DeLaughter was a former prosecutor who made international headlines in a famous civil rights case that brought the 1963 shooter of NAACP leader Medgar Evans to justice in 1994. He became a judge in 2002.
Here is his bio from the court page:
Judge Bobby B. DeLaughter graduated from Jackson Wingfield High School in 1972, where he was Student Body President. After graduating from the Ole Miss Law School in 1977, he practiced law in Jackson for ten years before becoming a prosecutor in the Hinds County District Attorney’s Office, where he tried a variety of cases ranging from thefts to capital-murder death-penalty cases. First appointed to the county court bench in 1999 by former Governor Kirk Fordice, Judge DeLaughter was subsequently elected to retain that post with almost eighty percent (80 %) of the vote. He was appointed to the circuit court by Governor Ronnie Musgrove, effective June 1, 2002, to fill the unexpired term of retiring Judge L. Breland Hilburn. Judge DeLaughter is unopposed in seeking election for a full term to that position.
Past President of the Mississippi Prosecutors’ Association, a former member of the National District Attorneys’ Association Board of Directors, and graduate of the FBI’s National Law Institute in Quantico, Virginia, he has been honored as one of Mississippi Magazine’s “Fifteen Great Mississippians,” and served as lawyer-in-residence at Pepperdine Law School in Malibu, California. He was also the first recipient of the Law Alumni Public Service Award, presented annually by the faculty of the Ole Miss Law School, “in recognition of his devotion to the public good as demonstrated by his record of outstanding public service.”
His closing argument in the Medgar Evers murder case is one of ten featured in Ladies and Gentlemen of the Jury: Greatest Closing Arguments in Modern Law, published by Scribner Publishing Co. Judge DeLaughter has authored a personal memoir about the case, Never Too Late, also published by Scribner. His book won the non-fiction award of the Mississippi Institute of Arts & Letters.
Judge DeLaughter and his wife, Peggy, live in Terry with the youngest of their six children