Mississippi Litigation Review & Commentary : Mississippi Personal Injury Lawyer & Attorney : Phillip W. Thomas Law Firm : MS Litigation Review & Commentary

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In this October post, I discussed the vacant 5^th Circuit Court of Appeals slot and mentioned Justice James Graves as a candidate to fill the position. Since then, President Obama’s administration has moved at its typical slow pace in filling the position. With the President’s White House Counsel leaving the administration at the end of the year, it appears unlikely that the announcement of a nominee is imminent.

It’s my understanding that Justice Graves remains on a growing list of candidates. Other names mentioned as candidates, in no particular order, include:

1. Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Winston Kidd,
2. Hinds County Chancery Court Judge Denise Owens,
3. former Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Robert Gibbs,
4. Jackson attorney Doug Minor,
5. Assistant U.S. Attorney Felicia Adams, and 
6. Circuit Court Judge Margaret Carey-McRae.

It sounds like Judge Winston Kidd is Congressman Bennie Thompson’s candidate. But each of the other candidates have their own supporters in political circles or the bar. I have not heard of Congressmen Gene Taylor or Travis Childers supporting a candidate. Taylor is known to stay out of appointment debates. Childers is rumored to have focused on pushing for Oxford attorney Christi McCoy to be named U.S. Attorney for the Northern District. But McCoy is unlikely to get the nod.

It is believed that some of the 5^th Circuit candidates have been interviewed over the phone by the White House.  

A huge question is when will the White House make an announcement. To see how long this could go on, look at the vacant U.S. District Court seat that has long been presumed to be going to Jackson attorney Carlton Reeves. The seat has been vacant for years and Reeves has been the only known candidate since Obama’s election more than a year ago. But the White House has yet to make an announcement and appears to be in no hurry to make an appointment.

If the White House follows a similar pace with the 5^th Circuit nominee, we will be still be talking about this vacancy this Summer, and perhaps later.

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Back in July I agreed with Alan Lange that, contrary to published reports, Christi McCoy will not be appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi. This week Patsy Brumfiled with the Northeast Daily Journal again predicted that McCoy will get the nod:

Informed sources say the U.S. Department of Justice has begun its work on President Obama's nomination of a new U.S. Attorney for North Mississippi.

Reports continue to say the choice will be Booneville native Christi R. McCoy, 40, who practices in Oxford.

I have not heard anything to change my July prediction that McCoy is not going to get the appointment. It might not matter anyway. At the rate that President Obama is making appointments it might be President Huckabee who gets to fill this slot.

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Main Justice has an article today about the Northern District U.S. Attorney position that once appeared certain to be going to Christi McCoy. Here is the article. The article does not really shed much light on the situation other than suggesting that McCoy is still a possibility for the job, which I am hearing is not the case. The article does mention that Patsy Brumfield, who originally disputed Ya'll Politics' report that McCoy would not be nominated, now admits that there are problems:

But even Brumfield, who originally refuted reports that McCoy’s candidacy had run off the rails, has concluded that “something” is amiss. But what?

The article states that Curtis Ivy is campaigning for the position and that it could still go to McCoy. It's my understanding that McCoy ran into fatal problems unrelated to Joey Langston in the screening process and is out. I also understand that Ivy is trying to get the position, but is no shoe-in at this point even though other names have not emerged.

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Earlier this week Alan Lange at Ya'll Politics reported that Christi McCoy is no longer in the running for the appointment for U.S. Attorney for the Northern District. As mentioned in this earlier post, Patsy Brumfield at the N.E. Daily Journal disagreed. I did not opine on the issue in my earlier post, but I am now going on the record saying that Lange is right and that McCoy will not be appointed. I have two sources who both told me that McCoy's nomination hit an insurmountable snag. My sources are less certain that Curtis Ivy will be appointed for the slot, but he does appear to be in the running.  

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The big news yesterday was Governor Barbour's appointment of Gulfport resident and native John Gargiulo to fill the Circuit Judge seat vacated by the retiring Judge Jerry Terry. Here is the Sun-Herald's article on the appointment, which I speculated on in this post in May when Judge Terry announced his retirement. The article states:

Gargiulo attended college on a full ROTC scholarship before graduating from law school and joining a private practice in 1998. He has been a prosecutor with the District Attorney’s Office for nine years.

The following bio was attached to the article:

Age: 42

Hometown: Gulfport

Education: Graduate of St. Stanislaus, University of Southern Mississippi and Ole Miss

Experience: Assistant district attorney for Harrison, Hancock and Stone counties since 2000; private law practice of Bryant Clark Dukes in 1998.

Background: National Guard lieutenant colonel; served in U.S. Air Force as an intelligence officer for five years

Family: He and his wife, Lisa, have twin sons, Andrew and Jordan, 17, and a daughter, Katherine, 14.

It's also my understating that he was deployed in Operation Desert Storm. I am the same age as Gargiulo, but did not know him growing up (other than knowing who he was) because we lived in different neighborhoods and went to different schools. He has an excellent reputation on the Coast and will have no problem getting elected to a full term for the seat. Gargiulo is at least the second 1985 high school graduate from Gulfport to become a judge, joining U.S. District Judge Sul Ozerden.  

The other big story yesterday was the disagreement between Alan Lange at Ya'll Politics and Patsy Brumfield at the N.E. Daily Journal on whether Christi McCoy will still be appointed U.S. Attorney for the Northern District. Lange says that McCoy is out, Brumfield disagrees. Tom Freeland has the latest in this post. I do not have an opinion one way or the other right now, but I do know that Brumfield has mentioned names for the Southern District post after pretty much everyone around here agreed they were out of the running.  This makes me question whether Lange has information that has not yet reached Brumfield.

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Ya'll Politics has this post this morning stating that Christi McCoy is out as the U.S. Attorney appointment for the Northern District and that the Curtis Ivy of Oxford is in. According to Ya'll: 

Today a source with insider knowledge tells YallPolitics McCoy's "deep" ties with Joey Langston, and other issues, stalled her possible nomination. The source then went on to say Curtis Ivy, who has been a contender since the beginning, is highly regarded by many involved.

YP could not independently confirm Ivy's chances, or whether McCoy's ties actually prevented her from becoming the U.S. Attorney, however the source has been spot on with many other issues, and finds him credible enough to worthy this post.
 

Ivy is an African-American assistant U.S. Attorney in the Northern District who has a good reputation. In June, it was widely reported that McCoy's name was already submitted to the White House. I discussed it in this post. If McCoy is out, it is a recent development that apparently was based on a decision made by the White House. Of course, the White House could make such a decision based on anticipated Republican opposition after floating the name to Republican Congressional leaders.

It has long been presumed that one of Mississippi's U.S. Attorney seats would go to a white and the other to an African-American. With McCoy being white, speculation in the Southern District focused on Natchez attorney Deborah McDonald. One question now is that if Ivy is in in the North, does it open the door in the South for someone like Cliff Johnson. There will be a lot of speculation on these issues in the coming days. 

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This article in the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal confirms that Rep. Bennie Thompson submitted to President Obama Christi McCoy as the next U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi. McCoy is originally from Booneville and practices in Oxford.

The article mentions Forest attorney Constance Slaughter-Harvey as the potential nominee in the Southern District. That would be interesting, since Slaughter-Harvey is rumored to have removed her name from consideration. More recently, Deborah McDonald of Natchez is rumored to be the leading candidate.