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.
Deadly jails. Unprosecuted killings inside state prisons. Systemic failures across almost all parts of the criminal justice system. These are the major stories this year from The Marshall Project - Jackson reporters Caleb Bedillion and Daja E. Henry. — Paul D’Ambrosio
Hinds County’s jail crisis is worse than you think
At least 60 people are sitting in the Raymond Detention Center and other county lockups with no path to trial. And at least five have been held more than a year without an indictment — the essential step needed to put their charges before a judge or jury.
Our reporting found that the new federally appointed jail administrator pressed the Hinds County district attorney to move on cases stalled for more than 90 days without indictment. The DA and the public defender responded by asking county leaders for $700,000 to bring on more lawyers. While officials point fingers, the standoff makes one criminal justice problem brutally clear: Mississippi sets no deadline for indicting people held behind bars, leaving some to languish indefinitely.
Read Daja and Caleb’s deep dive into this issue.
Mississippi’s deadly prisons exposed: Dozens of cold cases reopened following investigation
A joint news investigation spearheaded by The Marshall Project - Jackson uncovered more than 42 killings of incarcerated people inside state prisons since 2015, with just six cases leading to a conviction. (Since our September publication, those numbers have reached at least 45 killings with eight guilty pleas). Another 21 deaths were labeled by authorities as “undetermined,” meaning the incarcerated person could have been killed, or could have died from an accident, suicide or natural causes.
Following our investigation with our media partners — Mississippi Today, Clarion Ledger, Hattiesburg American and The Mississippi Link — the head of the state’s corrections department said he will open investigations into the unsolved killings and mysterious deaths dating back to 2015.
The reporters documented systemic failures across the state’s prison system, including chronic staffing shortages, unwatched security cameras, gang violence and inadequate investigations. Prosecuting one prison murder was essentially forgotten for three years, until a reporter called.
“No one deserves to die like this,” one grieving mother, whose son was stabbed to death, said in court.
Read the complete series by Daja and our partners.
Deadly no-knock police raids exposed
They are called no-knock raids because a judge can grant police the authority to break down a door without notice, usually late at night when the person inside is asleep. In 2015, a homeowner targeted in such a raid thought the commotion was a break-in. When he came to his trailer door holding an air pistol, the police shot him dead.
Afterward, several judges refused to dismiss his family’s wrongful death lawsuit, saying there appeared to be no justification in the first place for the no-knock raid.
We investigated 91 no-knock warrants across six jurisdictions and found that 62 issued from 2015 through 2023 failed to meet basic constitutional standards.
To obtain a no-knock search warrant from a judge, police must show that the search will be dangerous, or that the suspect will attempt to flee or destroy evidence. Experts said the vast majority of warrants and affidavits examined by The Marshall Project - Jackson and the Daily Journal didn’t state an adequate reason, if any existed at all.
During our multiyear reporting effort, where we asked questions about the need for some no-knock warrants, authorities in one county scuttled the use of boilerplate no-knock search warrant requests to the court.
A long-standing federal civil rights probe is in jeopardy. Here’s why.
In May 1970, on the Jackson State College campus, student Phillip Gibbs was shot and killed by police in a 28-second barrage of more than 400 bullets. High school senior James Earl Green, walking home from his job at a convenience store, was also shot and killed.
More than 55 years later, no one knows why police opened fire outside a women’s dormitory. And no one has been held accountable.
A federal investigation into the killings was initiated after a 2008 law mandated that the U.S. Justice Department investigate unsolved criminal civil rights violations that led to a death before 1980.
By all accounts, the investigation was still open in 2024, but likely stalled after President Donald Trump took office again on Jan. 20. He quickly ordered the Justice Department to freeze all civil rights litigation. Then, most career attorneys in the Civil Rights Division were reassigned and some later quit. Government grants that were to help states and cities investigate cold-case homicides involving civil rights were cut. And the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division Cold Case Initiative page has not been updated since March.
Read Daja’s story and an interview with Dale Gibbs, Phillip Gibbs’ widow.
Poor criminal defendants may soon have lawyers after arrest. Our reporting exposed the need.
The Sixth Amendment states a powerful criminal justice right: Anyone charged with a crime is entitled to a lawyer. If you can’t afford one, the court will appoint an attorney for you.
Counsel isn’t always provided immediately to people charged with criminal offenses in many Mississippi counties, we found. Across the state, a patchwork of local governments and courts manages almost all public defense, but these systems largely operate out of sight. The state has long failed to even review how local officials do their jobs.
The confusion may be coming to an end. The chief justice of the state Supreme Court requested the 23 judicial districts to publicly post their plans for providing legal representation to indigent defendants. Read the new plans on the court page.
And read Caleb’s story with links to our prior work on this issue.
No one knows how many die in local Mississippi jails. Here’s why it matters.
When a Jones County resident was locked up in the county jail, he should have gotten the drugs to control his HIV infection and keep it from turning deadly. But he never got his pills. And a month later, he died from an HIV-related infection.
At least 46 people have died in Mississippi’s county jails since 2020, according to lawsuits, news reports and law enforcement records reviewed by The Marshall Project - Jackson. But those lost lives do not appear in any official statistics or records. The reason is that despite a federal law that requires jail deaths to be tracked — one of the best ways to identify issues that could later be used to save lives — the law is simply not followed most of the time in Mississippi.
An effort is underway now to improve reporting from jails.
Send us your story tips!
If you’ve experienced or witnessed something in the criminal justice system that you think we should look into further, contact us through this form or jackson@themarshallproject.org. All tips are confidential.