Trials in Port Gibson shootings to be in Hattiesburg|[04/05/07]

Published 12:00 am Thursday, April 5, 2007

Tandem trials for the Claiborne County man who pleaded innocent to shootings that left a county employee wounded and the county attorney dead have been set for May 29 and June 11 in Hattiesburg.

Carl Brandon, 52, will be tried first for aggravated assault on Loretha Porter, who sustained a gunshot wound at her workplace, the Claiborne County Road Department headquarters.

During the second, separate trial, Brandon will answer indictments alleging the murder of board attorney Allen Burrell and shooting into former Claiborne County Administrator James Miller’s home.

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On March 17, 2006, Burrell, 54, who also had a private practice, was slain outside his Market Street office about 8 a.m.

Moments later, shots were fired into the Miller home, and then Porter was shot in her office on Mississippi 18.

Brandon surrendered at the Claiborne County Sheriff’s Department about 20 minutes later and, after indictment in October, pleaded innocent in October.

Warren County Circuit Judge Frank Vollor, appointed to hear the case, said this morning that jurors will be selected from Claiborne County and taken to the Forrest County Courthouse. Claiborne Circuit Judge Lamar Pickard recused himself from the case.

Brandon is a former county road manager who was fired in 1997 following an investigation into allegations that he had sexually harassed a woman employee of the department.

Burrell, who represented the county’s board of supervisors for 26 years, and Miller participated in the investigation that led to Brandon’s firing. Porter was employed by the road department and provided information in the investigation, Claiborne County Sheriff Frank Davis has said.

Brandon appealed the county’s action through the state’s court system, and his efforts ended in 2002 with the Mississippi Supreme Court refusing to hear the case.

When the shootings occurred, Brandon was employed by the Vicksburg Warren School District as a special-populations teacher. The district was on spring break the week the shootings occurred, on a Friday.

Burrell practiced law in Port Gibson for 30 years. He was on the professional-responsibility committee of the state bar association, which honored him posthumously with its distinguished service award.

Brandon is accused of shooting Porter with a pistol in her back and side. She was hospitalized at University Medical Center, from which she had been released by March 21.

Miller’s home in Port Gibson was strafed with shotgun blasts, but he was not struck. He has since resigned.