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In this edition, an update on the conditions inside Hinds County’s Raymond Detention Center. Plus, Mississippi takes a step toward public defense reform and expanding voting rights for the formerly incarcerated.
– Caleb Bedillion and Daja E. Henry
Raymond Detention Center still plagued with violence, understaffing
Federal court-appointed monitors visited Hinds County’s Raymond Detention Center in May for the first time in nearly three years. They found a deteriorating jail that has, for at least a decade, violated the constitutional rights of people held there.
In April, 37-year-old Anthony Johnson was assaulted and killed inside the jail. Johnson’s death was ruled a homicide, caused by multiple blunt force trauma, according to Hinds County Coroner Jeramiah Howard. Three people incarcerated at the facility have been charged in connection with his death. None of the cameras on the unit were working at the time of his death, according to the monitors’ report.
Violence continues to plague the facility, and there is nowhere near enough staff to quell it. Some people incarcerated there languish in housing units with mice, standing water, broken showers, busted out windows, no lights, and no air conditioning, according to the monitors’ report.
Thirty-four assaults were reported in the first three months of this year. The report describes a victim with “an ear hanging loose,” another “bleeding profusely from the mouth,” and a third with a stab wound to the head.
The facility has 71 detention officers, fewer than a third of the number needed to safely operate it, the monitors reported. According to a 2021 staffing analysis, the jail would require about 246 employees to operate its two detention pods.
Sheriff Tyree Jones disputed the monitors’ count of officers, he told WLBT, but conceded that staffing is a major issue across the country.
“I think it’s unfair to target us,” he told The Marshall Project - Jackson earlier this year.
The monitors’ report also noted two more deaths this year. A 54-year-old man died on May 9. The coroner said he appeared to have died of natural causes.
The second death was noted in the jail’s criminal investigations log to have happened on Feb. 12. However, neither the coroner nor the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation has any record of a death on that date.
A federal judge has ordered the jail to be taken over by a court-appointed receiver, who is scheduled to gain full control of the facility on Oct. 1. Construction on a new jail is underway, with the first phase scheduled for completion next year.
Public defense reform inches forward in Mississippi
As we reported, Mississippi legislators agreed last month to spend nearly $700,000 to boost public defense resources in one of the state’s most rural court districts for at least a year. With the signature of Gov. Tate Reeves, this funding agreement will be the first of its kind in Mississippi. It comes as the Mississippi Supreme Court is requiring greater transparency from the local judges who largely manage the state’s patchwork public defense systems.
The state will fund new defense attorneys and support staff to aid poor defendants in the 5th Circuit Court District, which includes seven counties in the north-central region of the state.
One lawmaker who supported the spending measure called it a “way for us to start looking at a statewide public defender system.”
Most states have just such a system or have oversight mechanisms in place to ensure that local counties and courts adequately provide poor defendants with the Constitution’s guarantee of free legal counsel. Mississippi, however, has one of the nation’s most decentralized public defense systems, and those systems have largely operated without any kind of oversight. Legal experts and civil rights advocates have criticized these local defense systems as overburdened and ineffective.
State money, managed through a state office, will alleviate that problem in one of the state’s 23 circuit districts, for a time.
In the other districts, the Mississippi Supreme Court’s recent actions to enforce a rule that’s been on the books since 2017 will require public disclosure from judges of how they handle their constitutional obligations in this area.
“It’s only with that kind of transparency that we can hold people accountable,” said a civil rights lawyer in the state.
Expanding voting rights is still on the state House agenda
In this year’s legislative session, lawmakers did not restore voting rights to a single person disenfranchised following a felony conviction.
It’s a sign of how steep the hill is for many of the people who have lost their right to vote for life, sometimes for convictions such as shoplifting.
But despite deep skepticism from the Mississippi Senate toward reforming the state’s disenfranchisement laws, which are among the harshest in the nation, the leader of the Mississippi House continues to keep the issue on the policy agenda.
House Speaker Jason White, a Republican in his first term as speaker, recently announced plans to convene a series of committees tasked with fighting for his priorities ahead of next year’s legislative session.
Having already secured sweeping tax cut legislation, White is now most deeply invested in “school choice” policies. However, one of his committees will focus on expanding ballot access, including early voting laws and the restoration of voting rights to at least some of the people currently banned for life from voting.
Previous reporting by The Marshall Project - Jackson found that at least 55,000 people have lost their voting rights since 1994, many for low-level crimes such as writing a bad check. We also explained how the state’s confusing laws around voting eligibility work for people with felony convictions.
Also in the news
New U.S. Attorney nominees. President Donald J. Trump has nominated Baxter Kruger and Scott Leary to fill vacancies for U.S. attorneys in Mississippi’s Southern and Northern districts, respectively. They must be confirmed by the U.S. Senate. Mississippi Today
Longest-serving man on Mississippi’s death row executed. Mississippi executed 79-year-old Richard Gerald Jordan on June 25. He was sentenced to death in 1976. Jordan’s was the first execution since December 2022. The Associated Press
Lawmaker challenges poor health care in prisons. Republican Rep. Becky Currie of Brookhaven found that incarcerated people in Mississippi are suffering and dying from treatable diseases, such as hepatitis C, even as the state spends more money on prison health care. Currie, the chairwoman of the state House Corrections Committee, authored a bill during the 2025 legislative session that would require the state Department of Health to conduct a review of health care in Mississippi prisons. The bill did not become law. Mississippi Today
A Mississippi man in Louisiana immigration detention. Kerlin Moreno-Orellana, a 35-year-old father of four, was arrested by the Jackson Police Department on June 16 for illegally dumping trash, along with his boss, Christy Parker. Parker was released. Moreno-Orellana, however, was held on a detainer for ICE and now faces deportation for a misdemeanor offense that usually results in a fine. As of Wednesday, Moreno-Orellana was being held at the Jena/LaSalle Detention Facility in Louisiana. Mississippi Free Press
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