This is The Marshall Project - Jackson’s newsletter, a monthly digest of criminal justice news from around Mississippi gathered by our staff of local journalists. Want this delivered to your inbox? Subscribe to future newsletters.
Federal courts have been busy this last month with Mississippi cases and lawsuits. Consequential civil rights questions are on the line, including Fourth Amendment search protections, electronic privacy, Black voting power and access to the ballot for some people with felony convictions. Some of the cases could impact the nation.
Here are the cases we’ve been watching.
– Caleb Bedillion and Daja E. Henry, staff writers, The Marshall Project - Jackson
Mississippi case may upend how law enforcement agencies use cellphones to investigate crimes
A postal robbery in Mississippi’s DeSoto County could reshape the nation’s legal landscape for electronic privacy.
A three-judge panel of the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals found last month that geofence search warrants are unconstitutional. These warrants rely on the vast troves of data that many tech companies collect from cell phones.
The Fifth Circuit covers Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas.
With these warrants, a law enforcement agency selects a geographic boundary, typically around the site of a crime. Authorities then ask tech companies to look through their location data and identify all digital devices that entered the geofenced area during a designated time. Law enforcement can eventually request the identities of people connected to devices of interest.
In the 2018 DeSoto County robbery, law enforcement turned to a geofence warrant after failing to identify suspects through eyewitness interviews. Geofence warrants were also used by investigators probing the Jan. 6 riot at the U.S. Capitol.
Critics fear the expansive and intrusive nature of these warrants. The Fifth Circuit opinion calls the possibility of “permeating police surveillance” one of the most alarming features of geofence warrants. Defenders of these warrants say users must allow big tech companies like Alphabet, which owns Google, to track and log their location data. However, the Fifth Circuit noted that these opt-in procedures do not trump the Fourth Amendment’s search restrictions.
In July, though, another federal court, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals, ruled that geofence search requests from law enforcement do not rise to the level of a search under the Fourth Amendment. The Fourth Circuit covers the Carolinas, Maryland, Virginia and West Virginia.
Both the Fourth and Fifth Circuit court rulings are on hold, pending an appeal before the full bench of each appeals court. Contradictory rulings between the two appeals courts could prompt the U.S. Supreme Court to issue the final ruling.
Mississippi challenges voter outreach executive order
Mississippi is one of nine states in a Republican-led challenge to President Joe Biden’s 2021 executive order aimed at expanding access to the ballot. The order tells federal agencies to consider ways to give citizens more opportunities to register to vote and access reliable information about the voting process.
However, GOP-led states are fighting the order, describing it as a secretive attempt to tilt the scales of the 2024 election in the Democratic Party’s favor, and an encroachment on states’ rights. This latest lawsuit, filed in Kansas, accuses the Biden administration of overstepping its role, working with partisan groups, and hiding its efforts from the public.
“We fully support encouraging voter registration and promoting an engaged electorate,” said state Attorney General Lynn Fitch, in a joint press release with Gov. Tate Reeves and Secretary of State Michael Watson, all Republicans. “But putting the full weight of the Oval Office behind an effort first developed by partisan activist groups and then hiding the agency activities from public scrutiny goes too far.”
And even though Mississippi law allows some people who are incarcerated to vote, Watson has singled out the federal Bureau of Prisons for criticism, suggesting that the agency might mislead Mississippians in their custody about their ability to vote in the state. Mississippi lawmakers this year added an explicit absentee voting excuse for eligible people in jail or prison.
This lawsuit comes after multiple GOP-led challenges to the executive order with similar claims.
In 2022, Louisiana’s then-attorney general, now Gov. Jeff Landry, a Republican, wrote a letter challenging the order, joined by 12 other attorneys general, including Mississippi’s Fitch. Earlier this year, a group of Republican Pennsylvania lawmakers filed a federal lawsuit, which has since been dismissed. And in July, the America First Policy Institute, a think tank started by former members of the Trump administration, filed a lawsuit in Texas challenging the order as well.
Disenfranchised Black voters become key point as state Supreme Court districts trial ends
Mississippi’s harsh felony disenfranchisement laws could be making it harder for Black voters to elect a state Supreme Court justice of their choosing, civil rights lawyers suggested last month during final arguments in a federal trial that could change the racial makeup of Mississippi’s three Supreme Court voting districts.
Most states give voting rights back to people at some point after a felony sentence is completed. But not Mississippi, where people convicted of some felonies lose their voting rights for life. One expert found that from 1994 through 2017, about 50,000 people lost their voting rights for life. Disenfranchised residents cannot vote in local, state or federal elections.
Most of those disenfranchised voters are Black, the study found. And that could have consequences for Black electoral power in Mississippi’s central Supreme Court voting district, which includes the capital city of Jackson and parts of the Mississippi Delta.
The 2020 census showed that Black people made up 49% of the voting-age population in the district. Plaintiffs in the federal suit say that isn’t enough to ensure that Black voters can consistently elect a candidate of their choosing. Their lawyers noted that since 1987, only four Black justices have been elected to the state’s nine-member high court, and all were initially appointed to the bench by governors to fill vacancies. No Black non-incumbent candidate has run for a seat on the court and won. Plaintiffs in the federal lawsuit say that a federal court should order a new district map to be drawn to include more Black voters.
In its defense, the state suggested that under an alternative counting method it proposed, Black voters are already a majority of the central Supreme Court district and that the district is well-balanced, with a history of White and Black justices winning elections.
The plaintiffs countered that the state’s alternative counting method is misleading, in part, because Mississippi’s felony voting ban disproportionately affects Black people.
Experts who have studied felony disenfranchisement say the case underscores the potentially significant ramifications for communities of color when states choose to strip voting rights away based on felony convictions. Federal District Judge Sharion Aycock is expected to issue her ruling in the coming months.
Meet us Sept. 26 in Jackson at ‘Your Right to Vote’ forum
Come join us on Thursday, Sept. 26, 2024, at 6:00 p.m. at the Two Mississippi Museums to learn about your right to vote in Mississippi. This event, co-sponsored by the Alluvial Collective and the Alpha Epsilon Lambda chapter of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc., aims to educate and empower individuals on the importance of voting and the impact it has on our communities as well as about common misunderstandings. In Mississippi, for example, most people convicted of a felony keep their right to vote, including in the upcoming presidential contest.
During the event, you will have the opportunity to engage in a discussion about the voting process in Mississippi, including details on who is eligible to vote, how to register and how incarcerated people can cast ballots from the state’s prisons and jails. This event is for everyone, whether you are a first-time voter or a seasoned voter. We look forward to seeing you there!
The event is free. Register now through Eventbrite.
