A Lowndes County man convicted of capital murder will get a new trial.
Circuit Judge Lee Coleman granted a motion Friday morning in 39-year-old Derrick Bankhead’s case, citing evidence District Attorney Scott Colom had a conflict of interest in prosecuting it. Bankhead was convicted on Sept. 1 for his involvement in a July 2011 armed robbery that resulted in the shooting death of his disabled cousin, Eddie Bankhead. He had received a life sentence.
Bankhead’s attorney, Mark Williamson of Starkville, filed the motion on Sept. 15 to vacate the verdict and hold a new trial after evidence surfaced that Colom — who was lead prosecutor at Bankhead’s trial — had “stood in” to represent him as a public defender during a preliminary hearing in Columbus Municipal Court five weeks after the shooting. At that time, Bankhead said he told Colom information about the facts of the case that is protected by attorney-client privilege.
Williamson included with his motion records from the municipal court file showing Colom represented Bankhead at the hearing before former Judge Marc Amos. Colom was elected in 2015 as district attorney for Lowndes, Oktibbeha, Clay and Noxubee counties. He has since hired Amos as an assistant district attorney.
On Friday, Colom said he didn’t remember standing in as Bankhead’s defense attorney. He said he frequently stood in for defendants’ preliminary hearings while he serving as a public defender, so often that he said he doesn’t remember many of the defendants’ names or the details of their cases.
“I can see that (Bankhead’s) entitled to a new trial,” Colom said. “But I’m not conceding that I did anything improper in this case.”
Coleman ruled that legally Bankhead has to have a new trial given that the lead prosecutor in a case cannot have ever represented the defendant, however minimally.
Bankhead’s defense attorney Mark Williamson also requested the trial be handled by a different District Attorney’s Office, and that Bankhead be moved from Mississippi Department of Corrections and placed back in the Lowndes County Adult Detention Center to await trial.
Coleman said he intends to schedule the new trial as quickly as possible.
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