Mitchell Defends Smith, Calling the AG’s Attempts to Silence Him “Cowardly and Wrong”

From the Mitchell campaign

June 6

BIRMINGHAM, AL—The Alabama Attorney General’s Office yesterday issued a statement attacking former Montgomery Police Officer Cody Smith, who has linked arms with the Jay Mitchell campaign in recent months. 

In the years since his trial, which garnered nationwide attention, Smith has been the target of violent death threats and harassment from the radical Left. The FBI, the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, and local law enforcement are all aware of these well-documented threats. Smith still carries a felony conviction, so he is unable to legally obtain a firearm to defend himself and his young family.

In an overt act of intimidation or apparent rush to do Katherine Robertson’s political bidding, Attorney General Steve Marshall publicly published Smith’s work address, email, and phone number in a press release—doxing Smith and creating serious risk of harm to him and his colleagues. Smith’s attorney responded swiftly with a redaction demand, and the Attorney General rightfully complied. 

Mitchell said, “It’s cowardly and wrong for Katherine Robertson and her boss to try to silence Cody Smith in this way. They should take responsibility for their failures in his case and apologize to him. Publicly.” 

Smith only became active in the Mitchell campaign after Katherine Robertson bragged about her involvement in his case on the campaign trail. She stated on multiple occasions that believes Smith’s conviction was wrongful—even though she fought to uphold it, opposed his immunity petition, and refused to plead him out of prison on anything less than a felony charge.

Robertson’s team has called those decisions a matter of “jurisdiction.” But that isn’t true. Those decisions were entirely discretionary. Alabama law explicitly states that the Attorney General has the authority to "superintend and direct" the prosecution in any criminal case at any time. And the Attorney General’s Office always carries the constitutional mandate to do justice in cases of wrongful conviction. 

Jay Mitchell was the only leader who stood for Smith when he was being wrongfully prosecuted by the State. If it had not been for Jay’s Supreme Court opinion highlighting Smith’s case as one of the “most astonishing failures of justice” the court had ever seen, the State would not have revisited Smith’s case at all. 

• Read the Smith Family’s response to the Attorney General’s attacks here (and attached)
• Read Jay Mitchell’s above-referenced Supreme Court opinion (attached).