Former state legislator Fred Smith's fifth lawsuit against the Arkansas secretary of state over the way he was removed from the election ballot in 2012 was dismissed Thursday because he waited too long to sue over some issues and because other courts already decided other parts of his complaint.
Smith, representing himself, offered an impassioned argument to Pulaski County Circuit Judge Chris Piazza, claiming he and his family have been repeatedly maligned by state officials and political leaders who've wrongly labeled him a convicted criminal.
Piazza appeared sympathetic to Smith's anguish, but said he had no choice but to dismiss this suit, filed in July, because it hadn't been filed within the statute of limitations and because some of the issues Smith raised had already been decided by other judges.
"I'm sure this has been a tortuous time for you, but the rule of law is firm on this," the judge said.
Over the past five years, Smith, of Crawfordsville, has filed 12 lawsuits in state and federal court over the way the state Democratic Party kept him from running in a District 50 race to represent Crittenden and Cross counties.
In October, Circuit Judge Alice Gray dismissed one of his lawsuits against the Democratic Party on the same grounds Piazza cited. Gray barred that suit, filed in May, from moving forward because Smith had either taken too long to sue or issues he raised had been decided previously.
In 2012, Smith, a former Harlem Globetrotter basketball player, registered for the District 50 House race, but party officials took him to court and had him deemed ineligible for office because of a guilty verdict against him in a Chicot County theft case in 2011.
The verdict required him to pay $29,250 in restitution and allowed him to expunge the case after a year, preventing a criminal conviction from being entered. The funds were money that Smith, who operated an after-school program, had been overpaid by the Dermott School District.
Smith didn't have the case sealed until after he had signed up for the House race, a delay that a judge ruled made him ineligible for the Democratic primary when he filed. He then ran that same year as a Green Party candidate and won. But he lost his 2014 re-election bid running as a Democrat.
NW News on 12/02/2017