JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A former Mississippi Department of Human Services director has been indicted on 20 additional felony charges tied to allegations that he participated in misusing money that was supposed to help some of the poorest people in the nation, including some spent to send a former pro wrestler to a luxury drug rehab facility.

John Davis of Brookhaven has pleaded not guilty to the new charges of bribery, conspiracy and making false statements to the government. The indictments were unsealed this week, days after he entered the plea.

In early 2020, Davis and five others were charged in what the state auditor called the largest public corruption case in Mississippi in the past two decades. Davis and some of the other defendants are still awaiting trial.

Davis was a longtime Department of Human Services employee who was chosen to lead the agency in 2016 by the Republican governor at the time, Phil Bryant. Davis retired in July 2019.

Like the previous charges, many of the new ones against Davis are connected to federal money from Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, which the Department of Human Services paid to nonprofit education organizations run by mother and son Nancy New and Zachary New.

The new indictments allege those organizations, with Davis' knowledge, paid $160,000 for drug rehabilitation in Malibu, California, for former pro wrestler Brett DiBiase; that Davis hired DiBiase for a Department of Human Services job that required a college degree, knowing DiBiase did not have a degree; and that the department paid DiBiase $48,000 for work he did not do.

Court records show a Hinds County grand jury issued the latest indictments on April 8. An April 12 court document showed Davis pleaded not guilty to all the charges, as he had to the previous ones. Hinds County Circuit Judge Adrienne Wooten set a Sept. 26 trial date on the new charges.

DiBiase pleaded guilty in December 2020 to one count of making a false statement. He said in court documents that he had submitted documents and received full payment for work he did not complete. He agreed to pay $48,000 in restitution, and his sentencing was deferred.

Mississippi Auditor Shad White has demanded repayment of $77 million of misspent welfare funds, including money paid to retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre, who lives in Mississippi. Favre has not been charged with any criminal wrongdoing.

White said Favre received $1.1 million for speeches but did not show up for them. Favre has repaid the money, but White said in October that Favre still owed $228,000 in interest. In a Facebook post when he repaid the first $500,000, Favre said he didn’t know the money he received came from welfare funds. He also said his charity had provided millions of dollars to poor children in Mississippi and Wisconsin.

A recent series of investigative reports by Mississippi Today has focused on the corruption case, including private communication between Bryant and Davis about Human Services programs. The NAACP has called on the Justice Department to investigate spending in the Department of Human Services. Nancy New and Zachary New were indicted in March 2021 on federal charges of fraudulently obtaining money from the Mississippi Department of Education. They are awaiting trial.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A mother and son who ran a for-profit education company have pleaded guilty to improperly obtaining millions of dollars from the Mississippi Department of Education by submitting false documents about schools they operated.

Federal court records show that on Wednesday, Nancy New pleaded guilty to wire fraud and Zachary New pleaded guilty to conspiracy. They remain free on bond, and sentencing is set for Nov. 9.

“My office was proud to continue our work with our federal partners to help achieve this result in this case," Mississippi Auditor Shad White said in a statement Thursday.

Nancy New was president and Zachary New was vice president of operations for New Learning Resources Inc., which ran three private schools that offered services for children with autism or dyslexia — New Summit in Jackson, North New Summit in Greenwood and South New Summit in Hattiesburg.

Mississippi law allows some public education money to be paid to private schools for students with special academic needs, but prosecutors said Nancy New and Zachary New submitted documents fraudulently seeking reimbursement for teachers' salaries. Those included claims for teachers who no longer worked at the schools and claims that misrepresented other school employees as teachers.

Prosecutors said New Learning Resources fraudulently obtained more than $2 million from the state from 2017 to 2020.

The mother and son are among the people still facing state charges in the alleged misuse of federal money through the state Department of Human Services, in what White has called the largest public corruption case in Mississippi in the past two decades.

Nancy New and Zachary New were indicted in March 2021 on federal charges of wire fraud, aggravated identity theft, money laundering and engaging in monetary transactions with proceeds of specified unlawful activity with education money. They originally pleaded not guilty to all counts. Conviction on all charges would have carried up to 210 years in prison.

Nancy New pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, which court documents define as monetary transactions using proceeds of an illegal activity. She faces up to 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine. A judge also could order her to pay restitution, and she could have to forfeit a Jackson home and any other assets bought with the fraudulently gained money.

Federal prosecutors filed a new charge against Zachary New on Wednesday, and he pleaded guilty to conspiracy. He faces up to five years in federal prison, three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine.

Madison/Rankin County Circuit Court Judge Dewey Arthur walked into courtroom 1 of the circuit courthouse in Canton at 9:06 a.m. on March 28, 2022. His first order of business was the sentencing of 34-year-old Carlos Dominique Allen for drug offenses.

Before the sentence, Assistant District Attorney Todd McAlpin told the court that the judge should treat Allen as a habitual offender.

In Mississippi, someone facing a conviction for a second drug offense faces twice the maximum years in prison. Someone with two prior felony convictions gets the maximum sentence for the crimes as a habitual offender. If a plaintiff gets sentencing enhancement for being both an habitual offender and a subsequent drug offender, the court will double the maximum number of years for the crime. In both cases, the offender will serve without the possibility of parole or probation.

McAlpin provided evidence that in 2013 in Lauderdale County, Ala., Allen received a sentence of three years and three months in the Alabama Department of Corrections for drug possession. In 2016, a judge sentenced him to 10 years of imprisonment for assault in the second degree in the same county, McApin added.

“Anything further?” Judge Arthur asked McAlpin.

“Not as far as the subsequent drug offender or habitual offender (issue).”

“Anything from the defense on the subsequent offender and habitual-offender issues?” the judge asked, turning to defense attorney Gerald Mumford.

“No, your honor.”

Killing Austin Elliott?

Before sentence pronouncement, the prosecution called on Mississippi Credit Union Association President and CEO Charles Elliott to testify. His child, Austin Elliott, died one year ago—on Feb. 23, 2021—from a fentanyl overdose after allegedly purchasing the drug from Allen.

Madison County Coroner Alex Breeland wrote in a letter dated Feb. 6, 2022, to the Madison/Rankin County District Attorney’s Office that six people died in Madison County of similar causes in the month Austin died.

Austin Elliott graduated from the University of Mississippi in mid-2019 with a business degree, majoring in management and minoring in entrepreneurship. His mother, Tina Elliott, told the Mississippi Free Press that he started using drugs during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A couple weeks after he first tried opioids drugs, Austin thought, “I can see why people can get in trouble with this,” Tina Elliott recounts of Austin’s experience. “So we took him to the doctor, and (he) never had any more problems.”

“And then that day (Feb. 22, 2021), he runs into (Allen) and takes it.”

Tina Elliott explained that Austin went out with a friend for dinner at around 6 p.m. that Monday and took half a pill of what he allegedly got from Allen.

“He met Carlos through a friend that he went to high school with; he mentioned that they were friends,” Tina Elliott said.

After taking the tablet, Austin passed out in the restaurant’s parking lot. Tina Elliott explained that after an ambulance got to him, a paramedic injected Austin with Narcan, a medication designed to reverse the effects of opioid overdose, which depresses the central nervous system’s functioning, including breathing. The ambulance took Austin to a hospital.

Tina Elliott said that Austin cried tears of joy in the hospital. “I’m grateful to be alive. I’ve got y’all; everything’s going to be fine,” Austin said between tears.

“Honey, the Lord’s not done with you, yet,” Tina replied.

Austin Elliott came back home around 12:30 a.m. on Feb. 23, 2021. He ate some food, was in good spirits, started getting ready to sleep, and everything seemed alright, Tina Elliott remembered.

“And he said he felt a little strange, like he was scared to go to bed,” she told the Mississippi Free Press. “So he ate, laid down about 1:30 (a.m.), and I found him about 3 (a.m.). He had aspirated.”

Madison County Sheriff’s Office deputies arrested Allen later that day, and the district attorney’s office subsequently charged him with possession, sale and trafficking in fentanyl, as well as possession of hydrocodone and amphetamine.

Back to the Courthouse

In the courthouse on March 28, 2022, Austin Elliott’s father, Charles Elliott, advocated for the maximum sentence for Allen.

“Austin made a horrible decision, but he did not deserve to die,” Charles Elliott said. “Austin was going to get married. … We were going to have grandchildren.”

“It’s been our hopes and our prayers that Austin will be the last person to die as a result of the defendant,” he added. “Your honor, we pray that you make that a reality today.”

Allen’s younger brother, Delandrez Allen, an active-duty soldier stationed at Fort Campbell, Ky., asked the judge for leniency when he took the stand. He explained that his brother moved from Alabama to Mississippi with his wife and children six years ago to start a new life.

“Since he’s been here, he maintained employment and attended college and graduated with honors, and was deepening his faith and attending a church there in Jackson, Mississippi”

Defense attorney Mumford asked him, “You’re not asking for your brother to go unpunished, are you?”

“No,” Delandrez Allen answered, “but I’ll just ask that the judge has leniency in his judgment today. I would like the judge to acknowledge that he has young children, a wife, and I don’t doubt one bit that he can be rehabilitated.”

“I think that he should be at least given the opportunity to at some point be there for his children and at least be able to raise them so that they can be productive citizens in life.”

Carlos Allen soon took the stand.

“Austin Elliott, you know, he was a friend of mine, so I would just like to send my condolences to his family,” he said, addressing the court. “Our prayers are with them regardless of what things may have looked like or whatever they may be in. I have nothing further.”

Later, Judge Arthur said that as a subsequent drug offender and a nonviolent habitual offender in Mississippi, Allen faces 40, 160, 12 and 12 years for each of the four indictments, totaling 224 years. In his sentencing order, however, the judge wrote that Allen will serve 100 years in prison “without early release or the possibility of parole.”

“Pills, in this case, were manufactured in a way to resemble legitimate pills, but they weren’t,” Judge Arthur said in court. “Your statement on tape was basically (that) people are dying from these, and you sold them anyway.”

“This court has rarely seen somebody so heavily involved in the trafficking of narcotics, and this court just can’t get past the fact that you knew these pills kill, and you sold them anyway,” he added. “The basic reason for this court’s sentence (is) it has to send a message: You can’t sell death in Madison County, Miss.”

Next: Torrey A. Powell

After the end of Allen’s sentencing, it was time for 42-year-old Torrey A. Powell to face the judge for his own sentencing.

Madison/Rankin County District Attorney’s Office wrote that on April 29, 2020, a Madison police officer stopped Powell on the road, while the suspect was driving.

“The officer found Powell did not have a valid driver’s license or insurance and asked Powell to step out of the car,” the release continued. “For safety reasons, Powell was patted down, where a pill bottle was found in Powell’s front pocket.”

“Powell admitted the bottle contained ecstasy pills, methamphetamine and heroin.”

While Powell faced the judge on March 28, 2022, seated beside his counsel, Bentley E. Corner, Assistant District Attorney Ashley Allen told him to find that Powell was a subsequent drug offender and a nonviolent habitual offender. With no objection from the defense, the judge agreed. Allen then argued for maximum sentences for Powell.

“He has committed felony drug offenses in Georgia and Oklahoma in multiple counties in Mississippi, and that’s just the ones that I can remember off the top of my head,” Allen said. “The State urges this court to sentence Mr. Powell as both a subsequent and nonviolent habitual offender and to run each of those charges consecutively—because I do not believe that any time that he spends back out in the free world after he receives and serves his sentences will be spent being a productive member of our society.”

However, defense counsel Corner pleaded that the court deviate from following the statute by considering Powell’s health condition. “Mr. Torrey is a heart patient; he has a pacemaker—he’s had two heart attacks since he’s been in jail,” he said.

Corner argued that a maximum sentence without the possibility of probation or parole means Powell will not be eligible for medical release due to his heart condition. “He has already served almost a year in pretrial detention, so he (would have been) eligible for that medical release after he’s been seen by the hospital and the doctors to determine whether or not his heart condition is deteriorating while in prison,” he said.

“So we’ll urge the court to sentence him to a number of years without the mandatory nonviolent habitual offender provision that would keep him from being eligible even for a medical release or for a release at age 65,” Corner concluded.

While addressing the court before his sentencing, Powell explained that he had been a drug addict, which can lead to his trouble with the law, and asked for leniency. “I’d spend 42 years of my life to finally realize that my drug use will be the death of me,” he said.

The judge, nevertheless, sentenced him to 40 and 16 years for two counts of methamphetamine possession. “All those sentences will be served without the possibility of parole or probation, any early release whatsoever,” he added. “The defendant is sentenced as a habitual offender.”

In another Madison/Rankin County circuit courtroom that day, Judge Brad Mills sentenced 42-year-old Lucas Montel Howard as a habitual offender “to serve (60) years after a jury convicted him of Possession of Cocaine with the Intent to (sell) and Conspiracy to Sell Cocaine,” a Madison/Rankin County District Attorney report said.

Seven Mississippi legislators filed 13 bills in the 2022 legislative session to reform the habitual-offenders’ laws in the state, but none garnered enough support to pass and go into effect.

Madison/Rankin County District Attorney John K. Bramlett told the Mississippi Free Press on March 28, 2022, in Canton, Miss., that he is not opposed to limiting the application of the habitual-offender laws.

“There’s some talk now of maybe making it where you can’t go back forever to pull up felonies,” he said. “I don’t have a problem with that,” he said. “In other words, if you were convicted of a crime in 1980 and 1982, and then you slipped back in 2022, you’ve had 40 years living a pretty clean life, I don’t think they should come after you as habitual.”

“So at some point, I think they’ll narrow down the years that you look back—15 years, maybe,” he postulated.

This story originally appeared in the Mississippi Free Press. The Mississippi Free Press is a statewide nonprofit news outlet that provides most of its stories free to other media outlets to republish. Write shaye@mississippifreepress.org for information.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Mississippi will expand a work release program for nonviolent inmates from one county to three counties.

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves signed House Bill 586 on Friday, and it will become law July 1.

“Dignified work has the potential to offer new beginnings,” Reeves said Monday in a statement announcing his signing.

The Rankin County sheriff was already authorized to let inmates work outside the county jail during the final year of their sentences. The new law says the sheriffs in Harrison County and Lee County also can create a program.

Each sheriff can choose up to 25 inmates to participate, and inmates choose whether to do so.

While working outside jail, each inmate can earn money and must have a bank account. They can use some of the money for “incidental expenses.” Up to 25% of what they earn can help to pay fines, restitution, fees or support of dependents. They may keep using the accounts and any remaining money after they are released.

Jessica Broughman entered Rankin County Detention Center in December 2018 on a methamphetamine sales charge. That would be her fourth felony charge, and she feared she would get a lengthy jail sentence.

“My parents have been taking care of my daughter (Aubrey) since she was 2 years old,” Broughman told the Mississippi Free Press about her now-10-year-old daughter Aubrey in a March 23, 2022, phone interview. “During that time when I really struggled with my addiction (to heroin and meth), and I was in and out of jail a lot, they were taking care of her and raising her, which was a blessing that I had them to do that.”

The 33-year-old recalled the confused state of mind she was in as she arrived at the detention center in 2018. “I was at a really dark place in my life,” Broughman said. “I was struggling really bad with my addiction. I was very lost. I didn’t know what was going to happen next because I was already a convicted felon.”

Broughman was arrested earlier in 2018 for methamphetamine possession but bonded out before her arrest again in December that year.

From the viewpoint of the sheriff’s administrative assistant Kristi Shanks, Broughman appeared jaded and distant when she arrived at the detention center that December, which she described in a phone conversation on March 18.

Over time, though, Shanks says she saw some shifts in Broughman, including her determination to carve out a new path for herself.

“We just noticed a big change in her from being kind of hard and standoffish to becoming involved and open, receptive to things, so you just notice the change in people slowly as they grow,” Shanks said.

Broughman, who said she had been clean since December 2018, described the need to be in her daughter’s life as a motivation for change. “I was tired of not being a good mom; I was tired of having to be a mom through a jail phone,” she said. “I missed out on a lot of memorable years with my daughter and my family.”

Shanks said Broughman took advantage of all the resources that the jail offered to her.

“While she was here, she really—with all of our churches coming in and doing Bible studies—she really got in her Bible, and she let God really change her heart, and she softened up, and she had the mentality of getting out and wanting to do good and being successful and not going back to the lifestyle she was living, doing drugs and everything,” Shanks commented.

“She enrolled in college courses while she was here. She took all the classes.”

The sheriff’s office offered Broughman parenting, computer, anger-management and financial-management classes, and she took college courses through Hinds Community College.

Because Broughman suffered from addictions when she entered Rankin County Detention Center in 2018, she entered programs from Celebrate Recovery, Narcotics Anonymous and Alcoholics Anonymous.

She was among the first offenders enrolled in Rankin County’s work-release program after the Mississippi Legislature passed House Bill 747 in 2021. The program allows Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey to send nonviolent offenders in their last year in jail outside the detention center to work with private or government entities. Bailey sent Broughman to work at Genna Benna’s restaurant in downtown Brandon beginning May 21, 2021.

Convict Leasing By Another Name?

Rep. Gene Newman, R-Pearl, submitted HB 747 in January 2021. The first iteration of the bill specifies that income the offenders earn while participating in the work-release program comes under the control of the authorities who can distribute them to pay child support, fines, restitution or other owed fees. The offender will receive the balance when released from jail.

The version that the Mississippi House passed in February 2021 added the Mississippi Department of Corrections and Mississippi Prison Industries Corporation to the list of agencies that can establish such a program, in addition to a sheriff or court, as the first version stated.

Mississippi’s America Civil Liberties Union took issue with the House-passed bill. ACLU-MS Deputy Director Alicia N. Netterville told the Mississippi Free Press on March 9 that the bill allows convict-leasing by another name.

“So just for some context, we kind of have to look back at history, to look back at the exception clause in the 13th Amendment that did not necessarily prohibit slavery, but had an exception for people who have been convicted, duly convicted of crime,” Netterville said.

During the Civil War (1861-1865), the Confederate army, representing southern states including Mississippi, fought the Union Army to maintain and expand the institutional enslavement of Black people. After the Union Army won the war official in April 1865, the country enacted the 13th Amendment, one of three Reconstruction amendments that purportedly prohibited slavery, to the U.S. Constitution.

The amendment reads, “Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.”

Netterville says the practice of convict-leasing developed out of the 13th Amendment’s exception clause. “And what convict-leasing is, is when people were free from the plantation, state legislatures across the country created a plethora of crimes to justify what we know now as racial profiling in order to arrest formerly enslaved people and take them to places like Parchman, and then they will lease them back to the plantation owner, but the individual was not paid; the plantation owner actually paid Parchman.”

The Mississippi Department of Archives and History wrote that Parchman Farm—the Mississippi State Penitentiary located on a 28-acre land in Sunflower County—began operation in 1901, became the central hub for the state’s correctional system and resembled a massive antebellum plantation in many ways. Parchman now takes up more than 18,000 acres.

Netterville explained that the convict-leasing practice evolved into peonage over the years, “arresting people for debt and then, in turn, leasing them out,” the deputy director added.

EJI: Slavery Existed Until 1930s

The Equal Justice Initiative attested that slavery persisted until the 1930s in the form of convict-leasing.

“The Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, ratified in 1865, prohibited slavery and involuntary servitude, but explicitly exempted those convicted of crime,” EJI continued. “In response, Southern state legislatures quickly passed ‘Black Codes’—new laws that explicitly applied only to Black people and subjected them to criminal prosecution for ‘offenses’ such as loitering, breaking curfew, vagrancy, having weapons and not carrying proof of employment.”

“Crafted to ensnare Black people and return them to chains, these laws were effective; for the first time in U.S. history, many state penal systems held more Black prisoners than white—all of whom could be leased for profit,” the organization added. “Industrialization, economic shifts and political pressure ended widespread convict-leasing by World War II, but the Thirteenth Amendment’s dangerous loophole still permits the enslavement of prisoners who continue to work without pay in various public and private industries.”

ACLU-MS Deputy Director Netterville said that convict-leasing supplied labor for both the private and public sectors “to build railroad (or) anything that they needed labor for; they relied on the practice of racial profiling and convict-leasing,” she added. “So we had a convict-leasing law on our books in the 1800s.”

The ACLU worked to ensure that HB 747, as the Mississippi House of Representatives passed, would not see the light of day, even though it judged that the notion of a work-release program was not inherently wrong.

“Work-release programs have proven to be a successful way to reduce recidivism,” Netterville said. “So the ACLU is not opposed to work-release, but we are opposed to work-release that mirrors convict-leasing in any shape, form or fashion.”

In a 2014 seminar research paper, Patrice Keon Pettigrew noted that inmates’ participation in educational, vocational and/or work release programs might reduce recidivism by 20% to 60%.

However, in Netterville’s judgment, House Bill 747 was an attempt to resurrect Mississippi’s 1800s convict-leasing laws. “So that bill would have literally allowed every sheriff in the state of Mississippi to have work-release program(s), but work-release programs that would have required that the incarcerated person who was working will turn over all of their income to the sheriff—just reclassified convict-leasing,” she explained.

The ACLU-MS said further conversation regarding the bill resulted in its revamping. “As a result of our aggressive advocacy, supporters of HB 747 requested meetings to explain why the bill was not an attempt to resurrect convict-leasing, slavery and sharecropping,” the organization wrote in a report. “Holding firm to our opposition of the bill, we reached a compromise that allows the Sheriff of Rankin County to implement a one-year pilot program.”

“The bill limits the pilot program to no more than 25 incarcerated persons, requires incarcerated persons to open a bank account, and caps the amount of wages used to pay child support, fines and restitution,” ACLU-MS added. “In addition to mandatory reporting by Sheriff Bailey, the PEER Committee will conduct a final study of the pilot program.” That final report is due by December 2022.

Netterville noted that the organization worked on the bill with the Rankin County sheriff. “We worked on language with him and policy with him to prevent the abuse—the financial abuse—and the convict-leasing,” she said.

“The advocates were very particular about making 747 only for people currently housed in the Rankin County custody to avoid some of the abuses seen in other programs like (in) Louisiana, where sheriffs and courts and prosecutors work together to create these convict-leasing programs.”

Louisiana has a work-release program that gives the sheriff complete control over the offenders’ wages. The sheriff disburses the inmate wages to cover food, clothing, medical and dental expenses, travel expenses, support dependents, and to pay fines and fees. The inmate gets any remaining balance upon discharge.

A Trusted ‘Trusty’ Program?

The people of Rankin County elected Bryan Bailey as sheriff in 2011. He immediately worked to stop the county’s cooperation with the Mississippi Department of Correction regarding sending some prisoners to county jail via its ”trusty” program.

“It just got to be where it was too much of a hassle, dealing with the state, the guidelines and different things like that. We ended up having a meeting with our judges and our district attorney’s office and the sheriff’s office and said, ‘Hey, we got some good people here we’d like to keep as trusties,'” Bailey told the Mississippi Free Press in a March 18 phone interview.

A 2011 MDOC manual indicated that inmates can get trusty status to work for the institution, or as a labor crew or if the inmate possesses a skill. “An inmate in trusty status may be awarded a trusty time allowance of 30 days reduction of sentence for each 30 days of participation in approved programs,” the manual said.

There were 12 possible programs a trusty can be involved in, such as what the manual calls “MDOC classified jail support.” Others include a community-based work program, a joint state-county work program, road crews, “sensitive” placement, Mississippi Prison Industries, mobile work crew, essential inmate unit support, governor’s mansion, satisfactory participation in education or instructional program, satisfactory participation in work projects, and satisfactory participation in any special incentive programs.

On the MDOC website, the agency explained that “Trusty Earned Time allows for the reduction of sentence of 10 days for every 30 days successful participation in selected work and educational programs.”

Then-Gov. Haley Barbour benefitted from the trusty practice, first pardoning several trusties assigned to him in the Governor’s Mansion who had violently murdered wives or girlfriends, as the Jackson Free Press’ Ronni Mott revealed in 2008, with several follow-ups until he left office in 2012 when the practice attracted wider media attention.

Trusty Program As Reentry in Rankin

Rankin County started its inmate trusty program as a reentry program more than 10 years ago, with funding from the community.

“So it is just a community-based effort on rehabilitation, which I think the only way it’s going to be successful is for our communities to be involved,” Bailey said. “Our churches are highly involved in this. If I have a need for an inmate, I can get on the phone and have it covered within minutes by a church.”

The Rankin County trusty program operates as follows: If an offense ordinarily carries, for example, a three-year sentence with the MDOC then the district attorney, in collaboration with the sheriff and the judge, will offer the same or a slightly longer term of confinement at the county jail in exchange for a pledge to complete specified activities in the program. The term must be a minimum of one year and a maximum of five years.

The Rankin County sheriff’s trusties work at the vehicle maintenance shop or woodshop, or they clean county buildings and take various classes like Jessica Broughman did when she enrolled in the trusty program while incarcerated. The trusties will, later on, go back to court to be released on time served and placed on probation.

“This is all on the county level with our county inmates, who haven’t been sentenced to go to MDOC,” Sheriff Administrative Assistant Shanks explained.

Sheriff Bailey commented that some people in the program have come to him at the end of their time and requested more jail time until they feel they are ready to reenter society.

“I know you’re not going to believe this, and I’ll be glad to let you talk to a couple of people that asked for it, but I’ve had people that when it was time for them to get out, they came to me crying in tears and said, ‘Sheriff, I’m not ready to get out. If I get out right now, I’m not going to make it. I’m going to fail, I’m going to get back on meth,'” Bailey recalled.

“And we went to the judge and got them six more months, or three more months or something till they felt like they were ready to leave, and then once they leave, we try to make sure they have a safe place to live, that they have a good job, and some of them would even have vehicles donated to them.”

A Missing Link: A Mountain of Fines

The Rankin County sheriff said that his unscientific conclusion was that the program had achieved around a 50% recidivism reduction. Still, he observed over the program’s 10 years that it had a missing piece.

“I noticed that these people were getting out, and they’ll have a mountain of fines,” he said. “One big problem is most of these people in their drug life or criminal life, they lost their license, they had a bunch of tickets, you know, they just had fines everywhere.”

“They’ll have fines on the charge that they’re currently in here on, so money, having some money was a big deal,” Bailey added. That is the reason for his advocacy and work with the ACLU on the work-release program that HB 747 established.

“The reason we pushed hard forward with the Legislature (is because) it was a missing link in our reentry program we’ve been doing here,” he said. “Having a little bit of money is one big thing that people need to be successful when they get out of prison.”

The version of Mississippi’s 2021 HB 747 that became law in 2021 limited the provision to Rankin County for one year as a pilot program allowing up to 25 inmates in the final year of jail time at a time, and it puts admission into the program at the discretion of the sheriff. It also limited the amount of money used for fines and restitution payments.

The bill does not allow more than 25% of the income to go to fines, child support, restitution, fees, and the cost of obtaining a driver’s license, leaving Sheriff Bailey to determine how they will spend the remaining amount. The sheriff told the Mississippi Free Press that he mandates that inmates save 50% of their income and otherwise allows them to spend 25% on anything they want.

“I knew that especially with the Mississippi Sheriff’s office in the south that I want to be real careful with them doing the work program because I didn’t want anybody to say that these inmates are being taken advantage of or something like that,” Sheriff Bailey told the Mississippi Free Press.

“So the number-one thing on my work program is I don’t touch any of their money,” he added. “They’re in complete 100% control of their money, and the sheriff’s office and the county does not get a dime of it.”

Earning Money for After Incarceration

Only those in Rankin County’s trusty program can participate in the work-release program once they meet some requirements, including a threshold number of classes. Those in the work-release program make a monthly report on their money in worksheets that administrative assistant Shanks prepares.

Shanks discussed inmates’ difficulties when they are released from jail and have no money. When combined with the hurdle of getting work, this sometimes results in involvement in illicit activity, which may ultimately result in re-incarceration.

“That’s how the work-release program started—Sheriff (Bailey) really wanted to try to help them make money while they’re here ’cause that was one thing we noticed—a lot of inmates getting out, not having a job, not having money, and then they would come right back in here. The recidivism was just so high,” Shanks told the Mississippi Free Press.

“A lot of inmates will get out and turn right back to selling drugs or prostituting, whatever they have to do to make money,” she added. “And so we just wanted to start the work program so that they can start making money while they’re here so they have a foundation when they get out and they can stay with their job so they’ll have employment and that will help them have a job, make money, so they don’t have to find how to make money in other ways.”

The sheriff said that about 11 people are currently in the work-release program because he is starting small, and that around 10 have graduated. He unscientifically judged that while the trusty program had a 50% reduction in recidivism, it’s as low as 20% for the work-release program. However, the program is still at a stage too early for a more definitive appraisal.

Businesses are lining up offering to take in those in the work-release program, the sheriff told the Mississippi Free Press. Also, inmates can receive minimum wage or more.

“I have a guy who’s a certified mechanic (worrying) that he was going to be cutting grass or something for a minimum wage,” the sheriff said. “I went to the owner of Bob Boyte Honda (Brandon, Miss.) and talked with him; they hired him as a mechanic at Bob Boyte Honda. So he’s making what the other certified mechanics make.”

“Now if somebody doesn’t have a skill, they are going to start out in a starting position. But if I have a certified electrician, I’m not going to go let him cut grass,” Bailey asserted. “I will find him a job with an electrician.”

He said that most of the women in the work-release program work at places like Genna Benna’s Restaurant and McClain Lodge as servers and hosts, and while a majority of the male participants work at locations like a welding shop, Bob Boyte Honda and Summit Foods.

Mississippi State Rep. Gene Newman, R-Pearl, who sponsored HB 747 in 2021, told the Mississippi Free Press on March 21 that the bill’s novelty is in affording inmates the ability to make money while incarcerated. “It allows people who committed a crime while they’re still in jail … to be able to actually work so that they’ll have money whenever they get out so that they can support themselves, so it’ll be less likely that they go back,” Newman said. “The program has been very much of a success.”

“You can’t have just a criminal-justice (system) that’s just about punishing people,” he added. “You’ve got to be able to figure out how you are going to help them get back into the society when they come back.”

Sheriff Administrative Assistant Shanks said she writes the work-release program’s reports and submits them to the Legislature. “We’ve already made a few reports to them, and they’re very pleased with how it’s going,” she told the Mississippi Free Press. “We did it every six months, so the last time we went was in the middle of February; we went in and turned in the latest reports that we did.”

“That will be the second report we have given them on the inmates that are working,” she added. “We gave it to the senators that are on the corrections committee.”

‘Something Meaningful Like Work’

Mississippi State Senate Corrections Committee Chairman Juan Barnett, D-Heidelberg, put forth Senate Bill 2275 this legislative session to extend the Rankin County work-release program for two more years and to allow Jackson County to similarly test the program.

“I think individuals should have the opportunity to work even if they’re incarcerated,” Sen. Barnett told the Mississippi Free Press in a March 2, 2022, phone interview. “They should still have the opportunity to participate in something meaningful like work.”

This year, Rep. Newman is sponsoring another bill, HB 586, which will remove the current one-year limit on the 2021 HB 747 and make the Rankin County program permanent.

Jessica Broughman left the Rankin Detention Center in August 2021 with about $7,000 saved from working at Genna Benna’s Restaurant between May and August 2021 as part of the work-release program while in jail, and even after she left the jail, until September that year.

Broughman bought a 2009 Honda Fit for $5,000 soon after she walked out of prison a free woman. She joined Milwaukee Tools in September 2021 as a shipping clerk through the help of one of the Celebrate Recovery facilitators. The car aided her movement to and from work.

“When she got out, she paid off all her fines. She bought a vehicle, moved back in with her mom in Madison, and got her child back,” Shanks told the Mississippi Free Press. “And now she’s working at Milwaukee Tools, has a good job, and she’s very successful.”

Broughman said that she has continued to attend Celebrate Recovery programs and is involved with a church.

“I’m just trying to be proactive,” she said. “I just want to be aware of my addiction. I want to be aware of my surroundings, but not to a point where it hinders me because that’s not the person I am today, but I think staying aware of it is always a positive thing.”

“I just want to start a life, actually live a life that I am supposed to be living.”

This story originally appeared in the Mississippi Free Press. The Mississippi Free Press is a statewide nonprofit news outlet that provides most of its stories free to other media outlets to republish. Write shaye@mississippifreepress.org for information.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A federal judge has issued a second contempt order over poor conditions at a county jail in Mississippi, where court monitors found staff members are afraid to work in a housing unit controlled by gangs of inmates.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves filed the order Wednesday against Hinds County because of problems at the Raymond Detention Center, WLBT-TV reported.

The jail is divided into housing units called pods, and Reeves wrote that conditions in Pod A are “particularly egregious," with gangs carrying out attacks and deciding which inmates receive meals.

“The living conditions, or lack thereof, and near-complete lack of supervision, have contributed to lawlessness in that part of the facility,” Reeves wrote.

Reeves cited the killing of one inmate by others in October in the pod. He wrote that video footage showed the man being hit in the head by one inmate and then stomped on by another. After the inmate died, he was dragged back and propped into a sitting position and was later laid down on a mat. Nine hours passed before officers found his body.

Reeves issued his first civil contempt order against Hinds County on Feb. 4, writing that officials in Mississippi's largest county had failed to fix longstanding problems in the jail. From Feb. 14 to March 1, he heard testimony about conditions to determine whether to order a receivership in which the federal government would take over operation of the jail, with Hinds County paying the tab.

One of the court-appointed monitors of the jail, David Parrish, testified that Pod A is filthy and has broken lights, locks and showers. He also said the pod lacks fire extinguishers and fire hoses.

“Everything in the place is torn up,” Parrish said. “It’s just a very bad mess.”

The U.S. Justice Department sued Hinds County in 2016 after finding unconstitutional conditions at the jail, including “dangerously low staffing levels,” violence among detainees and violence by staff against detainees. It also found problems with treatment of juveniles and suicidal detainees. And, it said, the jail had cell doors that would not lock.

Hinds County supervisors agreed to a federal consent decree in 2016, saying the county would correct the problems. Supervisors promised again in 2020 to fix the problems as the county faced the threat of being held in contempt of court.

The legal action over the Hinds County jail is separate from an investigation the Justice Department began in February 2020 after an outbreak of violence in the Mississippi prison system.

Emmett Till disappeared into Bryant Grocery and Meat Market to buy candy on an August evening in 1955. Wheeler Parker, his cousin, went with him into the Money, Miss., store. Parker stepped back out shortly thereafter, and for one minute, the 14-year-old visitor from Chicago was alone in the store with Carolyn Bryant, the 22-year-old clerk of the store her husband, Roy, owned.

Just one minute later, Till’s cousin from Mississippi stepped in. Simeon Wright watched Till pay, and they left together.

Few lost moments in history have been put to such scrutiny. Two witnesses to those obscured seconds emerged from the grocery that day, but only one would ever be afforded the right to testify about them. Carolyn Bryant told her story in the Tallahatchie County Courthouse in Sumner that September with her husband and his half-brother on trial.

Emmett Till, Bryant claimed, grabbed at her hand when paying, then rounded the counter and grasped her by the hips, his arms around her back. What she says he told her next—the sexual euphemism about white women she declined to speak out loud—would be the death of Emmett Till, however much a lie and no excuse for murder in any case. After all, in the words of murderer J.W. Milam, he was “that boy that done the talking down at Money.”

Somehow, less interrogated by the public, is another moment in the same trial briefly after Bryant’s story. It is contained in the testimony of Till’s uncle, Mose Wright, who at the trial stood and pointed down at J.W. Milam and Roy Bryant, knowing what that could mean for his life and safety.

It was the early hours of the 28th of August when Milam and Bryant descended on the Wright household, armed and looking for Till. Before Milam and Bryant and their other accomplices took Till away, they stopped by the car, Mose Wright said, and asked someone in the vehicle if the boy they had was him—the one from the grocery.

“Yes,” responded a voice in the car, a “lighter voice than a man’s,” Wright testified.

The voice, logic argues, could be no one other than Carolyn Bryant. For all of the endless details, precise timelines, for all the deceptions and lies in that courtroom or the just-so story told to Look Magazine after the acquittal; for whatever Till said in the store, for his whistle or the way his hands might have brushed against Bryant’s when he paid for his candy, Mose Wright’s testimony points one more unavoidable finger—what he swore in that courtroom is that Carolyn Bryant helped lynch Emmett Till.

The Last Living Accomplice

Almost 67 years later, Deborah Watts, co-founder of the Emmett Till Legacy Foundation, stood beneath the Mississippi Capitol dome, and the topic on her lips was determination to see long-deferred justice for her then-14-year-old cousin killed that night in Leslie Milam’s barn.

“We’ve got a promise to many that we would persist, and that’s why we’re here today,” Watts proclaimed on March 11, 2022.

The family of Emmett Till is once again calling for justice, nearly 70 years past young Till’s vicious murder, tied to a cotton-gin fan in the Tallahatchie River. Gathering at the steps of the Mississippi State Capitol’s rotunda on March 11, speakers from Emmett Till Legacy Foundation called for charges against Carolyn Bryant, now Carolyn Bryant Donham, who later divorced Roy Bryant and remarried. She is the last known living instigator of Till’s murder.

“Mamie Till-Mobley … left this earth not knowing if there would ever be justice for (Till’s) brutal murder, but she also left open his casket so we would bear witness to the hate that has been embedded in our DNA since the slave ships arrived in America,” Watts said about the boy’s mother. A photograph of Till’s mangled face in his casket appeared on the cover of Jet Magazine on Sept. 15, 1955.

“The murder remains unsolved,” she continued. “And the last living accomplice in that murder case is Carolyn Bryant.”

‘The Culpability of Carolyn Bryant Donham’

Of the many distortions that followed Till’s lynching—including the early lie that Bryant and Milam had simply let Till go—the momentary encounter between Donham and Till is the most scrutinized, in no small part because she is still alive, reportedly living in Durham, N.C. Donham’s testimony in 1955 to an all-white jury in Sumner has never lined up with other witness testimony of the event, including Till’s family and friends who saw no such action.

An all-white jury acquitted Bryant and Milam, after which they admitted to the crime in a paid interview with Look Magazine with a white journalist who hid facts. Although that interview firmly established the men’s guilt, it also concealed the participation of other men who were never named, charged or tried with the lynching.

At Friday’s event in the Capitol, Jaribu Hill, executive director of the Mississippi Workers’ Center for Human Rights, said Donham’s participation was a key part of the lynching of Till. “As my sister Deborah said earlier—exposing the lynching—it wasn’t a killing, it wasn’t a murder. It was a lynching. … We want full acknowledgement of the culpability of Carolyn Bryant Donham.”

“Remember,” Hill continued, “it’s Carolyn Bryant, the 21-year-old white woman who fingered a child, knowing that she was pointing him out to his murderous, killer husband. … We want justice. We want the original warrant that should have been served on her in 1955.”

From Lip Service to Justice

For Joshua Harris-Till, another cousin of Emmett Till, justice has for too long been lip service, mourning without action on the part of the powerful. “To ask my family to think about forgiveness is to ask us to forget about justice. When will we get the justice that we are due? When will she be held accountable for her actions? When will she have to actually face the ramifications for what happened in that store?” he said of Donham.

Several attempts to bring Donham to trial have already failed—first in 2007, when a Leflore County Grand Jury declined to bring manslaughter charges against Donham, declaring a lack of sufficient evidence. Late last year, the U.S. Justice Department closed yet another investigation into Till’s lynching without further charges against Donham for perjury or any other crime.

Renewed interest in Donham’s involvement followed her 2008 interview with historian Timothy B. Tyson for his book “The Blood of Emmett Till.” Over the course of two recorded interviews with Donham, Tyson wrote in his book that she had firmly acknowledged that her testimony at the trial had been a lie.

But Tyson has acknowledged that her confession had not been recorded. The historian said that the incriminating statement had been made just prior to the recording. “Carolyn started spilling the beans before I got the recorder going,” Tyson said at the time. “I documented her words carefully.”

Without an ironclad admission that Donham had lied, the U.S. Justice Department closed the case in late 2021.

‘It Empowered All Of Us’

At the rotunda steps, activists and extended family members of Till presented their case to the public and then walked across High Street to deliver their letter to the office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch, along with 250,000 signatures on a flash drive calling for justice on behalf of Till and his family.

For many of those gathered in support of the march, the unpunished lynching of Emmett Till is representative of the unfulfilled promise of justice facing Black Americans today. Akil LaBertis, carrying a banner with the words “Justice For Emmett Till,” told the Mississippi Free Press that the void of responsibility for killers like Till’s remains today. “A lot of things like this are still happening (today). The game doesn’t change, just the players.”

The story of Emmett Till usually garners sympathy when it is told. But the activists, the family members and the speakers present at the event wanted more than words of support—they want action, material consequences for whatever participants are still alive.

“There’s a value gap,” LaBertis said. “Everyone says they know the importance of (justice), but they don’t know the value of it, the cost of it.”

Reena Evers-Everette—who is an advisory board member for the Mississippi Free Press—is the daughter of civil rights icon Medgar Evers, whom white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith murdered in Jackson in 1963. She is familiar with a long and winding road to justice.

“The Medgar Evers family knows that pain,” she said at the rally. “Knows the sight of blood.”

They know resilience, too. “The strength and courage that Mamie Till displayed continuously, even before her son stepped foot on that train from Chicago, and then when the casket came on the train back to Chicago, her strength and courage went viral, as we say now, but it empowered all of us,” Evers-Everette added.

Time Running Out

Time for the justice the speakers demand is running out. Keith Beauchamp, the documentarian whose film “The Untold Story of Emmett Till” led to the original 2004 re-opening of the case, expressed the difficulty of fruitlessly seeking real accountability. “It is frustrating to come back every decade or so and stress the importance of seeking justice for Emmett Till,” he said. “… I have to keep screaming and hollering about the importance of getting closure. Not only for the family of Emmett Till but for this whole nation.”

Beauchamp, also an MFP advisory board member, is a writer and producer of the new feature film “Till” based on his long-time work on the case.

Mose Wright passed long ago, in 1977. Mamie Till-Mobley died in 2003. Simeon Wright, one of Emmett’s cousins present both at Bryant’s Grocery the day of the encounter and later, at Till’s abduction, died in 2017.

Murderers J.W. Milam died in 1980 and Roy Bryant in 1994.

A representative from the Public Integrity division of the Attorney General’s office accepted the letter to Fitch who has not responded about the future of the case. The Office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch did not return a request for a comment to the Mississippi Free Press.

This story originally appeared in the Mississippi Free Press. The Mississippi Free Press is a statewide nonprofit news outlet that provides most of its stories free to other media outlets to republish. Write shaye@mississippifreepress.org for information.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi judge will hold a hearing next month to determine if a death row inmate truly wants to request an execution date and if the inmate is mentally competent to waive appeals in the case.

In court papers filed Monday, a special assistant state attorney general said the hearing for Blayde Nathaniel Grayson is scheduled for April 7 before George County Circuit Judge Kathy King Jackson.

The state Supreme Court on Jan. 28 ordered that Grayson, 46, be put under oath to say whether he wishes to go forward with his request for the state to schedule his lethal injection.

Grayson was convicted of capital murder in 1997 in the 1996 stabbing death of 78-year-old Minnie Smith during a burglary of her home in south Mississippi’s George County.

He said in a handwritten letter to the state Supreme Court in early December: “I ask to see that my execution should be carried out forthwith.” Grayson also said then that he wanted to end all of his appeals.

Grayson’s attorney, David Voisin, submitted a separate letter days later asking justices to disregard Grayson’s request because Grayson still had an appeal pending in federal court.

On Jan. 31, Voisin and another attorney submitted papers to the state Supreme Court saying Grayson wanted to withdraw his request for an execution date. They also said Grayson wanted to keep his remaining appeals.

In written arguments Feb. 2, state Attorney General Lynn Fitch said Grayson's request should remain in place so the George County circuit judge can hold the competency hearing.

The state Supreme Court ruled Feb. 22 that Grayson could not withdraw the request for an execution date. One of the current state Supreme Court justices, David Ishee, represented Grayson during his trial and during some appeals of the conviction. Ishee did not take part in the Feb. 22 decision.

Mississippi on Nov. 17 carried out its first execution in nine years, giving a lethal injection to David Neal Cox, who surrendered all appeals and described himself as “worthy of death.” A jury in north Mississippi sentenced Cox to death after he pleaded guilty to killing his estranged wife and sexually assaulting his stepdaughter in front of her dying mother.

MCCOMB, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi woman says local officials need to take immediate steps end senseless violence like the drive-by shooting that killed her 6-year-old son while he was playing with friends at a city park in McComb.

Kyoukius Washington, the mother of Oterious Marks, said her heart “aches for this city."

Washington gathered Monday with friends, relatives and school officials at Central Park in McComb, the Enterprise Journal reported. One person held an enlarged photo of her son, as others placed stuffed animals near the blood stain on the basketball court where the first-grader was shot Sunday afternoon.

“I’m upset, I’m hurt, I’m distraught. I’m losing my mind,” Washington said as relatives wailed nearby. “I’m sad, extremely sad. My heart is broken. ... My baby is dead.”

Oterious was pronounced dead at Southwest Mississippi Regional Medical Center. Pike County Coroner Wally Jones said the child was struck in the abdomen by a high-caliber bullet.

“The crime rate is out of hand, and the recklessness and senselessness that got my son killed," Washington said. “I’m angry. I’m so angry."

Oterious had been playing with his brothers and friends as his mother watched from a nearby picnic table. Jody Ramee, Oterious’ 12-year-old brother, said he had seen someone with a gun at the park earlier but did not think the person would shoot. Then he saw a car come down a road near the basketball courts and someone started shooting. Jody watched a man standing next to him on the court get shot in the leg. Then he saw another bullet hit his brother. Another grazed Jody's arm.

Police Chief Garland Ward said the other people who were shot are 23, 18 and 17. Two of the four wounded were in critical condition, and one of them was airlifted to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson. The others had minor injuries and were released from the local hospital, Ward said.

Police arrested four suspects Monday — Bryan Cameron, 18; Yajari Jackson, 19; Bryceon Thompson, 18; and a 17-year-old. All face charges of capital murder and four counts of aggravated assault manifesting extreme indifference to human life. They remained in the Pike County jail Wednesday. It was not immediately clear whether any of them had lawyers who could comment on the charges.

Washington said the shooting should serve as an awakening for McComb.

“I don’t know who the target was in this situation, but I know for sure it wasn’t my 6-year-old son,” she said.

Oterious, whose family called him “Bull,” was a first-grader at Otken Elementary School.

“He was lovable. He was fun. He had a whole lot of character. He was a sweet boy,” Washington said. “He was so full of life.”

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Gangs inside a Mississippi jail often determine whether other inmates receive meals, a court-appointed monitor testified in a federal court hearing.

Elizabeth Simpson testified Tuesday that staffing shortages are so severe at Hinds County's Raymond Detention Center that gangs and “inmate committees” control certain aspects of life, including whether some inmates get to eat, WLBT-TV reported.

A former administrator of the jail, Maj. Kathryn Bryan, learned staff would put food on carts to take to the jail's housing units and would let the inmates distribute it, Simpson said. In two cases this January, detainees in a mental-health unit were suffering severe weight loss as a result, Simpson said.

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves issued a civil-contempt order Feb. 4, saying officials in Mississippi's largest county have failed to fix problems at the jail. He started holding hearings last week to determine whether to order a receivership in which the federal government would take over operation of the jail, with Hinds County paying the tab.

Simpson testified Tuesday that inmate committees determined whether certain detainees could remain in housing units known as pods.

“The detainees who control the unit decide who can be there and who can’t. If they don’t want (a detainee) there, they will set up assaults until they leave,” she said.

The U.S. Justice Department sued Hinds County in 2016 after finding unconstitutional conditions at the jail, including “dangerously low staffing levels,” violence among detainees and violence by staff against detainees. It also found problems with treatment of juveniles and suicidal detainees. And, it said, the jail had cell doors that would not lock.

Hinds County supervisors agreed to a federal consent decree in 2016, saying the county would correct the problems. Supervisors promised again in 2020 to fix the problems as the county faced the threat of being held in contempt of court.

Reeves’s Feb. 4 order noted that the courts can set financial penalties for civil contempt orders.

The legal action over the Hinds County jail is separate from an investigation the Justice Department began in February 2020 after an outbreak of violence in the Mississippi prison system.

Many inmates being housed at jail are being held longer than required by their sentence due to poor record-keeping. One detainee remained too long because a jail worker used the wrong screen on a computer program to calculate his release date.

“They don’t have a tracking system for people to be released,” Simpson said.

During recent site visits, Simpson found six people had been “over-detained,” with one in custody 16 days too long and another in custody two months longer than his sentence mandated.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A Mississippi inmate who escaped from prison over the weekend was captured Tuesday in a county where he had been convicted of murder, and about a dozen prison employees were suspended because the staff waited more than a day to tell the state Department of Corrections he was missing, department officials said.

Michael Floyd Wilson, 51, was captured in coastal Harrison County, at least 130 miles (210 kilometers) from Central Mississippi Correctional Facility outside Jackson.

Sheriff Troy Peterson said in a news release that officers caught Wilson in a car that had been reported stolen from a neighboring county. Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain said the car ran out of gas while Wilson was driving.

Cain said Wilson is being moved to a different prison and “he'll have a hard time getting away from us there."

Officials bemoaned that they had not received timely notification of Wilson's escape. Because his escape was kept a secret until Sunday, he was able to go undetected when he was treated at a hospital twice under a fake name for injuries he received while going over the prison’s razor-wire fence.

“We want to assure the public that we won't make those mistakes again because we have taken corrective action,” Cain said Tuesday. “We're shocked, upset and appalled that he got away.”

The employee suspensions add stress to a prison system that came under Justice Department scrutiny in 2020 after an outbreak of violence by inmates in multiple facilities.

State and federal law enforcement officers took part in a multistate search for Wilson.

Department of Corrections spokesman Leo Honeycutt said Wilson escaped Saturday and prison staff told the department about the escape Sunday. Wilson had obtained gloves, and one of those was stuck in the wire, Honeycutt said.

It Wilson's third escape from custody, Honeycutt said. Wilson got out of a county jail in 2001, where he was being held on a burglary charge. Wilson was sentenced to two life sentences in September 2015 after being convicted of murder for beating two people to death on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 2014.

In July 2018, Wilson escaped from South Mississippi Correctional Institution in Leakesville and was captured two days later in Ocean Springs, which is about 70 miles (113 kilometers) away.

Investigators have learned that after Wilson's latest escape he went to a nearby subdivision in the Jackson suburb of Pearl and told someone he was bleeding because he was an FBI agent who had been in a motorcycle accident, Honeycutt said. That person called 911, and an ambulance picked up Wilson and took him to the University of Mississippi Medical Center in Jackson.

“We dropped the ball because we didn't know he had escaped,” Honeycutt said of the department.

Cain said Wilson gave a fake name at the hospital. After Wilson was released from the hospital Saturday, he ended up at an auto parts store in Richland, several miles from the prison. Cain said someone called police because Wilson was still bleeding.

When officers arrived, Wilson gave a fake name. Officers called an ambulance and Wilson was taken back to the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

“He must be really, really convincing,” Honeycutt said. “I mean, he should be an actor.”

Wilson was discharged from the hospital for the second time early Sunday, before the Department of Corrections had been notified of the escape, Honeycutt said.

During his escape in 2018, Wilson ditched his prison garb, obtained civilian clothing and got a ride to a hospital after saying he had been injured in a motorcycle wreck and he needed to be at the hospital because his wife was in labor. The person who gave him the ride was a newspaper publisher who did not know Wilson was an inmate because the prison had not yet notified the public about Wilson's escape.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The failure of Mississippi's largest county to follow federal orders to improve jail conditions has “caused people to die, suffer injuries and live in ongoing danger," a Justice Department attorney told a federal judge Monday.

Helen Vera with the department's Civil Rights Division argued that U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves should put Hinds County's Raymond Detention Center under a federal receivership, WLBT-TV reported.

Reeves issued a civil contempt order against Hinds County on Feb. 4, saying officials have failed to fix problems at the jail. He is holding hearings this week to determine whether to order a receivership in which the federal government would take over operation of the jail, with the county paying the tab.

Vera said seven inmates had died at the jail in 2021, including one who was killed by other inmates and not discovered for nine hours. She said 75 fights and assaults broke out at the facility last year.

Vera said officers are often absent from the housing units, leaving those to the control of gangs. Toilets and other fixtures don’t work, and drugs and paraphernalia are regularly trafficked into the facility, she said.

James Shelson, an attorney for the county, argued that the consent decree is too large to effect change at the Raymond Detention Center and that it oversteps its authority under federal law. He said the county is planning to build a new jail, with supervisors approving $68 million for it.

Shelson also said half of the sheriff's department budget already goes toward the jail.

“The county operates in a world of finite budgets,” Shelson said. “That’s just a reality. There’s going to be a finite budget regardless of who is at the helm.”

The U.S. Justice Department sued Hinds County in 2016 after finding unconstitutional conditions at the jail in Raymond, including “dangerously low staffing levels," violence among detainees and violence by staff against detainees. It also found problems with treatment of juveniles and suicidal detainees. And, it said, the jail had cell doors that would not lock.

Hinds County supervisors agreed to a federal consent decree in 2016, saying the county would correct the problems. Supervisors promised again in 2020 to fix the problems as the county faced the threat of being held in contempt of court.

Federal authorities say Hinds County has fully complied with only three of 92 provisions in the consent decree.

Reeves's Feb. 4 order noted that the courts can set financial penalties for civil contempt orders.

The legal action over the Hinds County jail is separate from an investigation that the Justice Department began in February 2020 after an outbreak of violence in the Mississippi prison system.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Officials from Hinds County and the federal government are set to go before a Mississippi federal judge Monday to argue over who will control the county's troubled jail.

The Clarion-Ledger reported that a hearing is set Monday in Jackson in front of Judge Carlton Reeves who is expected to decide later this month on whether the federal government should take over the running of the jail.

The newspaper reports that attorneys for the county are expected to argue that they should be allowed to keep running the Raymond Detention Center in order to continue improvements. But federal attorneys are expected to push for the jail to fall under federal control so as to bring it into compliance with a consent decree established in 2016.

The consent decree was established to address “unconstitutional conditions” at the jail. Those conditions included security problems such as cell doors not locking and staffing shortages.

Reeves has called into question the county's claims that it is making progress in the right direction. Reeves said evidence from monitoring reports doesn't support that, and he pointed out that six inmates died in the jail in 2021. Back in November, the judge gave county officials an ultimatum to make the jail safe or risk it being put in federal receivership.

In December, the county's attorneys argued that court monitors hadn't visited in 18 months so the court doesn't have a current understanding of the conditions at the jail. They argued that there's been improvements in medical and mental health care for inmates as well as building and cell repairs as well as other improvements.

Reeves wrote in an order earlier this month that monitors visited the jail in-person Jan. 24, and said it looked “substantially the same” as it had previously.

Under a receivership, an outside, appointed operator would be brought in to bring the jail in line with the consent decree.

RIDGELAND, Miss. (AP) — Attorneys for a Black delivery driver are calling for a federal hate crimes probe of the attempted shooting of the driver in Mississippi, saying it's another example of Black Americans facing danger simply for going about their daily activities.

The FedEx driver, 24-year-old Demonterrio Gibson, was not wounded in the Jan. 24 incident. One of his attorneys, Carlos Moore, said Thursday that he believes police are not taking the investigation seriously. Two white men are facing charges, but Moore said the state needs to upgrade those charges to attempted murder.

Moore said Gibson had done nothing wrong before two white men tried to stop him, with one of the men holding a gun.

“He was simply Black while working,” Moore said during a news conference.

A Justice Department spokesperson confirmed to The Associated Press on Thursday that the department received a request to look into the case and will review the request to determine any next steps.

Gibson said he was wearing a FedEx uniform and was driving an umarked van that FedEx had rented when he dropped off a package at a house in south Mississippi. He said as he was leaving, he noticed a white pickup truck pulling away from another house on the same large lot.

He said the pickup driver tried to cut him off as he left the driveway. Gibson swerved around him and then encountered a second man who had a gun pointed at the van and was motioning for him to stop. Gibson said the man fired as he drove away, damaging the van and packages inside. He said the white pickup chased him to the interstate highway near Brookhaven before ending the pursuit.

Two white men from Brookhaven, 58-year-old Gregory Charles Case and his son 35-year-old Brandon Case, were arrested and released on Feb. 1. Police told local news outlets that the elder Case was the suspected pickup driver, while Brandon Case was the man in the street. Gregory Charles Case is charged with conspiracy. Brandon Case is charged with aggravated assault.

The attorneys who represent the men — Terrell Stubbs for the father and Dan Kitchens for the son — did not immediately respond to two phone messages that the AP left for each of them Thursday. A person in Stubbs' office said he was in court, and a person in Kitchens' office said he was out of the office.

Gibson said Thursday that he is seeking mental health treatment and is on unpaid leave from his job.

“I have real bad anxiety since the incident,” Gibson said.

Jim Masilak, manager of media relations for FedEx, said in response to questions from AP Thursday: “FedEx takes situations of this nature very seriously, and we are shocked by this criminal act against our team member. ... The safety of our team members is our top priority, and we remain focused on his wellbeing. We will continue to support Mr. Gibson as we cooperate with investigating authorities.”

Nobody was injured but the chase and gunfire have sparked social media complaints of racism in Brookhaven, about 55 miles (90 kilometers) south of the state capital, Jackson. The local NAACP chairman has called on city's Black police chief to resign, but the chief says he has no intention to do so.

“I’m not going anywhere until God makes that decision,” Collins told the Daily Leader. “That’s between me and God. Until God calls me I’m not worried about what anybody says.”

Moore compares the incident to the killing of Ahmaud Arbery, a 25-year-old Black man who was running empty-handed through a Georgia subdivision in 2020 when three white strangers chased him down and blasted him with a shotgun. The white men, including a father and son, were convicted of murder and sentenced to life. Defense lawyers said they suspected Arbery had committed crimes in their neighborhood, but prosecutors said there was no evidence of that. The three still face a federal hate crime trial.

About 68% of Brookhaven's 12,000 residents are Black. The city is in Lincoln County, where District Attorney Dee Bates said information will be presented to a grand jury for a decision on charges once police complete their investigation of the Gibson incident. Witnesses, including Gibson, will be able to testify.

James A. Bryant II of Los Angeles, another of the attorneys representing Gibson, said Thursday that Gibson experiences pain knowing that people tried to harm him because he is Black.

“That has to be the most frightening experience one could face as a young Black man," Bryant said. "And then not only that — they continued to chase him until they got to the freeway. So what would have happened if they were able to cut him off?”

A federal judge has declared Hinds County in contempt of court, setting the path for receivership proceedings after the county, in a Jan. 21, 2022, motion, sought to end the consent decree at the Hinds County Detention Center in Raymond. The decree has been in place since 2016 due to poor safety conditions, broken locks, unlawful detainment and numerous other problems at the jail.

In the Friday, Feb. 4 order, U.S. Southern Mississippi District Court Judge Carlton Reeves said that although the motion to terminate the consent decree suggested that the county no longer violated the incarcerated citizens’ constitutional rights, the evidence does not support that claim.

“The motion instead appears to be a last-ditch effort to prevent a federal takeover of the Raymond Detention Center,” the order declared.

The court cites non-compliance with provisions to protect inmates from harm, use of force training and review, incident reporting and review, sexual misconduct, grievance and prisoner information systems, restrictions on the use of segregation, lawful basis for detention, continuous improvement and quality assurance. The judge explained that the county’s termination motion claimed victory for the 62 of 92 requirements because it recorded sustained compliance in three and partial compliance in 59.

“But that leaves more than two dozen provisions where the County is simply non-compliant with a Court Order,” Reeves said. “For each of those, the County is in civil contempt.”

Continuing to slam the county’s motion to terminate the consent decree, Reeves said the move was just a shift of legal strategy, seeing that the county had previously asked the court to delay contempt proceedings until July 2022 to allow it more time to comply.

“In that response, the County begged this Court to delay its decision on contempt until July 1, 2022, so that it could continue ‘turning the RDC battleship towards a new and better heading,'” he wrote. “Apparently, the County and its new attorneys decided to just abandon ship, and instead spent their time engineering a position antithetical to all of the County’s prior representations.”

“After stating for nearly six years that the provisions of the Consent Decree were necessary and in conformance with the Constitution, the County now says that the Consent Decree exceeds ‘the constitutional minimum necessary to provide the County’s inmates with basic sustenance.”

‘A Receiver Therefore is Appropriate and Necessary’

The U.S Department of Justice responded to Hinds County’s motion to terminate the consent decree on Jan. 27, 2022. The DOJ lawyers argued that the court should hold the county in contempt and deny the motion to end the 2016 consent decree because the defendants’ failure to comply fully with 88 out of the 91 provisions had harmed detainees.

While the DOJ Civil Rights Division Special Litigation Section trial attorneys Christopher N. Cheng, Sarah Steve and Helen Vera are representing the federal government in the case, other officials have their names on the court filing.

These include Southern District of Mississippi U.S. Attorney Darren J. LaMarca; General Civil Rights Division Assistant Attorney Kristen Clarke; Civil Rights Division Special Litigation Section Chief Steven H. Rosenbaum; Southern District of Mississippi U.S. Assistant Attorney Mitzi Dease Paige; and Civil Rights Division Special Litigation Section Deputy Chief Laura L. Cowall.

“Defendants’ widespread contempt of the Consent Decree shows they are unwilling or incapable of fixing the constitutional violations at the Jail on their own,” the department wrote. “A receiver therefore is appropriate and necessary.”

They asked, and the judge agreed to postpone for 60 days the automatic stay in the implementation of the consent decree.

Based on the Prison Litigation Reform Act, a motion to terminate the consent decree triggers an automatic stay on the decrees mandates, 30 days after filing, but the court may postpone it by 60 days for “good cause.” The DOJ told the court that the stay was necessary because of a current constitutional violation, the resulting harm and the complexity of the termination motion. The county did not oppose the motion.

The DOJ said that county officials have “repeatedly ignored or dismissed technical assistance recommendations made by the Monitor, consultants, and the United States.”

They said that they had earlier filed for contempt against the county in June 2019 for noncompliance and settled for a January 2020 stipulated order, which contained short-term remedies. At that time, the county had been in sustained compliance with only one of the 92 consent decree requirements.

“Despite the Stipulated Order, Defendants continued in their pattern or practice of constitutional violations, and continued their widespread non-compliance with the two remedial orders,” the department added. “Indeed, nearly two years after the Stipulated Order, the Monitor’s fifteenth and most recent compliance report of November 24, 2021, concludes Defendants are in substantial compliance with only three of the Decree’s 92 substantive provisions.”

Problems at Henley-Young Juvenile Detention Center

Because the consent decree covers every facility that the county detained pretrial inmates, it now covers the Henley-Young Detention Center. In 2017 the county decided to move minors charged as adults to that facility and not the Hinds County Detention Center in Raymond.

As a part of the argument for the court to hold the county in contempt, the department said that Henley-Young also has its problems, including poor staffing, supervision, and lack of programs for youth charged as adults. It accused the county of slashing youth-care professional positions at the jail from 49 at the time of the consent decree to 42, and by October 2021, had filled only 24.

“Leadership turnover, delays in hiring clinical staff, and a lack of long-term planning have also slowed reforms,” the DOJ added. “The above current and ongoing failures in supervision, treatment, care, and education for youthful detainees will continue, and increase, without the Consent Decree.”

A latest leadership turnover to hit the Hinds County Detention Center involved former Jail Administrator Kathryn Bryan. After a decision clash with former interim Hinds County Sheriff Marshand Crisler, she tendered her resignation Nov. 10, after five months in office. She complained of lack of support, and described, according to court documents, a recent directive from Crisler that she found “reckless and dangerous.”

Her resignation was meant to go into effect Feb. 10. However, the newly elected sheriff Tyree Jones announced Jan. 31 that the resignation was effective immediately.

In the Jan. 27 brief, federal lawyers said that recommended changes in the consent decree were “critical to protecting youthful detainees from unconstitutional substantial risk of serious harm from physical violence, inadequate mental health care and other programming, and inhumane conditions of confinement.”

The federal lawyers accused the county of not implementing a process where acquitted detainees are released directly from the court “rather than returning to the Jail in handcuffs,” and do not investigate incidents of untimely or erroneous prisoner releases.

County Lawyers: DOJ Has Not Proved its Case

In response, the county attorneys said in its Jan. 31 filing that the DOJ’s response did not demonstrate “current and ongoing” constitutional violations at the jail, the consent decree was not excessively intrusive, and a receiver is “unnecessary and constitutes the most intrusive-means to cure the alleged ‘current and ongoing’ violations.” Phelps Dunbar, LLP attorneys Reuben V. Anderson, W. Thomas Siler Jr. and Nicholas F. Morisani signed the county’s response.

“To sum it up: DOJ’s response confuses constitutional requirements with preferential ‘best practices’ for jails. DOJ also fails to show the types of systemic constitutional violations that justify broad-scale, system-wide relief,” the county attorneys wrote.

Anderson told the Mississippi Free Press on Monday, Feb. 7, that he was “unable to make a comment at this time.” (Reuben Anderson is also a donor to the Mississippi Free Press, which has no impact on reporting decisions.)

Noncompliance with Consent Decree Provisions

In an order dated Jan. 10, Judge Reeves had written that by Jan. 19, the parties should submit names of two to three potential receivers and stated at the time that he planned to rule on the case in February. Five days before the Jan. 19 deadline, Hinds County said it wants to terminate the consent decree.

“The County thus respectfully asks that the Court hold in abeyance any decision to engage in such an extraordinary use of power until July 1, 2022, to allow the County additional time to continue its ongoing efforts and to prove it can make even more significant, positive change at the RDC,” the county lawyers had written in December 2022. But one month later, Jan. 21, 2022, they changed their tune asking the court to terminate the consent decree.

“Accordingly, because the consent decree’s policies and provisions exceed the constitutional minimum necessary to provide the County’s inmates with basic sustenance, and the conditions of the County’s facilities do not violate the inmates’ basic constitutional rights, the consent decree must be terminated or, alternatively, modified pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3626(b) of the PLRA,” the county lawyers later argued in the Jan. 21 court filing.

“Fast-forward to October 2021, the county’s compliance with the consent decree paints a different picture,” they added. “The monitoring team found the County in either sustained compliance or partial compliance with nearly seventy-percent (70%) of the consent decree’s policies and provisions; a far cry from the monitoring team’s first visit and a clear reflection of the positive, upward trend of operations at the RDC.”

However, various reports issued by court monitor Elizabeth Simpson, corrections operations expert David M. Parrish, juvenile justice expert Jim Moeser and corrections mental health expert Dr. Richard Dudley contradicts the county’s recent statements, Reeves wrote Friday.

“Given the evidence contained in the 15 Monitoring Reports, Hinds County’s newfound position is very concerning,” Reeves wrote.

“Hinds County decided to commit to the Consent Decree and the Stipulated Order. Twice it agreed that their provisions were narrowly tailored and the minimum necessary. It should have to live with that choice until it fixes RDC,” he added.

This story originally appeared in the Mississippi Free Press. The Mississippi Free Press is a statewide nonprofit news outlet that provides most of its stories free to other media outlets to republish. Write shaye@mississippifreepress.org for information.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A federal judge has issued a civil contempt order against Mississippi's largest county, saying officials have failed to fix more than two dozen problems in a jail plagued by violence and lax security.

The U.S. Justice Department sued Hinds County in 2016 after it had found unconstitutional conditions at the county's jail in Raymond, including “dangerously low staffing levels," violence among detainees and violence by staff against detainees. It also found problems with treatment of juveniles and suicidal detainees. And, it said, the jail had cell doors that would not lock.

Hinds County supervisors agreed to a federal consent decree in 2016, saying it would correct the problems.

Supervisors promised again in 2020 to fix the problems as the county faced the threat of being held in contempt of court.

“It is now 2022. Many of the problems the Board promised to address have not been corrected,” U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves wrote in his contempt order Friday.

The order noted that the courts can set financial penalties for civil contempt orders.

Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones, who was elected in late 2021, told WAPT-TV that the jail has had problems since it opened in 1994, and those have continued to get worse. Jones said he is working on a plan to hire more detention officers.

“Whatever I can do to prevent death, serious bodily injury in our detention facility, I’m currently dedicated to doing that,” Jones said.

The legal action over the Hinds County jail is separate from an investigation that the Justice Department began in February 2020 after an outbreak of violence in Mississippi prison system.

Reeves wrote Friday that the situation at the Hinds County jail “deteriorated significantly in 2021.” He wrote that a monitoring team found in May that “there continue to be fires set by inmates, there is an extremely large amount of contraband in the facility including drugs.”

Between January and October 2021, six detainees died in the Hinds County jail, Reeves wrote.

The first death occurred in March of that year, when nobody carried out a nurse's order to hospitalize a person who had been arrested, the judge wrote. The person collapsed, and someone went to get automated external defibrillator from the jail's medical unit, but the device had no pads and could not be used. The person died.

The fourth death, by drug overdose, occurred in August. Reeves wrote that inmates said they called for assistance for that person for five hours and the jail staff did not respond.

The consent decree and a monitoring team were approved by U.S. District Judge William H. Barbour Jr., and the case was transferred to Reeves when Barbour took senior status in December 2018.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A parole board has released one of three men convicted in the kidnapping and 2017 death of a 6-year-old boy who was asleep in the backseat of a car that was stolen from a grocery store parking lot.

D'Allen Washington, 22, pleaded guilty in 2018 to one count of accessory after the fact in the kidnapping of Kingston Frazier. He had been sentenced to 15 years in prison.

Washington was released Tuesday by order of the Mississippi Parole Board, his attorney, Warren L. Martin Jr., said in a statement.

“Mr. Washington met all of the conditions for parole under Mississippi law and was granted parole based upon his eligibility and other factors,” Martin said. “As he has done since this tragic incident, Mr. Washington continues to express his sincerest condolences to the Frazier and Archie families. During this period, Mr. Washington respectfully requests privacy as he takes steps to move forward with his life.”

Frazier’s grandmother, Lynn Winston, said she was not happy with the board's decision and believed his 15-year sentence was itself too lenient, even though authorities said Washington was not the one who fatally shot her grandson.

“This was a 6-year-old child that could do nothing to fend for himself,” Winston told WLBT-TV. “And here you are adults, young adults, that could have perhaps prevented this. ... My grandson died horrifically and (Washington) only got 15 years and he did not do the full 15. He didn’t even do five years.”

Madison County District Attorney Bubba Bramlett told WAPT-TV that the crime Washington was convicted of “is a 25% crime, meaning eligible for parole after serving 25% of the sentence.”

Frazier was sleeping inside a Toyota Camry in May 2017 when his mother left the car running in a Jackson parking lot. Authorities say Byron McBride, then 19, got out of a car to steal the Camry, leaving behind Washington and then-17-year-old Dwan Wakefield. Police say McBride later shot Frazier, abandoning the car behind a building off Interstate 55 in Madison County. The child was still in the backseat.

McBride pleaded guilty to capital murder and was sentenced to life in prison. Wakefield was convicted of accessory after the fact to murder, kidnapping and motor vehicle theft and was sentenced to 35 years in prison.

The parole board said Washington is required, among other things, to be on electronic monitoring for a year. He also must report monthly, undergo random drug testing, adhere to a midnight curfew and have no affiliation with convicted felons. His state supervision ends Dec. 21, 2028, followed by five years of probation.

“Parole is a privilege that the Mississippi State Parole Board does not give lightly,” Board Chairman Jeffery Belk said. “Should he violate the conditions of his parole, he will be returned to prison.”

In the early hours of Oct. 18, 2021, between 4:30 a.m. and 5 a.m, a fellow inmate repeatedly hit Michael Richardson in the head as another stomped on his head several times in a section of the Hinds County Detention Center in Raymond, Miss., where the doors don’t lock. As they dragged the 41-year-old across the mezzanine, Richardson moved slightly but shortly afterward stopped moving altogether.

His attackers then pulled him back, put him in a sitting position and laid him on a mat where he remained motionless for the next eight hours before jail staff discovered his body.

Jackson police had arrested Michael Richardson on Oct. 9, 2021, according to court documents, at Jackson’s Regency Hotel for having a firearm as a convicted felon. The early felony conviction was for a September 2004 armed robbery, for which he had served 15 years. On Oct. 11, the Jackson Municipal Court placed ordered bail of $100,000 at his initial court appearance, and he was locked inside the detention center for just a week until his murder.

Malik Richardson, 22, is still reeling from the loss of his father, Michael. “If I’m going to be totally honest, a part of me died when I found that my father was no longer alive; he is the person in which I was able to find my identity,” he said. He was reading a 500-word prepared speech he had typed on his phone on Wednesday, Jan. 26, 2022, as this reporter and family attorney Charles Mullins listened to him at his firm’s downtown Jackon office.

“He understood me without me having to explain myself,” Richardson added as he continued to reminisce.

Richardson left prison precisely three years before his death after serving 15 years for the armed-robbery charges.

“Oct. 18, 2018, was one of the best days of my life,” Malik said as he continued reading. “It was the day that my father was released from prison. It was also the day that held nothing but positive memories for me until Oct. 18, 2021. On Oct. 18, 2021, I lost more than a father, I lost my best friend and my role model.”

Video: How Michael Richardson Died

The Hinds County Detention Center has been under a federal consent decree since 2016.

Elizabeth E. Simpson, the federal court appointee tasked with monitoring the consent decree, reviewed the video footage of how Michael Richardson died and wrote to the court about it on Oct. 28, 2021, identifying this incident as the latest in a series of deaths at the jail that year.

Jail staff did not find Michael Richardson until hours later at 1:45 p.m., “despite the fact that breakfast and lunch (were) served and wellbeing checks were supposedly being made,” Simpson wrote.

Writing to the court 10 days after his death, Simpson blamed that incident and others recorded in the year on a lack of supervision and other problems at the jail.

“[T]he information that is available points out the ongoing problems and practices that have been raised repeatedly by the Monitoring Team are contrary to the Settlement Agreement and present life-threatening safety issues,” she wrote.

“This was on HU A-4 where the doors don’t lock, and there is minimal staff supervision,” she indicated. “As has been reported, sometimes there is only an officer in the control room with no officers assigned to the housing units.”

Sanctioning Errant Jail Officers

Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones informed the Mississippi Free Press over the phone on Jan. 26, 2022, that his agency had fired two jail officers earlier this year and another faces “possible disciplinary action” based on an administrative investigation into Michael Richardson’s death.

“There were several policies that had been violated,” he said. “The death is still under investigation from my understanding with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.”

“I haven’t gotten a report back from them or any findings about the criminal investigation that they were conducting about his death,” he added.

‘These Deaths Raise Concerns’

After six deaths in 2021, court-appointed monitor Simpson had seen enough and petitioned the court last October to take steps to prevent another.

“These deaths raise concerns that have been consistently raised in prior monitoring reports,” she wrote. “The Monitoring Team respectfully recommends that the Court set a status conference/hearing to address immediate measures that need to be taken to address the concerns raised above and prevent the future loss of life.”

On Nov. 23, 2021, one month later, U.S. Judge Carlton W. Reeves of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District sent a show-cause order. In it, he warned Hinds County that unless it could persuade him differently, he would place the jail under receivership, taking it from the county’s jurisdiction.

The County responded in December 2021, saying it has been doing all in its power to resolve the numerous issues.

Judge Reeves convened a telephone hearing on Dec. 21 to consider the scheduling of the show-cause proceeding and set a deadline of Jan. 4, 2022, for the parties to declare their agreement on how things will move.

The judge subsequently signed a scheduling order dated Jan. 10. “In its Order to Show Cause, the Court promised a hearing on whether a receivership should be created to operate RDC,” Reeves wrote.

He invited the parties to find as much agreement as possible “on the facts, the law, and the proper remedy this case warrants.” If that did not yield a positive result, he planned to proceed with an in-person evidentiary hearing for this week for two days and oral arguments for tomorrow—Friday, Jan. 28.

“Proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, exhibit lists, and witness lists are due by close of business on January 19,” he indicated. By that deadline, he asked each side to submit names and CVs of two to three potential receivers and stated at the time that he planned to rule on the case in February.

But, A Change of Plans

Judge Reeves later postponed the late-January proceedings to February after lawyers for Hinds County filed an emergency motion for an extension on Jan. 14, 2022, because one of them, Nicholas Morisani, had contracted COVID-19. Hinds County also told the court that it planned to ask for the termination of the consent decree.

“Defendants are also in the process of drafting a motion to terminate or modify the parties’ July 2016 consent decree pursuant to the Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA),” the lawyers wrote.

They contended that the PLRA requires the parties and the court to consider whether the decree goes beyond what is needed to address the alleged violations and whether it is restricted and the least invasive approach. They said that the motion necessitates a 30-day stay and possibly 60 days on proceeding after filing the said motion.

The court held another hearing four days later and decided to grant the emergency motion.

“The evidentiary hearing is reset for the week of February 14, 2022,” Reeves wrote on Jan. 18, 2022. “Proposed findings of fact and conclusions of law, exhibit lists, witness lists, and proposed receivers are due by close of business on February 9.”

“The County’s motion to terminate shall be filed by 1:00 PM on January 21,” he added. “The United States response is due January 27, and the reply is due January 31.”

On Jan. 21, Hinds County filed the motion to terminate or modify the consent decree, where it argued that it has complied with the January 2020 stipulated order.

“The Prison Litigation Reform Act (PLRA) provides several avenues for terminating or modifying prospective relief, like consent decrees,” the motion explained. “In light of those statutorily-prescribed provisions, the County files the instant motion to terminate or, alternatively, modify the consent decree.”

“Accordingly, because the consent decree’s policies and provisions exceed the constitutional minimum necessary to provide the County’s inmates with basic sustenance, and the conditions of the County’s facilities do not violate the inmates’ basic constitutional rights, the consent decree must be terminated or, alternatively, modified pursuant to 18 U.S.C. § 3626(b) of the PLRA,” they argued.

Their argument said that the jail is in better condition than when they agreed to the consent decree.

“Fast-forward to October 2021, the county’s compliance with the consent decree paints a different picture,” they wrote. “The monitoring team found the County in either sustained compliance or partial compliance with nearly seventy-percent (70%) of the consent decree’s policies and provisions; a far cry from the monitoring team’s first visit and a clear reflection of the positive, upward trend of operations at the RDC.”

While Sheriff Jones told the Mississippi Free Press that he will continue to engage with federal monitors and the board of supervisors to address concerns presented by the consent decree and respond to the show-cause order, Hinds County lawyers pointed out in the motion to terminate or modify the consent decree that zero suicides have occurred in its facilities since August 2021.

“And while one (1) death (of Richardson) resulted from violence, (Jail Administrator) Major (Kathryn) Bryan personally investigated the incident and authored the after-action report,” the County wrote.

Stabbed Through His Ears

But for the family of Richardson, it was one death too many. Now attorney Charles Mullins of Coxwell and Associates, representing the family, is preparing to take Hinds County to court for his death and seek a monetary settlement.

That would not be his first rodeo litigating cases of deaths at the center.

“I first started back in 2014,” Mullins told the Mississippi Free Press in a Jan. 26 phone interview. “There was a riot at the Hinds County jail, and I represented one family of a gentleman who was killed and two other inmates who were beaten up in the riot.”

Damion and Derrick Lewis suffered injuries at the riot. At the time, Derrick had been a pre-trial detainee for nearly six years and Damion for over two years. That means they had served a combined eight years in a jail with poor security and conditions, although they had not been convicted of alleged crimes that put them there.

“Both plaintiffs nearly lost their lives as a result of their injuries, and the long-term physical damages remain undetermined at this early stage in their recovery, as well as to what level of recovery can reasonably be expected,” Mullins wrote in the brief.

Markuieze’ Che’Rod Bennett, however, died in the riot. “The mob of inmates beat him with various blind and sharp objects, including broken broom and mop handles, one of which was used to stab decedent through his ears to his brain, leading to his death,” the complaint said. “Decedent died at the Hinds County Detention Center as a result of his injuries sustained in the riot of March 31, 2014.”

Mullins said that Merritt Philips “was arrested for a DUI” (on June 9, 2014). “(H)e was a diabetic, and they failed to give him this insulin, and as a result, he died (on June 21, 2014).“

In September 2018, Landon Veal, 35, sustained injuries after several inmates beat him up and left him unconscious. Mullins blamed an “out of control” jail for the incident in his brief.

A few months after that, on Dec. 6, 2018, several inmates at the jail assaulted Dominique Griffin. The county settled both cases in December 2020, Mullins said.

“And it’s essentially because the jail was being operated as an unconstitutional condition of confinement,” Charles Mullins told the Mississippi Free Press. “Essentially the jail is so understaffed, the staff they do have are not trained. There’s no supervision, and they have a policy essentially of failing to protect inmates.”

Because the jail cells in the unit where Michael Richardson was kept do not lock, “the inmates are just free to roam around unsupervised,” Mullins added. “And it’s something that when I was talking to Malik, Mike’s son, I said, ‘You know, it’s just a wonder that we don’t have more assaults and more deaths at the jail.”

Malik Richardson told the Mississippi Free Press that he is still processing his father’s death.

“My father was not perfect by any means, and neither was his past, but he did not deserve what happened to him,” he said.

This story originally appeared in the Mississippi Free Press. The Mississippi Free Press is a statewide nonprofit news outlet that provides most of its stories free to other media outlets to republish. Write shaye@mississippifreepress.org for information.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi Supreme Court is ordering a trial court judge to determine if a Mississippi death row inmate truly wants to request an execution date and if the inmate is mentally competent to waive his appeals in the case.

The state's high court on Friday ordered that Blayde Nathaniel Grayson, 46, be taken to George County Circuit Court and put under oath to say whether he wishes to go forward with his request for the state to schedule his execution.

Grayson, who has been on death row more than 24 years, said in a handwritten letter to the state Supreme Court in early December: “I ask to see that my execution should be carried out forthwith.” Grayson's attorney, David Voisin, submitted a separate letter days later asking justices to disregard Grayson's request because Grayson still had an appeal pending in federal court.

Grayson had said in his letter that he wanted to end all of his appeals. He was convicted of capital murder in 1997 in the 1996 stabbing death of 78-year-old Minnie Smith during a burglary of her home in south Mississippi’s George County.

The state Supreme Court did not set a deadline for the new hearing in George County Circuit Court.

Mississippi on Nov. 17 carried out its first execution in nine years, giving a lethal injection to David Neal Cox, who surrendered all appeals and described himself as “worthy of death.” A jury in north Mississippi sentenced Cox to death after he pleaded guilty to killing his estranged wife and sexually assaulting his stepdaughter in front of her dying mother.

One of the current state Supreme Court justices, David Ishee, represented Grayson during his trial and during some appeals of the conviction.

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Law officers, community leaders, and residents are meeting to discuss ways of curbing Jackson’s soaring crime rate.

The FBI and U.S. Attorney’s office are teaming up to assist law enforcement to help combat crime, but they say the effort can’t be done alone, WAPT-TV reported.

At a Thursday meeting, Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones said that everyone in the community must work together to stem violent crime in the state capital city.

“We need all communities, individuals, businesses, churches, whatever stakeholders to be on board to help us with the situation that we’re currently facing right now,” Jones said.

One topic of discussion at Thursday'(s meeting was the partnership between federal authorities and local officials known as V-GRIP. It’s an acronym for the Violent Fund Reduction and Interdiction Program.

“As everyone has said tonight, if we come together, we stand a much better chance at reducing the crime rate than the ways things are and have been in the last two years,” said Darren LaMarca, U.S. Attorney.

Jackson’s record 2021 murder rate was about the same as that of Atlanta — a city three times as large, WAPT reported.

The Jackson Police Department investigated 156 homicides last year. The Atlanta Police Department reported 158 homicides.

The city's homicide rate was a topic in Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves' recent State of the State address.

“In Jackson, Mississippi, even though Atlanta is more than triple our size, we saw roughly the same number of murders in that year. The rate of killings in Jackson is three times worse than Chicago. It is worse than St. Louis, Baltimore, and Memphis,” Reeves said.

“The violence scars families for generations," Reeves added. “Our community is torn apart by senseless acts of mayhem. If our state is to thrive, we need a capital city of order. Governed by laws, not abandoned to daily violence. We all have an interest in stopping this deadly cycle.”