Testimony continues Wednesday in the trial of Kenneth Fairley Sr., a Hattiesburg televangelist and political operative, which began Tuesday despite last-minute attempts by Fairley’s attorneys to halt the prosecution.
On Monday, Fairley’s attorney, Sanford Knott of Jackson, filed motions asking U.S. District Judge Keith Starrett to dismiss the case against Fairley. One motion claimed that the government failed to produce in a timely manner a range of information that could have been helpful to Fairley’s defense. Starrett dismissed those motions and ordered the trial to begin.
Outside the presence of the jury of 12 persons and two alternates, Starrett dismissed Knott’s motions.
Fairley and co-defendant Artie Fletcher of Picayune were indicted March 10 on multiple counts of money laundering and conspiracy to cheat U.S. agencies out of money reimbursed for residential rehabilitation in Hattiesburg.
The accusations stem from August 2010, when the City of Hattiesburg entered into an agreement with Fairley’s Pinebelt Community Services to rehabilitate three local properties. A fourth was included later.
The indictment states that Fairley contacted Fletcher, owner of Interurban Development, a New Orleans-based, for-profit development organization, to rehabilitate two of the properties. The indictment states that Fletcher conspired with Fairley to provide seed money to Pinebelt so that Pinebelt could incur costs before receiving reimbursement by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Fairly is charged with submitting inflated Pinebelt invoices for the work and pocketing the difference, about $170,000.
Fletcher pleaded guilty Friday to a lesser charge of failing to notify authorities that he knew a felony was being committed. He is expected to be the government’s chief witness against Fairley.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
Fairley should have been put in jail years ago.