A well-known Mississippi attorney’s position as a municipal judge in the Delta could be coming to an end.
The Mississippi Commission on Judicial Performance is urging the state supreme court to remove Carlos Moore from his position as a municipal court judge in Clarksdale and Grenada. Commission chairman Judge Ryan Bruhl contends that Moore has displayed a pattern of misconduct that will not stop unless disciplinary action is taken.
In recent years, Moore has been known to take high-profile cases across the state. The attorney represented a Black former FedEx employee who was allegedly shot at by two white men in Brookhaven, a child who was shot in the chest by an Indianola police officer, and was the legal counsel for the man accused of killing an Ole Miss student in 2022 before another lawyer took his place.
Toward the end of 2023, Moore was in hot water for naming the wrong Capitol Police officer in a lawsuit. In the suit, Officer Michael Maldonado was blamed for shooting a woman during a traffic stop — an incident in which he was not present. Moore later clarified that Michael Rhinewalt and Jeffrey Walker were the police involved after apologizing to Maldonado.
That incident, paired with others cited by the commission, went into the decision call for his removal as a judge.
Moore became a judge in Clarksdale in 2017 and in Grenada in 2020. From a more than three-year timeline spanning from late 2019 to early 2023, Moore is accused of making racially charged statements on social media more than once, using his position on the bench to accost law enforcement officers, inappropriately discussing cases on social media, and attempting to further his law practice through his judgeship.
The commission specifically asks the Mississippi Supreme Court to impose a six-year hiatus from Moore having a place on the bench and for the judge to pay a $5,000 fine.
At the time of publication, Moore had not responded to a request for comment from SuperTalk Mississippi News.
