Judge rejects AG’s bid to permanently end case against ex-Capitol Police officer

A Hinds County judge has blocked the state attorney general’s attempt to permanently drop the manslaughter case against a former Capitol Police officer who admitted to killing a 25-year-old Jackson man during a traffic stop.

Hinds County Circuit Judge Faye Peterson ruled the attorney general’s office was showing a “bias” for law enforcement, despite its legal responsibility to prosecute the manslaughter case against the white former officer, Michael Lamar Rhinewalt, for firing the shot that killed Jaylen Lewis, a Black man. After a majority-Black jury deadlocked on whether to convict Rhinewalt at trial last month, the new ruling leaves open the possibility that Rhinewalt could face a second trial and up to 20 years in prison under a future attorney general, once current Republican officeholder Lynn Fitch’s term is up in 2028.

September’s manslaughter trial against Rhinewalt and the other former officer who admitted to shooting at Lewis in self defense, Steven Frederick Jr., marked the first criminal trial from Capitol Police’s record year of shootings in 2022. After the trial ended in an acquittal for Frederick and a hung jury for Rhinewalt, Peterson said she could hold another trial as soon as February.

But just hours later, the attorney general’s office announced in a press release that it would not put Rhinewalt on trial again, writing that “in the case of a tie, the benefit of the doubt goes to our law enforcement officers.”

In her ruling Wednesday, Peterson criticized the attorney general’s reasoning, stating that Fitch’s office failed to give a substantive basis to “abandon” its oath and duty to keep prosecuting the case, such as “conflicting evidence.”

“The Court does not operate in (a) vacuum and is aware that on the date the case was announced as a mistrial, the Office of the Attorney General announced it would be abandoning its duty to pursue prosecution of this case due to a bias in preference of law enforcement rather than upholding the oath of the office to pursue prosecutions of cases without bias, sympathy or prejudice,” the judge wrote.

The attorney general’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. After Peterson rejected the office’s effort to get a permanent dismissal, the attorney general filed an official request Friday for the judge to temporarily drop the case.

“The prosecution is bound to administer justice and protect the public by faithfully, fairly and impartially prosecuting crimes without regard to bias, sympathy, prejudice, preference or favoritism,” wrote Luke Williamson, the special assistant attorney general who handled the prosecution. “The prosecution believes we have exercised appropriate and reasonable measures in the prosecution of this case.”

Peterson has not yet ruled on the new request, according to court records.

Arkela Lewis, whose son Rhinewalt killed, thought the case was over. But when she learned from Mississippi Today there was a chance Rhinewalt could face trial again, she said the judge’s ruling gave her “a little bit more faith.”

“It doesn’t give me peace, but I can breathe a little bit knowing that she’s speaking out for my family, for my son,” she said.

Peterson ruled that she would have considered a request to temporarily drop the case, while allowing another prosecutor to take it up in the future. But in its initial request, the attorney general’s office aimed to shield Rhinewalt from prosecution in the manslaughter case forever — an “unnecessary reach” for Fitch’s office, according to Mississippi Christian University law professor Matthew Steffey.

“What that does is it instructs the next attorney general — whoever that is, and no matter what future evidence comes forward — ‘You may not prosecute this officer,’” Steffey said. “It would be a shame to have to tell a victim, ‘We can’t pursue justice because the previous holder of this office made sure to tie our hands.’”

In Mississippi, the attorney general has sole power to prosecute officers for shooting civilians under state law. But both critics and allies of Rhinewalt have found fault with how the attorney general handled the case.

Speaking as Rhinewalt’s friend, Shaun Yurtkuran, a Jackson-based criminal defense attorney and a former prosecutor for the attorney general’s office, has another word to describe the office’s handling of the case: a “mess.”

Since Fitch’s office secured a grand jury indictment in the case last year, Yurtkuran said he has wanted nothing more than for Rhinewalt to finally be free of the case that has “financially ruined” his friend. But he said the attorney general failed to give the judge any valid legal reason for why the case should end forever.

“I don’t fault Judge Peterson because I fault the AG,” Yurtkuran said. “I think they screwed up in the beginning, like indicting him, and even to the end, they couldn’t even do that right.”

In his argument for a permanent dismissal, Williamson justified his request with the jury’s decision to acquit Frederick and the “age” of the case, even though it was the attorney general’s office that waited three years to indict the former officers.

This is not the first time a judge has questioned the fairness of the attorney general’s prosecution of Rhinewalt from his time as a Capitol Police officer with the force’s crime suppression Flex Unit. Another conflict stemmed from an aggravated assault case Rhinewalt faced after prosecutors accused him of shooting Sherita Harris, a Black woman, during an attempted traffic stop a month before he killed Lewis.

The attorney general’s office was prosecuting the aggravated assault case against Rhinewalt while it was also defending him against a $3 million federal lawsuit that Harris filed, which accused the former officer of shooting her in the head and leaving her with “permanent neurological and facial injuries.”

The attorney general’s office argued that, because separate divisions were handling the cases, there was no evidence of “improper influence” on the grand jury that indicted Rhinewalt in Harris’ shooting. But ultimately, the Hinds County circuit judge presiding over the case, Adrienne Wooten, ruled the discrepancy was an unprecedented “conflict of interest which gravely undermines the integrity and fairness of the proceedings.”

The attorney general appointed the office of Lin Carter, the district attorney of Forrest and Perry counties, to take over the prosecution for Harris’ shooting. After a year and a half of delays , Rhinewalt is scheduled to face trial in that case next month.

Law experts expect that Rhinewalt will be clear from prosecution in the manslaughter case as long as Fitch is attorney general. But Yurtkuran said the judge’s ruling still leaves the former officer in “legal purgatory.”

Steffey said that once Fitch’s term is up at the beginning of 2028, it will be up to the new attorney general to review Rhinewalt’s case and decide whether to put him on trial again. So far, the only name in the race is Republican Sean Tindell, the former public safety commissioner whose department oversees the bureau that investigated Lewis’ killing.

During his tenure over the Department of Public Safety, Tindell also oversaw reforms that gave its law enforcement standards board more power to investigate officer misconduct. He did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Lewis’ father, William Drake, said the attorney general’s decision against retrying Rhinewalt is a “political” move as Fitch runs for governor in next year’s elections. Fitch’s office has so rarely taken officers to court for shooting at civilians that Drake said the attorney general’s decision to indict Rhinewalt and Frederick for his son’s death already “spoke volumes” to him.

According to Fitch’s office, Lewis’ killing was one of only four times during her tenure when officers shot at civilians that the office did not find to be “justified.”

“For her to go against the grain, it was some light for me in some very dark times,” Drake said. “For her to even indict her own.”

This story was originally published by Mississippi Today and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.