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? Sign up for future newsletters.
In this edition, we highlight three Marshall Project stories: our investigations into jail conditions in Hinds County, indicted District Attorney Jody Owens’ flouting of campaign finance laws, and how the disarray at the Department of Justice could jeopardize an investigation into the 1970 police killing of two at what is now Jackson State University.
– Caleb Bedillion and Daja E. Henry
Civil rights investigations at risk under Trump
In 1970, at age 19, Dale Gibbs became a widowed mother of two. Police unleashed more than 400 bullets in 28 seconds on the campus of Jackson State College, killing her husband, 21-year-old Phillip Gibbs, and James Earl Green, a high school student. No one was ever prosecuted for the killings. Fifty-five years later, justice may once again evade the Gibbs and Green families, as disarray at the Department of Justice threatens a recently opened investigation into the shooting.
Gibbs and Green are two of 56 people murdered in Mississippi from 1955 through 1977 in killings that were suspected to be racially motivated. The Justice Department recently opened an investigation into the Jackson State killings following the passage of the 2008 Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.
However, sweeping changes at the department have led to the shrinking and redefinition of its Civil Rights Division, which is now leading the investigation. Read more about changes at the DOJ, the 1970 Jackson State shooting, and search the list of racially motivated killings investigated across the country in one of our latest stories.
Hinds County district attorney fails to file campaign finance disclosures
Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens was required by law to file paperwork in January showing how much money his campaign committee received in contributions and how much it spent throughout 2024.
Owens didn’t file the paperwork then, and he still hasn’t done it, prompting a $500 fine for ignoring state transparency laws, The Marshall Project - Jackson reported last month.
Without the public report, his campaign committee’s income sources and spending remain secret as Owens faces federal bribery and corruption charges. Federal prosecutors claim that Owens, the county’s top prosecutor, paid bribes to local officials in Jackson to influence a real estate development deal and disguised them as campaign contributions. He allegedly said that elected officials “finance their personal lives through their campaign accounts” and that bribes could be “cleaned” by running them through these accounts.
Owens, a second-term Democrat, has pleaded not guilty.
There’s a law on the books that prohibits elected officials from drawing a public salary while defying campaign finance reporting requirements, but it has not been enforced in Owens’ case, and may never have been enforced at all. Mississippi has notoriously lax enforcement of its campaign finance laws, and some statewide officials have called for new laws to clamp down on violators.
Last month, Owens told The Marshall Project he would file the report, but as of Wednesday, June 4, he still hasn’t done so.
Detained in the dark
Hinds County’s Raymond Detention Center can be a dark place. Literally.
Along with the numerous civil rights violations documented over more than a decade of litigation — gang assaults, dysfunctional locks, excessive force and a steady flow of contraband — people incarcerated there have been routinely denied access to fresh air and sunlight. Metal grates cover the small windows, and understaffing sometimes cancels recreation time.
Semiko Crump recalls being locked up for hours in what she termed “the hole.” “It’s no lights, absolutely no lights in this place.”
The Marshall Project’s local news teams investigated the lack of access to fresh air and sunlight in local jails in Mississippi, Ohio and Missouri. Across the country, people in jails are kept from seeing the sun and feeling the breeze, a violation of their civil rights, courts have ruled. Issues like poor building design, court case backlogs and understaffing keep people locked up in dark spaces for longer periods of time. This denial of access to sunlight and fresh air can make them sicker and place their lives in greater danger. Read our latest local investigation here.
Also in the news
ACLU keeping an eye on Mississippi. Amid the Justice Department’s decisions to halt civil rights investigations, the American Civil Liberties Union has launched its own in Rankin County as part of its Seven States Safety Campaign. Across seven states, including in Lexington, Mississippi, Justice Department investigations revealed patterns of police abuse, but no consent decrees or other oversight measures had been enacted. The advocacy group plans to file public records requests across these states for government documents, including use-of-force reports, records of Taser use and complaints of racial discrimination and profiling. Mississippi Today
Another appeal from death row. With a June 25 execution date looming, 79-year-old Richard Jordan is trying to stop his killing. His attorneys have asked the Mississippi Supreme Court to rehear its denial of his petition for post-conviction relief and the order setting his execution date. Jordan is the oldest and longest-serving person on Mississippi’s death row. Mississippi Today
Mississippi father among ICE detainees. Kasper Eriksen, a resident of Sturgis, Mississippi, and father of four, is one of about 48,000 people in immigration detention. Eriksen, a Dane who had been in Mississippi since 2009, failed to submit a form needed for his citizenship 10 years ago. Eriksen said he was never notified. He was detained during what was supposed to be a routine immigration hearing in April and now awaits deportation. Mississippi Free Press
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