WEST POINT — A former Clay County Circuit Court clerk was found not guilty Tuesday of embezzling almost $5,000 in fees paid to the court.
Bobbie A. Davis, 59, of 1713 Smith St. in West Point, was wrongfully accused of divvying up a $10,000 fine in the court”s accounting ledger to cover almost $5,000 missing from the evidence file cabinet in the clerk”s office.
Davis was cleared of the charge by all 12 jurors, who returned the verdict after about an hour of deliberation.
A second charge, of embezzlement while a public official, was dropped.
“I can do a dance right now,” Davis said after the two-day trial. “I”m just relieved. Thank God.”
Davis was indicted in 2009, a year after a state audit of court financial records.
The auditor found that in 1996, Clay County sheriff”s deputies made a drug arrest and seized about $5,000 in cash, which is now missing.
The accounting ledger was altered in February 1998 to move about $5,000 from the fines column to the restitution column.
In July 1998, the court ordered Davis to send the cash from the drug bust to the sheriff”s office, which she did in the form of a check that apparently drew money from the restitution column.
In closing arguments Tuesday evening, District Attorney Forrest Allgood argued that Davis changed the ledger, either to hide her negligence in losing the drug bust cash or because she took the money herself.
“What I”m asking you to do is hold someone accountable for taking public funds, not give her a bye,” he said.
But Davis” attorneys argued that she made a simple accounting error, if that. There was no proof, they emphasized, that there was even a crime committed, let alone that Davis did anything criminal.
The cash from the drug arrest could have been taken by any of the many people who had access to the unlocked evidence file cabinet, they said. Or, a sheriff”s deputy could have taken the cash directly to the sheriff”s office immediately after the drug raid.
“This case is ridiculous. It makes me angry,” defense attorney Jim Waide told the jury. “It ought to make you angry.”
Defense attorney Victor Fleitas also took Allgood to task for bringing a case to trial based on “speculation.”
“(The prosecutors) have the burden of proof,” Fleitas said. “They have not met that proof. Yet, Bobbie Davis has to sit there accused, subjected to this process, with no crime.”
Allgood countered that state auditors followed the money trail, which led to Davis.
“That”s not speculation,” he added. “Those are tracks. Tracks you can follow to a destination. And that destination is $5,000 that was supposed to go to Clay County.”
Fleitas countered that Allgood”s theory was trying to “make a square peg go into a round hole.”
Fifth District Circuit Court Judge Clarence E. Morgan III, was called in to preside over the case after 16th District Circuit Court Judges Lee Howard and Jim Kitchens recused themselves, due to their familiarity with Davis.
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