentence, even though Willis spent the 12 years of his own prison term in the confines of Parchman, where inmates routinely abused other inmates.
"I was just the other day talking with somebody, and they were talking about forgiveness, and I said 'I forgive DeLaughter, too.' There's no reason for me to haul that around," Willis said, adding that neither DeLaughter nor his representatives have ever called him with an apology.
The state of Mississippi has since granted Willis $500,000 in compensation for his wrongful conviction, thanks to a new state law. Willis told the JFP he would willingly trade the money for the 12 years he lost as a free man.
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