Why does it almost always take a scandal to make changes?

September 6th, 2023

It's 20 years in prison for a former Leake County sheriff's deputy who was arrested last year in an evidence tampering investigation that led to dozens of drug cases being dismissed. Justin Moore admitted his guilt in court yesterday. He had been indicted on 31 counts of evidence tampering over a two-year period. The Mississippi Forensics Lab had raised questions about some of the drug evidence submissions that came from the sheriff's office and conducted an internal investigation. Sheriff Randy Atkinson says, when he was notified, he asked the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation to get involved and do an audit of the sheriff's department's evidence vault confirming the source of the altered and tampered evidence. Atkinson says steps have been taken to prevent something like this from happening again—including revising the department's policy on the intake of narcotics. The sheriff says the case should serve as a warning to those involved in drugs in Leake County that nobody is above the law.