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, an update on our investigation into homicides in Mississippi prisons, poor conditions at Hinds County’s Raymond Detention Center, and a step toward reforming public defense in the state. - Daja E. Henry and Caleb Bedillion
MDOC to review dozens of prison deaths
Commissioner Burl Cain said the Mississippi Department of Corrections’ Criminal Investigations Division will review all homicides within the state’s prison system since 2015. In addition, the department will review nearly two dozen deaths deemed to have been due to undetermined causes.
Cain’s comments come after our reporting on 43 deaths ruled as homicides over the past decade in Mississippi prisons. Of those deaths, only eight led to murder convictions.
These homicides are the culmination of long-documented festering problems: chronic understaffing, lax oversight, gangs that rule by violence and delays in treating life-threatening injuries, the investigation found. The Marshall Project - Jackson worked with Mississippi Today, Clarion Ledger, Hattiesburg American and The Mississippi Link on the joint investigation.
The Marshall Project - Jackson reporter Daja E. Henry joined WJTV to discuss the reporting. Watch the interview here.
‘There’s nothing clean’ about Raymond Detention Center
Across the country, people awaiting trial in county jails are living in filth. Poor sanitation has been the subject of civil rights lawsuits for decades, and the complaints include plumbing issues, vermin infestations and lots of feces. The Marshall Project’s local news teams in Jackson, Cleveland and St. Louis exposed sanitation problems in three jails, including Hinds County’s Raymond Detention Center.
“There’s nothing clean about that place,” said Tedrick Francois, who spent two weeks in the facility this summer. He described vile conditions, including smells of sewage and limited access to showers, toilets and laundry facilities.
Court-appointed monitors have documented the facility’s deplorable conditions over the past decade, as part of a lawsuit brought by the U.S. Department of Justice. What they found included broken toilets and showers, empty cells used as dumpsters, and a system of extortion that forces detainees to pay to use the bathroom.
As a result of its failure to correct constitutional violations, the facility has been under the control of a federal receiver since Oct. 1. At an Oct. 6 meeting, the Hinds County Board of Supervisors approved an emergency declaration to address overcrowding at the facility.
New public defenders now at work in rural court district
State-funded public defenders have been representing clients for about a month now in one of Mississippi’s more rural court districts. They’ve taken about 20 defendants so far, said state Public Defender André de Gruy.
Lawmakers agreed in June to provide $668,000 to boost public defense services in the 5th Circuit Court District counties of Attala, Carroll, Choctaw, Grenada, Montgomery, Webster and Winston.
So far, three lawyers and an investigator have been hired with the funding and will soon have dedicated office space in Kosciusko, de Gruy said. Those lawyers are working alongside attorneys that the local counties were already paying to represent poor clients.
Mississippi has a constitutional duty to provide lawyers to criminal defendants who are facing felony charges but can’t afford their own attorney. However, state lawmakers have long required that local county officials and judges cobble together their own public defense systems without any state funding or oversight. These local systems have been criticized for decades as ineffective and inadequate. The Marshall Project - Jackson has found that some defendants have gone without legal representation at key periods in their cases.
This initiative in the 5th Circuit Court marks the first step toward what former state Rep. Nick Bain, a Republican, hopes will grow into a broader reform movement.
“We’re showing that not only is this a way to protect people’s constitutional rights, this is a far more efficient use of taxpayers’ money,” said Bain, the board president of a nonprofit that de Gruy’s office has contracted with to manage the new program.
Lawmakers will need to appropriate money for the program during next year’s legislative session to keep it going.
Delta State University tree hanging rekindles Mississippi’s violent past
The Sept. 15 death of Black student Demartravion “Trey” Reed, who was found hanged from a campus tree, has been ruled a suicide by local authorities. Reed’s family and community members dispute the finding and have commissioned a private autopsy whose results have not been released. The case has stirred deep unease, given Mississippi’s history of racial post-Civil War terror lynchings. Since 2000, at least eight other Black men in the state have been found hanging from trees. Each of those cases was ruled a suicide.
The incident has reopened the trauma associated with that history for many in the Black community, prompting questions over institutional transparency and the investigation’s adequacy. Read the full story here.
Also in the news
Hinds County coroner election results. There will be a runoff between the interim coroner and one other candidate following Tuesday’s special election. None of the six candidates won a majority of the vote, forcing a runoff between the top two vote-getters. Candidates are competing to finish the remaining two years of the term vacated by former coroner Sharon Grisham-Stewart, who retired in December. The relatively obscure office of county coroner has received greater scrutiny in the Jackson area after NBC reported last year on the cases of several men who were buried in a county pauper’s graveyard without the knowledge of their loved ones. WLBT
FBI arrests multiple law enforcement officials in drug sting. Sheriff Milton Gaston of Washington County and Sheriff Bruce Williams of Humphreys County are among several law enforcement officers in the Delta who have been arrested in a drug-related investigation. Mississippi Today
Redistricting appeal paused. Will Black voters in Mississippi get more influence over the state Supreme Court? That question — and the broader fate of Black political power in the United States — is in the hands of the U.S. Supreme Court, which is mulling several challenges to the Voting Rights Act. This comes even as a federal district court judge found in August that the Mississippi Supreme Court’s central voting district discriminates against Black voters. The state appealed to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, which has paused the appeal until the nation’s top court rules on the future of the Voting Rights Act. The district judge, Sharion Aycock, continues to hold proceedings about what remedial actions she should order the state to take. Mississippi Today
Charles Ray Crawford executed. After more than 30 years on death row, Charles Ray Crawford was executed earlier this month. He was convicted of the 1993 murder of Kristy Ray. Read about Crawford in his own words. Rooted Magazine
Formerly incarcerated man sues VitalCore over amputation. Christopher Boose was serving a one-year sentence at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility when he broke his right arm. In a newly filed lawsuit, he said that the correctional health care provider left his arm untreated for a week, causing an infection that led to the amputation of his arm. Mississippi Today
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