Deputy pleads guilty to 31 counts of evidence tampering

By Kennedi Cooper

Click here for updates on this story

    LEAKE COUNTY, Mississippi (WAPT) — A former Leake County sheriff’s deputy pled guilty to 31 counts of evidence tampering.

Justin Moore, 40, made his plea before a circuit court judge Tuesday. This came one year after his arrest.

Back in June 2022, The Mississippi Crime Lab found inconsistencies in evidence that was sent from the sheriff’s office after discovering irregularities in 14 evidence submissions. All of those submissions came from the Leake County Sheriff’s Office.

This sparked an investigation with the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics and District Attorney Steven Kilgore.

Sheriff Randy Atkinson said, “Every case that he was involved in, rightfully so, was dismissed … These folks had a second chance to be able to get their life straight.”

Atkinson said since the discovery of the evidence tampering, they have changed the drug evidence process by creating an evidence drop-off box.

“If you go to a bank and do a drop box, that’s what we’ve got now. It’s a drop box that they drop it into, and it’s no way of retrieving it,” Atkinson said.

Moore is now facing 20 years in prison and five years of post-release supervision.

Please note: This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.