Lazaro Aleman
ECB Publishing, Inc.
After two days of the state presenting evidence and witnesses’ testimony to a six-member jury, the presiding judge called a mistrial in the felony case of former Clerk of Court Kirk Reams on Wednesday afternoon, May 8.
Reams is charged with grand theft and organized scheme to defraud, as are his two codefendants, Warren Charles Culp Jr. and Justin Tyler McNeill. Culp has entered an open plea with the court, his sentence deferred until the termination of his codefendnts’ cases and dependent on his cooperation with the state.
Wednesday’s mistrial resulted from what Circuit Judge Stephen Everett called harmful and prejudicial errors that were cumulative in effect.
The judge was referring to comments by two of the state’s witnesses that alluded to Reams’ prior arrest on petty theft, for which he was suspended from office for little more than a year starting in late 2017.
The judge had in an earlier hearing issued an order that Reams’ prior arrest and petty theft charge could not be brought up in the trial. When both former County Commissioner Betsy Barfield and Culp in their separate testimonies alluded to the prior suspension and charge, the defense called for a mistrial.
“I can’t argue in good conscience that it’s not prejudicial,” State Attorney Jack Campbell conceded to the judge. “If you grant the motion for mistrial, you would be on solid ground.”
A new trial has been scheduled for the week of Aug. 19. Reams, meanwhile, has again waived his right to a speedy trial, thereby allowing for the August retrial. Too, the state indicated that it would seek to try Reams and McNeill together. Their cases had been separated months ago.
A full story of the trial will appear in next Wednesday’s paper.