By Billy Davis

Federal prosecutors in Oxford have asked a federal judge to reconsider an FBI agent’s grand jury testimony, suggesting the judge may have mixed up identities in his order of acquittal.  

The federal agent, Shannon Wright, testified last February about the alleged kickback scheme between Panola businessman Lee Garner and David Chandler, the former county administrator.

Senior U.S. District Judge Neal Biggers wrote that agent Wright had made “serious misstatements of fact” to the grand jury, one of several displeasures noted by the federal judge and aimed at prosecutors.

Assistant U.S. Attorney Clay Dabbs suggested in his Motion to Clarify that Biggers might have mistaken Chandler’s testimony for Wright’s.

According to Dabbs, prosecutors were entering the Motion to Clarify after “scouring” trial transcripts of Wright’s testimony and the testimony of Keith Luke, an investigator with the USDA.

“The government has studied the grand jury transcripts of both Agent Wright and Agent Luke and cannot identify any reference to Lee Garner adding five dollars per hour to his bills to cover his payments to Chandler,” Dabbs wrote in his Motion.

Prosecutors did find testimony in which Chandler alleged that had taken place, Dabbs suggested.

The post-trial filing from Dabbs was the first one entered by federal prosecutors after the judge acquitted Garner on August 28 of a jury conviction from March.

Dabbs and the U.S. Attorney’s Office can appeal the overturned conviction to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

The judge’s acquittal set Garner free from a looming prison sentence and also dropped two counts against Ray Shoemaker, the former Tri-Lakes executive.  

Biggers ruled that federal prosecutors failed to prove that Chandler acted as an “agent” of Tri-Lakes Medical Center, although at the time he was serving on the then-public hospital board.

Garner deserved an acquittal for that oversight, Biggers said, citing a Louisiana case against a convicted tax assessor.

In another development in the case, attorneys for Shoemaker are asking Biggers to drop remaining convictions against their client.

A 14-page motion asks Biggers to consider acquittal or a new trial for Shoemaker related to his tenure at Tri-Lakes, The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reported.

While all of Garner’s convictions were overturned, Biggers granted Shoemaker a new trial on one count but retained the other convictions according to the Journal.