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Dirty blankets lined the rails of the Grand Chateau apartments, left behind by residents after power to their homes was shut off by Entergy last week.

The owner of the apartment complex said the building was supposed to be vacant. But when power got disconnected, at least a dozen people still living there were left vulnerable to the heat.

City officials have stepped in to help the residents escape the near triple-digit temperatures by giving them access to a cooling center and, now, temporary housing.

“Nobody needs to live in those circumstances. So I got into action and helped those people get out,” said Ward 2 City Council Member Tina Clay.

She visited the apartment complex Friday night and called the situation heartbreaking. That’s when she stepped up not as a city council member, she said, but as a concerned citizen. 

Other city residents began bringing water and ice for the complex’s residents. The situation became more alarming when one resident had to be transported to the hospital for heat exertion. 

Soon after, efforts began to relocate residents from the dilapidated brick building on West Capitol Street. With the help fo state officials, Jackson Mayor John Horhn opened a cooling center Monday at the Jackson Police Training Academy on St. Charles Street, nearly two miles from the apartment complex, and is available to all Jackson residents. 

The city found money to help relocate displaced residents but it was not immediately clear how much money and where it came from. By Sunday, the complex was empty and residents were split among Matt’s House, a shelter for women and children, and temporary hotel housing. Stewpot Community Services is working alongside Matt’s House to shelter those affected. The nonprofit also donated 25 cots to the city’s cooling center and is helping provide meals.

“These hot days are dangerous for all of us, but especially for those who have no reprieve from the high temperatures,” the Rev. Jill Buckley, executive director of Stewpot, said in a statement from the city. “We are glad to work with the city to provide relief for our neighbors.” 

In a statement, Entergy said the power was disconnected after alleged signs of meter tampering were discovered. Power will remain disconnected until the property owner completes the necessary repairs. It remains uncertain when power will be restored.

The utility added that the complex still had two active accounts at the time of disconnection. 

Grand Chateau property owner Ramesh Ramchandran said eviction notices were handed out in May 2025, and units at the property were supposed to be unoccupied. 

Ramchandran told Mississippi Today that various efforts were made to renovate the property after residents were evicted. He said security issues caused delays. 

According to Ramchandran, the building was supposed to be boarded up and utilities cut off. He said squatters have been a longtime problem and added to the renovation delays.

On Monday, wooden boards covered most of the complex’s windows. The city posted notices on shuttered windows ordering the premises be vacated within 30 days of July 24. 

Ramchandran said he has previously called on the city to help in the renovation process.

Ward 5 City Council Member Vernon Hartley disputed Ramchandran’s claims. He said the city had tried to contact Ramchandran as late as September regarding code violations. Hartley added that the city can only do so much when it comes to matters regarding private property. 

“The City of Jackson cannot be just caretakers for everybody’s circumstances. We want to help in time of need, but that help has to be balanced,” Hartley said. “We’re limited by funding, and we’re also limited by law.”

Hartley added that city officials are trying to identify similar situations across Jackson.

The Medgar Evers Library reopened Tuesday during a day packed with activities for Jackson children.

Mississippi Today previously reported that multiple branches in the Jackson/Hinds Library System had maintenance issues, including the Evers branch in northwest Jackson.

The library closed for two months for air conditioning repairs. David Burks Jr., vice-chairman of the Jackson/Hinds Library System’s board of trustees, confirmed that the building has a new HVAC system.

“People come here for everything, so we wanted to make sure we got it up and running,” he said during a back-to-school event at the library.

The library will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Monday to Thursday, and from  9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

On their first day back, the library held a Back-to-School Bash. Branch manager Anne Sanders said at least 400 children from the area attended for a day of music, food and fun.

Music blasted in the library and the parking lot as children enjoyed a variety of activities: face painting; making arts and crafts; a bouncy castle; a dance party; interactive storytime and more. They also enjoyed popcorn, hot dogs and hamburgers. Donations made it possible for the library to give away hundreds of bags full of school supplies.

Sanders said the staff is overjoyed to get back to regular programming. 

“It’s just an explosion of excitement,” she said. “We’re all just so glad to be back.”

She said when the library was closed, people called every day asking when it would reopen. Seeing the children happy and the community coming together was her favorite part of the day.

Sanders had help from over a dozen volunteers, one of whom was retired nurse Idessa Chiplin. 

“We couldn’t wait until it opened back up again, because the people are like family,” Chiplin said.

Timothy White brought five children from The Youth Outreach Company to the event. His nonprofit organization provides enrichment and activities for at-risk Jackson youth. 

Now that the library is open, he plans to bring a group of over 40 to 50 kids when the afterschool program begins in September.

“We got a room right here that we can do 20 to 30 kids at a time that we can tutor, mentor, help with homework. If they need help with reading, math, science or anything like that, we have a bigger area … at this library right here,” he said.

“I bring them here, pack it up, because they don’t have nothing to do at these apartment complexes,” he added.

Shaw native Johnny Parker, the soon-to-be Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer, rates as quite likely the most influential strength and conditioning coach in American sports history. That is no exaggeration.

Parker, 79, remembers the Christmas gift from 65 years ago that started him on a career path that led to four Super Bowls and three Super Bowl championship rings.

“My momma and daddy got me a set of weights and changed my life,” Parker recalled. “Part of the instruction book told me to measure and weigh myself before I got started, and so I did. I was 5 feet, 11 and a half inches tall. I weighed a robust 105 pounds. My arms were 10 inches around.”

Older folks will understand this: Parker was skinnier than the poor guy always getting sand kicked in his face in the “before” part of the before-and-after Charles Atlas magazine ads. When Parker first got started with his new set of weights, he could only lift the bar. The weights were too much for him to handle.

“I was so skinny you could almost see through me,” Parker has said. “I had no self-esteem, no confidence in myself. My dream, like a lot of Mississippi boys, was to play high school football. I never became a great player, but I played. And however good I became, it was because of those weights.”

Parker, a Methodist preacher’s son, added 75 pounds of muscle. He became a starting lineman in football and threw the discus in track and field. His self-esteem soared. He still wasn’t college football material, so he attended Ole Miss and eventually got his degree in history. His plan was to teach, but the opportunity to also coach football presented itself, and that meant a few more bucks a month.

So he became a history teaching assistant football coach at Indianola Academy, a few miles from his hometown. And there, he set out to change lives just as that Christmas present from his parents had changed his.

One life he changed was that of Steve Yarbrough, the acclaimed Mississippi novelist from Indianola who has won far more literary awards than Parker won Super Bowl rings. Yarbrough stumbled into Parker’s Indianola Academy weight room as a ninth grader in 1971. He now says that day changed his life.

“I didn’t necessarily need to succeed at football, but I longed to succeed at something,” Yarbrough has written. “I am convinced that if I had not met Johnny Parker when I did, the rest of my life would have taken a very different course.”

Long story made short: In Parker’s weight room and on the football field, Yarbrough gained the self-confidence he had lacked. He became a star high school lineman, good enough to earn a college scholarship to Delta State. Football wasn’t his future, but now he had one. He found a reason to believe in himself.

The same lessons he learned in Parker’s weight room – lessons about hard work, dedication, persistence – would serve him in writing literature.  “Johnny Parker changed my life,” Yarbrough says. “I am by no means the only one who feels that way.”

Another is longtime high school football coach Joey Hawkins, who won four state championships at Jackson Academy and is now the head coach at Columbia Academy. Hawkins played for Parker at Indianola.

“The main thing that Coach Parker taught us was how to have a commitment to excellence on a daily basis,” Hawkins said. “He showed us how much hard work would pay off. He was a disciplinarian that showed tough love. He touched all of our lives. I love the man.”

So, you might ask, how does an assistant coach/history teacher at tiny Indianola Academy go on to helping NFL teams reach four Super Bowls and win three? Turns out, Parker practiced what he preached in terms of dedication, persistence and hard work. To all that add this: an insatiable thirst for knowledge. The more Parker learned about the science of strength and conditioning, the more he wanted to learn, which took him to Russia, where he studied under Russian Olympic coaches.

Understand, strength coach is a relatively new term in sports. As recently as 50 years ago, there weren’t many at all. Parker was South Carolina’s first in 1976, hired by Paul Dietzel. Indiana hired him in 1977, where he worked with Lee Corso in football and Bobby Knight in basketball. Then it was on to LSU. Then Ole Miss under Steve Sloan.

When it comes to career advancement, connections help, too. In 1984, with his injury-prone New York Giants struggling to win football games, Bill Parcells knew he needed to try something different. The Giants had never had a strength and conditioning coach, but Parcells decided they needed one and launched a nationwide search. Parcells was good friends with Knight, the Indiana basketball legend. Knight told Parcells about Parker. Halfway through a subsequent job interview, Knight knew he had his man.

The rest is NFL history. From 3-12-1 in 1983, the Giants advanced to 8-7, then 10-6 and then, in 1986, 14-2 and Super Bowl champions. I covered that 1987 Super Bowl, when Parcells credited Parker’s strength and conditioning program as the most crucial element in the Giants turnaround. Parcells said Parker’s program made his team bigger, stronger and more durable. But it was more than that, Parcells said. “The weight program has unified our team,” he said.

The Giants won another Super Bowl in 1990. And when Parcells moved from New York to the New England Patriots, Parker went with him and coached in another Super Bowl. Later in his career, Parker earned another Super Bowl ring with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and John Gruden.

Since his 2008 retirement, and especially in recent years, Parker has struggled mightily with his health, battling cancer among other serious health issues. Friends had been hoping against hope Parker could make the trip from Cleveland, Ohio, where he now lives, for Saturday night’s induction. A private plane had been secured for the trip. On Monday, Parker’s doctors made the final decision that Parker is just too sick to make the journey.

Nevertheless, his former Indianola Academy Colonels from more than half a century ago will fill several tables at Saturday night’s ceremonies at the Clyde Muse Center in Pearl. They will hear his taped remarks where he is asked about his career accomplishments. 

“I don’t know that I did much of anything,” Parker will say. “You know, good coaches coach football. Great coaches coach people. … If I have anything to be proud of it would be that I did fairly well at coaching people, not football.”

•••

More to read:

• Steve Yarbrough on Johnny Parker.

• The MSHOF Class of 2026.

• Hall of Fame Induction weekend activities.

 This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

Gov. Tate Reeves is a big proponent of understanding and celebrating Mississippi’s history, sentiments that I heartily agree with. Take for example his recent Confederate Heritage Month proclamation, which mentions the importance of coming “to a full understanding that the lessons learned yesterday and today will carry us through tomorrow if we carefully and earnestly strive to understand and appreciate our heritage and our opportunities which lie before us.” 

Although Gov. Reeves’ ambiguous language cleverly manages to say everything while simultaneously saying nothing, we still should ask what he means by urging Mississippians to “earnestly strive to understand and appreciate our heritage.”

After all, he is governor of a state that celebrates Robert E. Lee’s Birthday on the same day as Martin Luther King’s Birthday, Confederate Memorial Day and Jefferson Davis’ Birthday.

These state holidays are part of Mississippi’s heritage, along with its 1861 justification for secession from the Union, which includes the statement that “our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery.” A keen social analyst and purveyor of unintended irony, Reeves has proclaimed April as Confederate Heritage Month while also insisting that there is “not systemic racism in America”. 

But now to my modest proposal. Given Gov. Reeves’ appreciation for Mississippi’s history, I urge him to proclaim an annual “Jim Crow Heritage Month” as a companion to Confederate Heritage Month.

Identifying the most appropriate month for this recognition might require waiting until the GOP-dominated Mississippi Legislature redraws legislative districts to diminish Black voter power. Symbolically, though, November would be an excellent choice for Jim Crow Heritage Month, because in November of 1890 Mississippi adopted its post-Reconstruction constitution, which used a poll tax and literacy tests to disenfranchise Black voters. As the president of the convention, S. S. Calhoon said, “We came here to exclude the Negro. Nothing short of this will answer.” Consequently, the percentage of registered eligible Black voters in Mississippi decreased from 67% in 1867 to less than 6% in 1892. 

Now, that’s heritage.

Given the Supreme Court’s April 2026 Louisiana vs. Callais decision, one of the “opportunities that lie before us” – in terms of  Mississippi’s racial history – is the chance to suppress Black voting power throughout the South. According to the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Callais, which was written by Justice Samuel Alito, “Because the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the state’s use of race … and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”

Curiously, the Supreme Court’s Callais decision functionally implies that majority-white gerrymandered districts are constitutional, a form of fantastical legal logic that could lead to the end of multiracial democracy in the South.

This predication has been verified in Tennessee, where the state Legislature and governor quickly acted to gerrymander Memphis and eliminate the state’s only Black-majority congressional district – supposedly in the name of partisan politics, although the means and ends appear undeniably related to race in a state that celebrates Nathan Bedford Forrest Day, which honors the founder of the Ku Klux Klan.  Louisiana recently followed suit by eliminating one of two Black-majority congressional districts, while Alabama also is preparing to eradicate one of its two majority-Black congressional districts – a move that GOP governor Kay Ivey praised by observing that “For years, we have fought for this outcome, and I am proud to celebrate this win for Alabamians.” 

Well, some Alabamians. 

One small step for Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama, one giant step for the GOP in its quest to consolidate power in the South, with each state doing its best to channel Nina Simone’s lyrics to “Mississippi Goddam.”  

Alabama and Tennessee (and Louisiana) have gotten me so upset, and Mississippi will likely follow.

Given Gov. Reeves’ politics and selective view of his state’s heritage, as illustrated by his 2013 speech to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which he gave in front of an immense Confederate battle flag; the Republican-dominated state Legislature; and a pile on by GOP candidates for state offices, including Shad White (state auditor) and Michael Watson (secretary of state), it is likely that Mississippi will follow the lead of Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama, with Congressman Bennie Thompson’s district being an obvious target.

Poll taxes and literacy tests are out for the time being (bad optics, I suppose), but the effects of white-biased gerrymandering on Black voting power could be similar. 

Heritage, y’all. History and opportunity, right? So, how about November as Jim Crow Heritage Month in Mississippi? 

Of course, there is a different way forward for Mississippi, a possible future that pushes back against the state’s legacy of chattel slavery and Jim Crow laws, and its host of racist governors, from James K. Vardaman to Theodore Bilbo and Ross Barnett. Mississippi could refuse to follow the lead of Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama.

Instead, “A full (and truthful) understanding (of) the lessons learned yesterday and today” could invoke the heritage of Hiram Rhodes Revels (the first African American from Mississippi to serve in the U. S. Congress), Medgar Evers, James Meredith, the Freedom Riders, Robert Moses, Fannie Lou Hamer, William Winter and the Legislature’s 2020 decision to remove the Confederate battle flag from the state flag.

This noble and courageous heritage could propel Mississippi toward a more equable distribution of political, economic and social power. But that’s wishful thinking and appears unrelated to how Tate Reeves and the GOP leaders in Mississippi imagine the “heritage and … opportunities which lie before us.” 

So, cue Nina Simone. 

Bio: Christopher Norment holds a PhD in Systematics and Ecology from the University of Kansas and is an emeritus professor of environmental science and ecology at the State University of New York–Brockport. During his career he published over 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers and three science-related books of creative nonfiction, and received awards from the State University of New York for teaching and scholarship. He now lives in Jackson. 

Senate Judiciary A Chairman Brice Wiggins has worked for years to reform Mississippi’s notoriously opaque youth courts. He sat down with Mississippi Today to discuss why the courts are now somewhat open to the public, what happened during the the recent special legislative session and why having a uniform youth court system is crucial to to the state.

In December of 2025 Kristen Windham, director of policy for Gov. Tate Reeves, emailed a state lawmaker with a “report” on the status of a long-awaited review of Mississippi’s prison health care system. 

The document that Windham called a report was a letter that barely stretched beyond a page. And her update was that the monitoring report lawmakers were expecting still did not exist.

That came as a surprise to lawmakers who passed a law that said they are due a review of the medical services contract from the corrections department on Dec. 15 of each fiscal year. The state recently approved paying the law firm Butler Snow $700,000 for monitoring prison health care, despite no report being delivered yet.

The urgent interest in the review stems from the alleged denial of health care in state prisons. 

Mississippi Today has documented potentially thousands of people living with hepatitis C going without treatment, amputations following delayed care and trouble getting cancer screenings. Such findings, as well as handwritten letters sent to lawmakers by prisoners seeking care and panicked messages from their family members, drew bipartisan condemnation in the state House and numerous hearings at the Capitol.  

“They have decided to treat 50 inmates a year with Hepatitis C when there are thousands,” House Corrections Chairwoman Becky Currie, a Republican from Brookhaven, said in a recent interview with Mississippi Today. “They provide care when the Hepatitis C patients are so far gone that they need a liver transplant or die.” 

In her email to Currie, Windham cited a lengthy process, one that involved developing a “monitoring program” and “auditing tools” – neither of which had been put in place five years after VitalCore Health Strategies became the medical contractor for Mississippi’s prisons. The Kansas-based company was initially awarded four no-bid emergency contracts, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in the process, before securing a three-year contract. 

“As you are no doubt aware, developing a medical monitoring program and audit tools tailored to ensure both contract compliance and to evaluate the quality of healthcare takes months to develop,” Windham wrote in the December email. “When development of the audit tools and the initial site visits are completed, MDOC will be able to estimate when the first monitoring report will be completed.”

Seven months later, the Mississippi State Personnel Board on July 16 approved paying the law firm to monitor Mississippi’s prison healthcare system. But several lawmakers granted access to the report under state law told Mississippi Today they still have not seen it, and it’s unclear what progress has been made toward its production. 

“I have not received anything,” Currie said. “If we had used the money that we are paying Butler Snow to tell us what we already know, we could have cured so many people suffering in prison.”

The state law that said lawmakers are due a report from MDOC on Dec. 15 of each fiscal year passed in May of 2025. But Dec. 15 came and went later that year without lawmakers receiving a monitoring report. Windham’s email, obtained by Mississippi Today, shows what the governor’s administration has been telling lawmakers about the process for monitoring Mississippi’s troubled prison healthcare system, a process that has largely unfolded out of public view.

House Public Health Chairman Sam Creekmore, a Republican, and Senate Public Health Chairman Hob Bryan, a Democrat, also told Mississippi Today they had not yet seen any report. Under state law, both of the chairman are owed a copy of the report. They said the last formal update they received was in a December 2025 letter – previously obtained and reported on by Mississippi Today – from Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain, who said a private attorney will manage a team “experienced in correctional healthcare management” to conduct contract oversight. 

That attorney, Bill Lunsford of Butler Snow, the politically connected law firm contracted to monitor Mississippi’s prison health care contract, did not respond to a list of questions. Spokespeople for the Mississippi Department of Corrections also did not respond to messages with similar questions.  

Mississippi Today filed a public request asking for all monitoring reports submitted by Butler Snow on health care available to the state’s incarcerated population. In May, MDOC said the agency does not possess any such documents. 

The genesis of the still-awaited prison health care audit dates back to May of 2025, when the Legislature passed a bill instructing the corrections department to deliver a report on the contractor’s performance. The department hired Butler Snow, a Mississippi-based law firm that has defended prison systems and private prison health contractors in civil rights lawsuits alleging health care failures in several states. 

The 2025 legislation mandating the report on prison health care said MDOC shall provide a report of the monitoring and review of the medical services contract to the chairmen of Senate and House Appropriations, Corrections, and Public Health committees and to the Legislative Budget Office.

Currie had tried to give the Mississippi State Department of Health the authority to monitor prison health care. But her push was defeated, in part due to opposition from Gov. Reeves, who wanted to award monitoring authority to a private firm, according to Currie. 

In MDOC’s search for a medical contractor in 2023, it wrote that the agency “does not employ any licensed personnel responsible with oversight of its contracted healthcare provider,” but said it planned to reestablish a medical compliance office within three to six months of executing the contract. 

At that time, VitalCore had served as the agency’s medical contractor since 2020 after being awarded four no-bid emergency contracts worth $324 million for the services. Combined with its current role, VitalCore has been awarded over $600 million in state contracts.

In the months leading up to the 2026 legislative session, Currie developed a sweeping legislative package of reforms aimed at improving the quality of care in Mississippi prisons and introducing more oversight of the prison medical contract.

Currie wanted to use the report lawmakers had been promised to fine-tune the legislation and build consensus in the Senate, where all her reforms had failed the prior year. So in December of 2025, weeks before lawmakers were set to return to Jackson, Currie began asking for updates.

“I am asking for the audit that the Governor insisted on doing by hiring a firm for over $700,000 dollars to audit Vitalcore,” Currie wrote. “I would like to get it tomorrow before the Christmas Holiday and give me time to study it before the session.”

Windham replied that the contract “provided a six-month implementation period before monitoring activities would commence.”

“Over the next several months, the auditing/monitoring tools will be developed, and the monitoring team of experts will conduct initial site visits of MDOC facilities and begin utilizing the tools,” Windham added. 

Windham did not respond to a list of questions about the site visits, the monitoring tools and the status of the report. 

Without the report in hand, Currie still proceeded with advancing her reforms through the House. But the legislation was ultimately doomed again in the state Senate. 

Corrections Committee Vice Chairwoman Lydia Chassaniol, a Republican from Winona, refused to advance the bills out of committee. Chassaniol had been running the committee while Corrections Chairman Juan Barnett, a Democrat from Heidelberg, was out with an illness. Chassaniol claimed she was honoring Barnett’s wishes. 

“The Health Department was going to do it for free,” Currie said of the long-awaited report. “Now we are charging the taxpayers all this money for a report that supports the inadequate care.”

Mississippi Today reporter Gwen Dilworth contributed to this report

If you are arrested and charged with a felony crime in Mississippi and cannot afford a lawyer, you will be appointed one. But how soon you receive your criminal defense lawyer depends on where in Mississippi you are arrested and charged.

In some Mississippi counties, like Pearl River and Hinds, you could expect to be assigned a full-time public defender whose sole job is to represent criminal defendants. Ideally, they’d stand by your side during your first appearance before a judge, or if not, you’d hear from them within 72 hours after assignment. In other counties, your assigned public defender might be a lawyer in private practice whose criminal defense work is secondary to their main legal practice. They wouldn’t be assigned to you until after your initial appearance before a judge and, in the case of several counties, it could be weeks, rather than hours, before your first meeting with them.

The differing outcomes across Mississippi’s 82 counties are a result of the state’s fragmented, decentralized approach to public defense. It is up to county governments, rather than the state government in Jackson, to not only fund public defense at their discretion but also structure the system, such as determining whether a county will utilize full-time public defenders.

“Justice by geography” is what Aditi Goel, executive director of the Sixth Amendment Center, calls this system, and it has led to an uneven and unequal distribution of criminal defense for defendants throughout the state.

Now, for the very first time, a centralized account of the state’s geographic variations in public defense is available. A collection of reports outlining each circuit court district’s administration of the right to counsel for indigent defendants in felony criminal cases is on file with the Mississippi Supreme Court, after a request made by Chief Justice Michael Randolph in April 2025.

Taken collectively, the plans expose wide gaps in how Mississippi’s 23 judicial circuits document — and potentially deliver — the constitutional right to counsel for poor defendants, an analysis by The Greenwood Commonwealth reveals.

The Commonwealth reviewed all 23 plans, as did Mississippi’s Office of State Public Defender and the Mississippi chapter of the MacArthur Justice Center, a nonprofit law firm focused on criminal defense. Those reviews found that only about a third of court districts have clear plans that specifically state when and how a public defender is appointed to represent a criminal defendant following arrest.

Acquiring legal counsel as soon as possible after arrest is one core tenant of criminal justice, yet most plans are not clear on that point.

Criminal defense advocates have lauded the publication of those plans as one important step in addressing the shortcomings of public defense, because most were not available for public review before.

“We now have written plans for each district. That’s more than we had before,” said André de Gruy, who leads Mississippi’s Office of State Public Defender. “I would say we’re better off.”

Still, given the lack of clarity in many of the plans, accountability can be difficult, especially since there is no oversight of the patchwork public defender system. De Gruy’s office only handles death row and indigent appeals cases and there is no statewide authority for indigent defense in other criminal matters.

The Constitution’s Sixth Amendment guarantees criminal defendants a right to an attorney. In a state like Mississippi, which has high rates of poverty and demand for public defenders, defendants can sit in jail for months or even years awaiting indictment.

A 2018 report from the Sixth Amendment Center, a national nonprofit organization focused on indigent defense, found that the average delay between arrest and indictment in 10 Mississippi counties ranged from two months to over a year.

While Mississippi may have delegated the funding and administration of public defense to counties, Goel said the state still has a responsibility to ensure defendants receive appropriate representation.

“If the state doesn’t know whether everybody is in fact going to get an effective attorney in a timely manner, once they’re charged and accused of a crime, how is the state aware as to whether they are in fact meeting their obligation under the Constitution?” Goel asked.

Early representation considered key

In Mississippi, a defendant jailed and charged with a felony typically has an initial appearance and other pre-indictment hearings in a misdemeanor court, which can be a justice, county or municipal court.

Goel said it’s a concern if plans don’t offer clarity on legal representation for defendants while their case is still in the misdemeanor courts.

“What is being done to make sure that there’s actual representation provided to somebody who is charged with a felony from the municipal court to the next one? That kind of oversight is still missing,” Goel said. “…You want representation actually happening and visitations to the client happening, you want an attorney to provide legal representation. And that’s just not in court appearances. A lot of that takes place outside of court.”

Criminal defense advocates and legal experts say defendants should be appointed a lawyer immediately after arrest to ensure day-one representation. This allows an attorney to try and get bond lowered for their client and possibly get a case resolved before it is bound over to the grand jury — potentially preventing a defendant from languishing in jail and saving the county money.

Mississippi’s own Rules of Criminal Procedure — rules that the courts must follow when handling the criminal justice process — are very clear that indigent defendants be appointed an attorney no later than at their first, or initial, appearance before a judge. At these hearings, held within 48 hours of arrest if a defendant is still in jail, the judge will determine if there was probable cause for arrest and appoint legal counsel.

These initial appearances – and the preliminary hearings that may follow – are usually held in Mississippi’s misdemeanor courts, before a grand jury may indict a defendant on a felony charge. Following an indictment, the case is transferred to circuit court, where the felony is tried.

The Commonwealth found that only eight of the 23 court districts had plans that specifically state how counsel is appointed for indigent defendants after arrest while seven court districts had plans that said lawyers are appointed for defendants by their initial appearance, if not earlier.

For example, the plans of the 3rd District (Benton, Calhoun, Chickasaw, Lafayette, Marshall, Tippah and Union counties), 7th District (Hinds County), and 15th District (Marion, Jefferson Davis, Lamar, Lawrence and Pearl River counties), all identical in language, state clearly when and how a defendant receives a lawyer. The arresting authority will determine if a defendant already has counsel.

If not, the arresting authorities provide the defendant an affidavit to sign to request free counsel and counsel is then appointed. If a defendant, while still jailed, appears at an initial appearance and does not have counsel, the court then appoints that person a lawyer.

The three districts’ plans also state that appointed attorneys should meet with their clients within 24 to 72 hours after being appointed, preferably as soon as possible to attend their client’s initial appearance.

The above-mentioned plans are the exception, however, rather than the norm. In other judicial districts, the plans imply early representation in the misdemeanor courts but do not specifically explain the procedure for appointment of counsel.

The plan of the 12th District (Forrest and Perry counties) does not mention legal representation in the misdemeanor courts at all and only talks about appointment of counsel once a defendant has been indicted.

In the 4th District (Leflore, Sunflower and Washington counties) the plan states lawyers are appointed “as soon as practicable after arrest” although no timeline is set when that must occur.

“They’re not clear on when counsel is appointed, or is assigned, or is notified that they have a client. That’s a problem with these plans, is that they’re not clear,” said de Gruy.

That doesn’t necessarily mean defendants in districts with vague and unclear plans lack appropriate appointed representation. But because the plans are all self-reported, it’s unconfirmed whether what is stated on paper — even in the best of the plans — reflects what’s actually happening in and outside of the courtrooms.

Solutions neither obvious nor easy

It’s also unclear what, if anything, can be done to make improvements without reforming the state’s public defense system.

Associate Mississippi Supreme Court Justice David P. Sullivan, a former public defender who chairs the court’s criminal rules committee, says the high court’s authority is limited to ensuring plans exist, not to critique them and specify what should be in the plans. State Supreme Court justices are not in a position for assessment, given “we’re not out there in the field with the practitioners utilizing that system on a daily basis,” the judge said.

“We have made certain that every district in the state has a plan in place to comply with the rules for indigent defense. And that, until a controversy is brought to the court by litigants or attorneys for us to rule upon, we wouldn’t really have any way to police that,” Sullivan said. “Is it perfect? No, but that’s up to the Legislature to create a statewide system that would, in theory, be more beneficial.”

Past legislative efforts to reform Mississippi’s public defense system, including a modest bill that would set statewide standards, have failed to launch, even as a chorus of stakeholders, from former state Supreme Court justices, circuit court judges and more, have called for public defense to be state-funded, as are prosecutors.

“The reality is there is no governing standard when it comes to public defense,” said Republican state Sen. Brice Wiggins of Pascagoula, the author of the proposed standards bill and who chairs one of the Senate’s two judiciary committees.

“The realization is setting in amongst people and legislators that counties just can’t afford it, won’t afford it, won’t do it. And we’ve got to look at some way to do that” in terms of bolstering public defense, the senator said.

Wiggins said coming up with state funding is a challenge that stalls reform efforts, but it is not the only one, considering there are some public defenders who prefer the status quo.

“The people that benefit from the current system don’t want to have standards placed upon them,” the senator said.

Wiggins said some may believe public defense is only coddling criminals, but reforms would move both guilty and innocent defendants more quickly through the courts and save counties money.

“When money talks about being doled out, legislators tend to clam up. … (the) reality is that courts and the criminal justice system are a core function of government. And people over time have chosen not to put resources in that.”

TIPS WELCOME

Reach out to Greenwood Commonwealth staff writer Gerard Edic at 662-581-7237 or gedic@gwcommonwealth.com if you have tips or experiences to share regarding Mississippi’s public defense and criminal justice system. This article was produced with the support of Report for America and the Investigative Editing Corps and is a follow-up to an article on public defense Edic wrote last September, which can be found at www.gwcommonwealth.com/deadline-indigent-defense-plans-near.

– Gerard Edic is a corps member at the Greenwood Commonwealth with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. You can support his work with a tax-deductible donation at bit.ly/4wM0wV6.

Gov. Tate Reeves on Monday appointed Celeste Embrey Wilson, a circuit court judge in DeSoto County, to fill a vacant seat on the Mississippi Supreme Court. 

“Judge Wilson has dedicated her career to serving the people of Mississippi with integrity, fairness and a steadfast commitment to the rule of law,” Reeves said in a news release. 

Wilson has served as a circuit court judge in northwestern Mississippi since February 2017. Before that she served as a county court judge in DeSoto County from January 2009 through February 2017. 

Before her time on the bench, Wilson was an assistant district attorney for the state’s 17th Circuit Court District for seven years.

Reeves has a history of appointing people with prosecutorial experience to vacant judicial seats. 

“I am deeply honored and humbled by this appointment and grateful for the confidence Governor Reeves has placed in me,” Wilson said. “I look forward to serving the people of Mississippi with integrity and an unwavering commitment to our Constitution and the rule of law.” 

Wilson received an undergraduate degree from Delta State University and attended law school at the University of Memphis School of Law.

Wilson replaces Robert Chamberlin, also from DeSoto County, who left his seat on the state Supreme Court after being confirmed by the U.S. Senate as a federal judge in northern Mississippi. 

Her appointment means a second woman will join the court to serve alongside current Justice Jenifer Branning. Wilson will serve on the state high court starting Aug. 1, until a special election is held.

Wilson’s appointment now places an eighth person on the nine-member court. Reeves has not appointed someone to the seat vacated by James Maxwell, who also became a federal judge in northern Mississippi. 

Mitchell McGinnis owns two music academies and teaches vocal lessons in his spare time. He goes regularly to the gym, but that was as far as his athletic prowess and interest in sports went – until he found himself in Paris, at Stade de France during the 2024 Olympics, watching a sport he knew almost nothing about.

The game looked vaguely familiar: players chasing an oval-shaped ball and piling atop one another. But this was not American football. This was rugby.

While still in the stands, he picked up his cell phone and began searching for anything he could learn about the sport.

McGinnis did not know it yet, but his curiosity would help revive one of Mississippi’s oldest rugby clubs, attracting new players to an organization that nearly died out during the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“I remember sitting there Googling rules and trying to understand what was happening on the field,” he said. “It happened so fast.”

His introduction to rugby came by chance. A friend who won a lottery to attend the Olympics invited McGinnis to Paris.

He started searching for local rugby leagues near his Jackson home. Facebook led McGinnis to the Jackson Rugby Football Club. He began sending messages to the club back home. Within minutes, a practice was scheduled for that August.

Excitement built. But that initial practice fell through. So did another. That’s when McGinnis decided to grab the ball himself and run with it. 

He began recruiting players and scouting a field to play on. He would eventually get Jackson Public Schools’ permission to use Murrah High School’s practice field. Nearly three months after McGinnis first reached out to Jackson Rugby, they were finally going to meet.

He showed up at the high school dressed in a T-shirt and shorts. He kept slipping on the wet grass in his tennis shoes. 

“My friends joke a lot of times that a toxic trait of mine is thinking that I can do anything,” McGinnis said.

While rugby continues to grow in popularity in the U.S., it is hardly a staple of televised sports – dominated by football, basketball and baseball.

Nevertheless, rugby has found homes in some American communities. One of the early Mississippi adopters was Jackson Rugby. 

In rugby, two teams compete to advance an elongated ball to score a try — or a goal — by kicking, running and passing the ball backward. Its origins extend to the early 19th century in England and spread to the United States, mostly on college campuses. USA Rugby, the country’s governing body for the sport, counts 11,000 active players. 

An English sport makes it way to America

In a state dominated by college football, the English sport found its footing in Mississippi’s capital city in 1974. Back in 2010, team members even purchased and created their own makeshift facility with practice fields near Highway 49. 

“We get to have a good time. We get to run around together, laugh at each other, make a joke, have something to look forward to at the end of the week,” said Chris Mendonca, the team’s coach. “This is what I live for.”

Mendonca’s rugby journey started in 1999 during his Air Force deployment to Trier, Germany. Fresh from military training, Mendonca felt he was lacking a community and outlet outside of work. He would run across a local rugby league and instantly fell in love with the sport. 

Rugby became an outlet for Mendonca during his deployments in South Korea, Florida and Japan. Wherever he went, the sport gave him an anchor.

“I don’t know where I would be if I didn’t have this,” Mendonca said.

When he returned to civilian life, Mendonca went to work for Raytheon, a defense and aerospace company, that transferred him to Brandon in 2018.

He already knew he would join Jackson Rugby prior to his move. He had played against the team in 2005 when he played for a club in Okaloosa, Florida.

But it was not the same Jackson rugby team he remembered. 

The team was not nearly as active as it once was. Players left as they began families and started new careers. The last few active members attempted to host practices amid busy schedules. There were talks of merging the Jackson team with the one in Biloxi, but those discussions stalled when the COVID-19 pandemic hit.

Things continued to fizzle until McGinnis gave the team the push it needed. 

The goal: ‘play, have fun, challenge ourselves’

Mendonca was one of the two experienced players available when McGinnis organized the resurgent team’s first practice in October.

Mendonca arrived early and walked around the school parking lot filling a garbage bag with trash as he waited for other players to show up.

McGinnis arrived next. He approached Mendonca, wondering if he was a worker with the school. Mendonca said picking up trash was just something he could do while waiting. The team now makes a habit to clean the parking lot after every practice. 

Nearly two years have passed since the team’s revival on that muggy evening. Now Jackson Rugby regularly has over a dozen players at practice, with new people showing up to try the sport.

On most Sundays at 3 p.m., you can find the team at Murrah High School preparing for its next game. They sprint up and down the field, practice passing the ball and slam into foam pads to perfect their tackles. In between drills, they gather under a bright blue tent that gleams in the sun as they cool off with fresh watermelon and a misting fan.

“If you’re interested in playing, just come out and try for a practice or two,” McGinnis said. “We like to have a good time. It doesn’t matter if you’re a guy or girl. Come out and learn the game with us and have a good time.”

Caroline Swindool joined the group in early February after coming across a yard sign with the team’s information. At first she was intimidated by the predominantly male team. Her love for fitness and trying new things pushed her to join, and Swindool was welcomed with open arms.

“It’s really just a hodgepodge of a bunch of different people that you wouldn’t put together in a group normally, but everybody comes out and has the same common goal,” Swindool said. “We just want to play, have fun, challenge ourselves and get better.”

The club’s newfound popularity hasn’t gone unnoticed. McGinnis said several people approach the team’s tent at the Mobile Battleship Rugby Tournament earlier this month. Some asked about hosting games in Jackson later this year.

James Lawson has been a team member for two decades and has seen the team through hard times. He said the team is exactly where it needs to be.

“I think we got the right combination of people on the team right now,” he said, “and a lot of younger people on the team now to help grow rugby in this area.”