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Taylor v. State1/25/2000
er to account for the payroll, oversee disbursement of city funds and supervise the City Court Clerk's fund among other collateral matters.
. James R. Billingsley, the clerk for the City of Corinth since 1983, testified that in December 1994 he discovered that city funds were missing. The following January, the city contract auditors, Dobbins and Brawner, looked into the alleged discrepancy and confirmed that funds were, indeed, missing. On February 17, 1995, after a more detailed audit, the State Auditor's Office was notified of irregularities surrounding funds handled by Taylor for the clerk's office. In particular, Taylor's shared control over the "police court clerk clearing account" linked her to the missing city funds.
. Regarding this fund, Billingsley explained that the account held money placed there by a defendant in a pending action until such time as the court disposes of the case. If the court found the defendant not guilty, the defendant's money was returned. If the court found the defendant guilty, the fine was forfeited to the city and placed in the municipal general fund. Depending upon the type of offense, a check was then written out of the municipal general fund to the State of Mississippi.
. Billingsley described the typical process surrounding payment of a fine as a fairly simple procedure. Anyone owing a fine for speeding, DUI or other similar matters came to the police department and paid the fine in cash or by bond to a police dispatcher on duty. The dispatcher took the payment, wrote a receipt for the amount received and placed the money in an envelope identified with the person's name and amount of money contained in the envelope. Periodically, the dispatcher brought the brown envelopes containing the money and the receipt book upstairs to a deputy city clerk, primarily Taylor, but other deputy city clerks accepted the envelopes and receipts on occasion. The deputy city clerk then counted the money contained in the envelope, checked it against the information on the envelope, checked it against the receipt book itself, prepared a deposit slip for the requisite amount and deposited the city funds in the bank.
. In addition, a separate ledger book was kept in the city clerk's office. The deputy city clerk took the information from the brown envelopes and the receipt book, which had to be returned to the dispatcher's office as soon as possible to accommodate members of the public arriving to pay their fines, and made entries into the ledger book regarding the transactions before the bank deposit was made. The ledger recorded the name of the defendant, case number, receipt number and amount of money received from the person paying the fine. Furthermore, there was a "regular fine" book and a "state bond fee" book where fines paid or forfeited by a defendant and state bond fees the greater of twenty dollars or two percent of the fine were recorded, respectively.
. Burt Haney handled the investigation of these suspicious circumstances for the State Auditor's Office. After speaking with the CPA firm responsible for the audit, Haney took all available records and began scheduling every receipt he could document that came through city hall by way of the police department. Haney noted seventeen instances where entire deposits of fine money failed to make it into the bank. In addition, twenty-six instances of deposits deficient in regard to the deposited amount and the corresponding receipts representing fines covered by the deposit were found. During the auditing process, Haney reviewed the police receipt books, city court clerk's ledger, deposit slips, bank statements and the remaining envelopes which had been used to transport the mon
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