The Mississippi Highway Patrol suspended the state trooper who failed to obey a subpoena to testify in a DUI case involving the current son-in-law of Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, Mississippi Today has learned.

That son-in-law, Steven Frederick Jr., and another law enforcement officer are now charged with manslaughter in an unrelated case in 2022 while both were Capitol Police officers.

On March 12, 2023, Frederick totaled his Capitol Police Ford F-150 on U.S. 49 South in Covington County, just past the Simpson County line. 

When a trooper arrived, he told Frederick in a dashcam video obtained by Mississippi Today that he wanted to give the Capitol Police officer a handheld breathalyzer test “to see how high you are.”

Frederick flunked the test with a .15 score, nearly twice the legal limit of .08. He was handcuffed and arrested for DUI.

Frederick can be seen on camera asking troopers to remove his handcuffs. They refused.

On the video, Frederick is quoted as saying he had only two beers but later can be heard telling a trooper that he had been drinking whiskey. Then he adds, “I just lost my f—ing career.”

Fellow troopers say Clay Loftin told them that Bailey appeared on the scene and asked if he could take Frederick with him. They said Loftin told them he replied to the sheriff, “No, he’s coming with me.”

Bailey told WLBT in 2023 that he spoke to Loftin a “handful” of times and that he told the trooper to “do his job.”

If Bailey had taken Frederick with him, prosecution would have proved difficult, because results from handheld breathalyzers aren’t admissible in court. This is why DUI suspects are tested on machine breathalyzers.

At the Covington County Jail, Loftin put Frederick on the machine breathalyzer, which tested him at .127, according to the arrest report.

After Frederick was jailed, Covington County Sheriff Darrell M. Perkins released him without bond into Bailey’s custody. He said Bailey told him he was taking Frederick to a hospital.

State authorities have learned that a prosecutor, who wasn’t from Covington County, said Bailey called him and asked him what would happen if a trooper didn’t show up for a DUI hearing and the prosecutor replied that the case would be dismissed.

Bailey has denied these allegations. “Whoever said that I talked to a prosecutor is a liar,” he told WLBT. “That is a completely false lie.”

Authorities have also learned that after the wreck, Bailey reportedly telephoned Frederick’s supervisor at Capitol Police, Porfirio Grimaldo, telling the supervisor that he should keep Frederick on the force because “the DUI has been taken care of.” 

Contacted for comment, Grimaldo referred all questions to the department’s lawyers. “Our MDPS legal team is unable to comment on a conversation they were not a party to,” said spokesperson Bailey Martin.

Neither Bailey’s lawyer, Jason Dare, nor Bailey responded to questions about this.

Five months after the accident, Loftin failed to show up as required to testify in the DUI case against Frederick. A Covington County judge dismissed the case. 

Loftin was one of four troopers scheduled to testify that day in justice court. He was the only one who didn’t appear.

Afterward, fellow troopers said Loftin told them he had never received a notice of the hearing and if he had, he would have been there. Electronic records, however, show he received the email and opened it.

When troopers start their jobs, they agree in advance to take a polygraph test, commonly known as a lie detector test. If they refuse to take the test, they can be fired.

After Loftin took his polygraph test, the examiner concluded the trooper showed deception when he denied that anyone pressured him to ignore the subpoena to testify in court.

The trooper received a five-day suspension with no pay, and he did not appeal, according to records obtained by Mississippi Today. He declined to respond to requests for comment.

As for Frederick, he resigned three days after the wreck “to prevent termination,” according to his certification records. He had worked for Capitol Police less than eight months and paid nothing toward the Ford F-150 he totaled.

Bailey has said he never tried to influence justice. 

“I can swear on a stack of Bibles, I did not ask anyone for any help on that just because I knew the finger would be pointed at me because of that, and you know, let things take their course naturally,” the sheriff said in the 2023 WLBT interview. “I hate that it happened to him (Frederick) because he is a good guy.”

Another wreck, no charges

A year and a half after Frederick demolished his Capitol Police truck, he wrecked another patrol vehicle, this time as a deputy for Scott County.

Tina Hutchinson said Frederick was driving north on Highway 13 in Smith County when he hit her son’s truck so hard it turned his truck completely around. Frederick’s car careened up the driveway.

Both her son’s truck and Frederick’s patrol car were totaled, she said.

The speed limit along that stretch in Polkville is 35 mph. Frederick admitted he was doing 55 mph, Hutchinson said, and she believes it was even faster because of the damage done, the place the patrol car stopped and the lack of skid marks.

Certification records show Frederick had three previous speeding tickets, one of them resulting in a suspended driver’s license, which he attributed to a “misunderstanding” with the court.

After this accident, Frederick was sitting on the ground, saying he was hurt, Hutchinson said. “If your leg is hurting so bad, wouldn’t you wait for the ambulance?”

Instead, Sheriff Bailey again appeared on the scene and took Frederick to the hospital before troopers ever arrived, she said. “His daddy-in-law comes and picks him up.”

Neither Bailey’s lawyer nor Bailey responded to questions about this.

Frederick wasn’t charged with speeding or anything else, Hutchinson said. “Why leave the scene of an accident and not wait for the Highway Patrol?”

Officers, however, told her son that he couldn’t leave until after he spoke with troopers who had yet to arrive, she said.

Her son suffered no injuries from the wreck, she said. “I don’t know how it didn’t hurt him worse.”

Children sometimes play not far from the road where Frederick totaled his patrol car, she said. “What if he had slid and hit a kid?”

Manslaughter charge

Earlier this year, Frederick and Michael Lamar Rhinewalt pleaded not guilty to manslaughter in the Sept. 25, 2022, death of 25-year-old Jaylen Lewis in Jackson. Both officers were working for Capitol Police at the time. 

An investigation by Mississippi Today has uncovered that Col. Steven Maxwell, then-director of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, rejected hiring both officers, but Capitol Police, also part of the Department of Public Safety, hired them.

The officers reportedly told investigators that Rhinewalt shot Lewis in self-defense after Lewis drove his car toward them. A witness statement appears to back up their version of events.

According to the indictment, Frederick and Rhinewalt said this killing “was necessary to protect himself from great bodily harm or death at the hands of Lewis,” but the indictment concluded that was “not a reasonable belief under the circumstances.”

Lewis’ mother, Arkela, questioned why the officers, instead of being indicted for murder, were charged with manslaughter, defined under Mississippi law as killing a person without malice. “That’s crazy,” she said.

Frederick was released on a $10,000 cash bond on April 28, two weeks before he married Bailey’s daughter, Alexis. Frederick is set for trial Sept. 15, and Rhinewalt’s trial is set for Dec. 8.

After his indictment, the Scott County Sheriff’s Department put Frederick on administrative leave without pay. In an April 21 letter, Scott County Sheriff Mike Lee wrote that he didn’t know if Frederick would be retained.

That same month, the Department of Public Safety released Rhinewalt. He has also been indicted along with former Capitol Police officer Jeffery Alan Walker Jr. in the Aug. 14, 2022, shootings of Sinatra Rakim Jordan and Sherita Lynn Harris — six weeks before Lewis’ killing. The indictment accuses the officers of “manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life” in the shootings. Both officers have pleaded not guilty to the aggravated assault charges.

In the wake of these shootings, the department requested funding to purchase body cameras and now requires all Capitol Police officers on patrol to wear them. In addition, the department created an Internal Affairs Division that covers the entire agency and reports to the commissioner, who worked with lawmakers to give the Board of Law Enforcement Officers Standards and Training the power to investigate complaints against law enforcement officers.

Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said Internal Affairs now conducts uniformed background checks for all of the agency’s new law enforcement hires. In addition, he said the department will hold its first agency-wide cadet class in February to help ensure that all its officers are receiving the same training and understand the agency’s policies before beginning their career with the department. 

In the past, the department and the divisions it oversees have operated out of multiple headquarters. In 2026, the department plans to move into a new, 146,000-square-foot headquarters in Rankin County, where all divisions will be under one roof. 

Tindell said that consolidating all personnel into a single place will not only improve day-to-day communication and collaboration across divisions but will also enhance critical communication during emergencies and improve overall safety for all of Mississippi.