Records: County leader accused of DUI got special treatment
Published 12:59 pm Wednesday, June 19, 2019
(AP) — Phone records show a county supervisor in Mississippi managed to avoid being booked into jail and got his DUI charge dropped after calling the local sheriff.
The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reports Lee County Supervisor Billy Joe Holland was arrested in April 2018. Jail staff let him go without bail, and Sheriff Jim Johnson alerted county prosecutor James Moore.
The phone records obtained through a public records request show the same series of calls happened again just before Moore formally dropped the charge. Moore is now a county judge, and says the sheriff asked him to drop it.
Johnson denies ever making such a request, and Holland says he doesn’t remember calling the sheriff. The sheriff says he doesn’t remember the calls, but he says others have received similar treatment.