A former Leake County deputy will be spending time behind bars for tampering with evidence over the span of two years.
Justin Moore, who previously served as a law enforcement officer, became a suspect in an internal investigation launched by the Mississippi Forensics Laboratory on a number of drug evidence submissions that were received from the Leake County Sheriff’s Office.
Sheriff Randy W. Atkinson, who was notified of the investigation, requested that the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics look into the matter and conduct an audit of the office’s evidence vault. It was determined that evidence had been tampered with by someone within the department.
Moore later turned himself into MBI officials. He was arrested and charged with 31 counts of evidence tampering. He allegedly altered evidence which led to dozens of drug cases being dismissed in September 2022.
The former deputy pleaded guilty in the case resulting in 20 years to serve in custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections and five years of post-release supervision.
