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Controversial New Court Opens in Jackson

The Capitol Complex Improvement District Court is up and running.

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.

All eyes are on a new, controversial court system in Jackson. Plus, an 80-year-old Mississippi man sentenced to life under outdated drug laws is among about 2,500 incarcerated people who received clemency from President Joe Biden during his last days in office. We also recap some proposed legislation that could affect incarcerated people.

– Caleb Bedillion and Daja E. Henry

Controversial Capitol Complex court opens in Jackson

Jackson’s new state-appointed court system is up and running.

Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael K. Randolph swore in three judges to the controversial Capitol Complex Improvement District Court on Jan. 24. Newly appointed Judge Stanley Alexander held the first court session on Jan. 27.

Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael K. Randoph, left, swears in Stanley Alexander, center, to the Capitol Complex Improvement District Court on Jan. 24.

Mississippi Supreme Court Chief Justice Michael K. Randoph, left, swears in Stanley Alexander, center, to the Capitol Complex Improvement District Court on Jan. 24.

Alexander presided over the initial appearances of two defendants, one charged with a misdemeanor and one with a felony, according to Mississippi Today and court monitor reports.

Alexander and Judge James Holland were appointed to serve full-time. Also sworn in was Judge Christopher Collins, who will serve part-time, reviewing warrants after hours and other judicial tasks.

Alexander, a career prosecutor, recently served as a senior assistant district attorney in the state’s fourth judicial district, which encompasses Leflore, Sunflower and Washington counties. He ran unsuccessfully for Hinds County District Attorney in 2015 and 2019. He is a lifelong resident of Jackson.

“I look forward to serving the people of Jackson, and administering justice according to the law, and to temper justice with mercy,” Alexander told The Marshall Project - Jackson.

Holland has worked as a defense attorney in state and federal courts for over 40 years. He has been recognized as a fellow of the Mississippi Bar Foundation and a Life Fellow of the American Bar Association.

Collins has held multiple judicial positions since 1999, including in circuit and municipal courts, as well as the Supreme Court of the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians.

The Capitol Complex Improvement District Court will handle initial appearances for felony arrests by the Capitol Police and rule on misdemeanor charges and traffic citations.

The court was created through House Bill 1020, a controversial measure that garnered national attention and became the subject of legal challenges in state and federal courts from the NAACP, the ACLU and the U.S. Department of Justice. The lawsuits argued that the bill was unconstitutional, stripping voters in the majority-Black city of Jackson of the power to elect their judges. Instead, it allowed judges to be appointed by the chief justice of the state Supreme Court, who is White.

A state Supreme Court decision in September 2023 struck down part of the bill but upheld the creation of a separate court system. The NAACP dropped its federal lawsuit in December 2024.

U.S. Supreme Court refuses to hear lawsuit over Mississippi disenfranchisement law

Late last month, the U.S. Supreme Court shut down litigation aiming to soften Mississippi’s felony disenfranchisement laws.

Mississippi’s state constitution imposes a lifetime voting ban on people convicted for a range of both violent and nonviolent felonies, including shoplifting and writing a bad check. Most states take away someone’s right to vote while in prison but give it back sometime after release.

In a lawsuit, several disenfranchised Mississippians argued that lifetime disenfranchisement for nonviolent crimes violates the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit agreed with the plaintiffs and in 2023 ruled the law unconstitutional. However, in July 2024, the full 5th Circuit overturned the panel’s ruling and said Mississippi’s law could stay on the books.

The plaintiffs appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, but in January the court declined to take the case. That means the 5th Circuit ruling — and with it, Mississippi’s disenfranchisement law — remains in place.

This was the second lawsuit over the issue in recent years. Another group of plaintiffs had previously argued that Mississippi’s disenfranchisement law is unconstitutional because it disproportionately takes away voting rights from the state’s Black residents. That litigation was also unsuccessful.

That means legislative reform efforts now take center stage in the effort to soften one of the harshest disenfranchisement laws in the country. Last year, the Mississippi House of Representatives voted on a bipartisan basis to automatically restore voting rights to people convicted of some nonviolent crimes, but the state Senate did not take up the bill.

Several bills to reform the disenfranchisement system have again been filed in this year’s legislative session.

Biden frees Mississippi man serving life sentence for drug crimes

In 2018, Congress removed mandatory lifetime sentencing requirements for some drug crimes.

That change didn’t help Willie Hampton, a man from the Mississippi Delta’s Tunica County. Hampton was sentenced in 2001 to a life term for possessing crack cocaine, a sentence handed down under the older and harsher drug laws that aren’t on the books anymore.

However, during his final days in office, President Joe Biden commuted the sentences of almost 2,500 people still serving what Biden called “disproportionately long sentences” under outdated sentencing laws. Hampton was among the nearly 2,500.

Hampton, 80, was released Jan. 27 from a federal prison in Alabama, according to records from the U.S. Bureau of Prisons, as well as Hampton’s lawyer, Federal Public Defender Merrill Nordstrom.

Nordstrom had prepared a clemency application on Hampton’s behalf that highlighted his military service during the Vietnam War. He received a Purple Heart after a truck he was driving hit a land mine.

“That was so important to me, to humanize him and show that he’s more than a statistic,” said Nordstrom.

Because Hampton had several prior drug convictions, the sentencing judge was required by law in 2001 to hand down a lifetime sentence, Nordstrom said. One of those convictions was in 1979 for marijuana possession. That 1979 crime would not have triggered a sentencing enhancement under the 2018 reforms. Hampton would have instead faced a mandatory minimum of 15 years.

Hampton also saw his sentence impacted by the strong disparity between punishments for possessing crack cocaine and powder cocaine. This sentencing disparity has produced a racial disparity, with Black people being more likely to be charged with crack cocaine crimes and to serve longer sentences. Congress has narrowed but not eliminated the sentencing disparity between possession of the two drugs.

Merrick Garland, who served as attorney general under the Biden administration, ordered federal prosecutors to charge crack offenses in a similar way to powder cocaine offenses.

During his single term in office, Biden issued the most individual commutations and pardons of any U.S. president, increasingly using this power to advance criminal justice policy aims in the final month of his term in office. In December, he commuted 37 of 40 federal death sentences.

Also in the news

Capitol Police officers indicted. Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office has indicted two Capitol Police officers — one current and one former — in a 2022 police shooting that injured a Jackson woman. Prosecutions of police officers have been rare from Fitch’s office. NBC News

Municipal judge permanently removed. The Mississippi Supreme Court ruled to permanently remove former Municipal Court Judge Carlos Moore from the bench and fine him $3,000 for social media posts and public comments he made about racial disparities in the legal system. In an 8-1 decision, Justice Leslie King was the sole dissenting voice. WLBT

Legislator proposes protective gear for incarcerated workers. Mississippi state Rep. Justis Gibbs (D-Jackson) proposed a bill requiring the Department of Corrections to provide protective gear such as face masks and gloves for incarcerated people working with raw chemicals. This comes a year after Susie Balfour, who was formerly incarcerated at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility and now has terminal cancer, sued the department’s health care providers. Balfour alleged that she and other incarcerated people cleaned the prison with chemicals known to cause cancer without protective equipment, and that she received inadequate medical care. Mississippi Today

Did someone you care about get injured or die in a Mississippi prison?

The Marshall Project wants to know about deaths, injuries or mistreatment that happened in state prisons to incarcerated people or prison employees. If there’s an incident you think we should investigate, please contact us through this form or email jackson@themarshallproject.org. All tips are confidential.

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