Hinds DA agrees to investigate courthouse lock-in

The Hinds County District Attorney's office will investigate how a staffer for state Sen. Chris McDaniel's U.S. Senate campaign and two other McDaniel supporters ended up locked inside the county courthouse hours after everyone had left on Tuesday's primary election night.

Hinds County District 1 Supervisor Robert Graham said Friday he has asked Hinds County District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith to investigate the incident.

Smith said late Friday he agreed to his office conducting an investigation. He said the investigation would begin immediately and he hopes to have it completed over the next several days.

"We will try to answer the questions supervisors have," Smith said.

Graham's decision to ask for a further investigation comes after the Hinds County Sheriff Department said Thursday afternoon it had concluded an investigation and found no criminal activity or laws broken.

" Even if there was no criminal activity, it still doesn't account for why these three individuals were in the county courthouse afterhours with no county employee," Graham said. "We have no information whether they had criminal intentions or not. We don't know how long they were in there…We need to have a total accounting."

Graham said his office has been bombarded with calls from citizens after the sheriff department said lits investigation was over.

Scott Brewster, Janis Lane, and Rob Chambers were found locked inside the courthouse early Wednesday. They allegedly entered sometime shortly after 2 a.m. and, after realizing they were locked in, called for help.

Brewster is McDaniel's campaign coalition coordinator. Lane is president of the board of the Central Mississippi Tea Party. And Chambers is a consultant with the Mississippi Baptist Christian Action Commission.

The situation took on added significance because of the hotly contested U.S. Senate Republican primary pitting McDaniel against incumbent Sen. Thad Cochran. McDaniel led Cochran statewide by a slim margin, but in Hinds County, Cochran held a 2-1 margin over McDaniel. The two will face off in a June 24 runoff.

"Our investigation revealed that the three individuals were able to enter the courthouse through a side door marked for employees only," Sheriff's Department spokesman Othor Cain said Thursday afternoon in a statement. "This door was either propped open or was malfunctioning at the time of entry."

Cain said the three had access only to the common areas of the courthouse, including the hallways and restrooms.

To contact Jimmie E. Gates, call (601) 961-7212 or jgates@jackson.gannett.com. Follow @jgatesnews on Twitter.