MONTGOMERY, Ala. – With just one week to go until Alabama’s primary runoff election, the state’s attorney general and a candidate who wants to succeed him are trading rhetorical blows about how an officer-involved shooting was handled.
Attorney General Steve Marshall on Friday released a statement condemning Mitchell’s campaign using Cody Smith, a former Montgomery police officer to criticize Katherine Robertson, Marshall’s chief counsel who is facing Mitchell in the GOP runoff.
Smith was convicted of manslaughter in 2019 for fatally shooting an unarmed black man in 2016. He reached a plea deal with the attorney general’s office in 2024 and was released from prison on time served.
But in Mitchell’s ad, Smith criticizes how the AG’s office handled his case and attacks Robertson by name. Smith says in the ad that Mitchell, who was a justice on the Alabama Supreme Court at the time, was the only one who had his back in the case.
Marshall said in a statement that the ad made “demonstrably false allegations.”
“I find it reprehensible that someone who wants to hold the office of Attorney General would, for an attempt at political gain, recklessly attack the office he wants to lead,” Marshall said. “For some time, this candidate has felt the need to smear the record of this office on an array of matters that he knows nothing about…”
In addition to his statement, Marshall’s office released a letter written by Smith thanking Marshall for taking over the case from the district court.
The letter, Marshall said, has made the situation “especially difficult” and “personal.”
“Nothing about the facts have changed, only the political season,” Marshall said. “I have immense compassion for Officer Smith and what he endured and am sad to see his story used as a misguided political weapon against those who fought to help him. No matter what Officer Smith chooses to say now, any one of us would help him again in a heartbeat.”
Marshall initially released an unredacted version of the letter, which included Smith’s work address and personal cell phone number.
Mitchell’s campaign has jumped on the issue, calling it an attempt at doxing.
“In an overt act of intimidation or apparent rush to do Katherine Robertson’s political bidding, Attorney General Steve Marshall publicly published Smith’s work address, email, and phone number in a press release—doxing Smith and creating serious risk of harm to him and his colleagues,” Mitchell’s statement says.
Smith’s lawyer demanded a retraction of the letter, saying that the publication of his employment information “materially increases the risk of harm.” The AG’s office has subsequently taken down the original letter and replaced it with a redacted version.
Mitchell shot back at Marshall for releasing Smith’s personal information. He claimed that Smith has already been “the target of violent death threats and harassment from the radical Left.”
“It’s cowardly and wrong for Katherine Robertson and her boss to try to silence Cody Smith in this way,” Mitchell said in a statement. “They should take responsibility for their failures in his case and apologize to him. Publicly.”
The Robertson campaign declined to comment on Mitchell’s statement.
Smith has since taken to social media to double down on the statements he made in the ad.
“Call it what you want, but the only thing the Alabama Attorney General’s Office can actually take credit for fighting for is self preservation,” Smith said in a Facebook post. “They didn’t fight to help me for 8 years—in fact, they opposed me at every turn, only stepping in when the right kind of pressure was applied by Jay Mitchell’s opinion in my case. The rule 32 we filed by Jay’s advisement is what landed me a vacated conviction and strong armed their office into the plea deal they’ve placed such misguided pride in.”
The two candidates are battling it out for the Republican nomination in what has become one of the chippiest races on the ballot.
Robertson and Mitchell advanced to the runoff with 41% and 34% of the vote, respectively.
The runoff is June 16.