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Federal oversight of local law enforcement is now in doubt, even as a federal court moves one step closer toward a takeover of the Hinds County jail. We bring you those updates along with new developments from the state’s Legislature and highest courts.
– Caleb Bedillion and Daja E. Henry
Hinds County jail still unsafe, as receivership dispute continues
After many delays, a federal court may be close to finalizing a takeover of the Hinds County jail.
The Raymond Detention Center has been under a consent decree since the U.S. Department of Justice sued the county in 2016 for the jail’s poor conditions, including rampant violence, gang control and severe understaffing. The federal district court twice held the county in contempt for failing to make the necessary changes to end unconstitutional confinement.
In 2022, U.S. District Court Judge Carlton W. Reeves ordered a receivership, an arrangement in which an independent monitor takes control of the jail’s operations. He appointed Wendell France Sr., a former Baltimore jail warden. France never got to start, as the receivership has been tangled up in a legal dispute over the scope of the receiver’s power.
While the legal battle lingered, the violence continued. Seven people died from unspecified causes in the jail in 2021, according to court documents. From June 2022 through September 2022, there were 52 reported assaults, according to the court-appointed monitors. In one instance, four people escaped via the roof in 2023.
Monitors appointed by the court have not visited the jail in at least two years, according to the court. The last monitoring report was filed in December 2022.
An appeals court ruling last year allowed Reeves to move forward with a narrowed version of his receivership plan. In a virtual hearing last week, Reeves gave both parties in the lawsuit a week to submit proposals for what a receivership might look like with a reduced scope.
At Friday’s status hearing, Reeves referenced multiple lawsuits in which people detained in the Raymond Detention Center have claimed they were assaulted inside the facility.
DOJ changes could halt federal investigations of local police
A Trump administration freeze on the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division has cast doubt on the future of several federal investigations into local law enforcement in Mississippi.
The Justice Department under the Biden administration announced last year it would begin an investigation into Rankin County and its Sheriff’s Department. This followed the sentencing of the so-called Goon Squad, a group of sheriff’s deputies and a Richland police officer who tortured two Black men and shot one in the mouth. A former deputy now serving time for his crimes recently detailed the abuses carried out by the Goon Squad to Mississippi Today.
The freeze, however, ordered the DOJ not to file any new cases or settlements.
Some recent court agreements between local police and federal authorities may also be in peril, such as in Louisville, Kentucky. In Mississippi, local activist Angela English told Mississippi Public Broadcasting the NAACP will continue fighting for accountability in Rankin County.
The DOJ also recently announced the findings of a similar investigation into police misconduct, in Lexington, in Holmes County.
The investigation into the city of 1,200 and its small police force culminated last year with a damning report that detailed racial discrimination, sexual harassment and unfair usage of monetary bonds. The DOJ report stated that the city and its police department “cooperated with our investigation and took action when we raised concerns about wealth-based detention.” No further corrective action has been announced, and a spokesperson for the city declined to comment.
The DOJ and the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi’s office did not respond to requests for comment.
Proposed meth legislation prompts controversy
Republican state Sen. Daniel Sparks introduced a bill this year to make low-level methamphetamine possession a misdemeanor rather than a felony. The bill also increased penalties for higher levels of meth possession. The legislation moved through the state Senate without much notice until Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones, a Democrat, objected to it.
The bill died this week in the state House.
Sparks, a lawyer who serves as a part-time public defender in Tishomingo County, responded at length to the controversy, writing a column and releasing a video.
Sparks said that because of testing delays at the state crime lab, even low-level drug cases can sit for months or even years before an indictment. He said making some of these meth charges misdemeanors will move cases through the courts faster and allow judges to get qualifying defendants into drug treatment programs earlier.
Sheriff Kevin Crook, of northeast Mississippi’s Monroe County, said meth cases are the majority of drug crimes his rural department faces. He has prioritized efforts to divert drug abusers into treatment and believes that approach has broad support among law enforcement officials.
“I think everybody understands there needs to be some type of change to get that into the mental health realm,” Crook said of meth laws. “But I don’t know that we all agree whether it should be made a misdemeanor.”
Recent Supreme Court rulings hint at direction of new judges
Last year’s judicial elections brought two new justices to the Mississippi Supreme Court and one new judge to the Mississippi Court of Appeals.
Recent opinions show one new member of each court staking out expansive positions on certain civil liberty issues.
In a case before the state Supreme Court, a man from Forrest County asked justices to toss his convictions of child exploitation and lustful touching of a child, saying his cellphone was illegally searched. The court denied his request and applied the “private search” doctrine, finding that police were entitled to break into the man’s phone without a warrant after the man’s girlfriend supplied police with the passcode to the device and to an encrypted vault within the phone.
Justice Jenifer Branning, who defeated incumbent Jim Kitchens last year, joined the court’s 6-2 majority.
However, David Sullivan, the second newly elected justice, joined a dissent in the case, authored by Justice David Ishee.
The dissent argued that the police officer’s search of a cell phone in this case exceeded the private search doctrine, which allows police to conduct a search without a warrant if the search was previously conducted by a private citizen.
The dissent also argued that cell phones contain so much private information that Fourth Amendment protections against unreasonable searches must be zealously applied to them.
“I do recognize, and gladly so, that the consequence of my proposed holding would be that agents of the government cannot ever unlock and search an individual’s passcode-protected cell phone without a warrant,” wrote Ishee, joined by Sullivan.
In another case, the Court of Appeals upheld a conviction despite claims of unconstitutional delays in the trial.
Judge David McCarty, who joined the bench in 2019, has long been critical of the state’s notorious trial delays. He concurred with the unanimous result, saying that he had no choice under binding legal precedent. But joined by the court’s newest member, Judge Amy Lassiter St. Pé, he wrote a blistering concurrence calling for the precedent to be overturned.
“The extreme delay presents us with the opportunity to reassess the unworkable nature of the judicially crafted speedy trial analysis and, instead, return to a faithful observation of constitution and statute,” wrote McCarty, joined by Pé and Judge Deborah McDonald.
Follow criminal justice bills in the Legislature
Visit our legislative tracker to see how bills proposed by Mississippi lawmakers might impact the courts, criminal law and civil rights during this year’s legislative session. The tracker will be updated weekly as bills move through the state House and state Senate. Watch reporter Caleb Bedillion discuss the tracker on WJTV.
Also in the news
Anti-homelessness bills advance. Following a U.S. Supreme Court decision that allows cities to ban sleeping or camping on public property, several bills in Mississippi have moved forward to prohibit public camping and panhandling without a permit. Mississippi Today
Hinds County deputy killed. Hinds County Deputy Martin Shields Jr. was shot and killed while responding to a domestic violence call in Terry. Eric Brown, who was accused of shooting Shields, was later found dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound. WAPT
Mississippi private prison to hold more ICE detainees. CoreCivic, the private prison company that runs Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, announced that it would soon have space for 250 more detainees from U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The company also runs Adams County Correctional Center, which holds over 2,000 ICE detainees on average each day. Mississippi Today
Legislature debates corrections appropriations bill. The Mississippi Senate passed a bill appropriating the Department of Corrections more than $450 million. This is about $12 million less than the previous year. The House passed the bill with an amendment to bring the sum to about $468 million. The two chambers must now reach an agreement about the budget. Magnolia Tribune
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