Special judge will hear motion against DA’s office
Judge William Acree will hear arguments to remove the Shelby County District Attorney General’s office from the retrial of a man sentenced in 2001 to death row.
Attorneys for Andrew Thomas, who is now at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution, filed a motion to have Criminal Court Judge Mark Ward disqualify himself from the retrial as well as from the hearing to remove the DA’s office.
Ward ruled that he would hear the new trial himself, but he asked the Tennessee Administrative Office of the Courts to provide a special judge to oversee proceedings in a motion to disqualify the DA’s office.
Acree is a former circuit court judge for the 27th Judicial District in West Tennessee, which includes Obion and Weakley counties. He also served as president of the Tennessee Judicial Conference.
Andrew Thomas’ murder conviction
Thomas was first convicted in federal court in the 1998 in the armed robbery of James Day, a courier with Loomis, Fargo and Co. Day was shot in the back of the head and robbed while at a Walgreens store on Summer Avenue in April 1997.
Paralyzed after the shooting, Day testified in the robbery trial and Thomas was sentenced to life in federal prison.
Day died in 1999 from complications caused by the gunshot wound. In 2001 Thomas was convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to death.
But in 2017 Thomas was awarded a new trial after his attorneys learned that his ex-girlfriend, Angela Jackson, had been given $750 by a member of the Safe Streets Task Force, a multiagency group of federal and state law enforcement officers who investigated and assisted in the federal trial.
The payment was made in 1998, which was after the federal robbery trial and before Day died.
Jackson denied getting paid in the state trial and prosecutors have said the payment was not disclosed to them.
The case was prosecuted by Amy Weirich, now the Shelby County district attorney general and Jennifer Nichols, who is now a criminal court judge. Weirich said they didn’t know about the payment until 2011.
And because Ward made a donation to Nichols’ campaign for judge, defense attorneys asked that he remove himself from the case.