OurTupelo

Seldom in the history of the state has the Legislature passed laws, without being forced to by the federal courts, to make it easier for Mississippians to vote.

As COVID-19 spread in 2020, Mississippi legislators and election officials were criticized by national groups because of their nominal efforts to accommodate voters during the deadly pandemic. In the midst of the health scare, Mississippi legislators took one step to improve voter access.

Granted, it was a small step, but by Mississippi standards perhaps a landmark event. The Legislature amended state law to allow mail-in ballots to be counted if they arrived in the circuit clerk’s office within five days after Election Day.

Republican groups are now asking the U.S. Supreme Court to rule that a law passed by the Republican-dominated Mississippi Legislature is unconstitutional.

Never mind that Mississippi is one of only three states in the nation that does not allow some form of no-excuse early voting – in person, by mail or both. Never mind that many of the people who are allowed to vote by mail – if they have an excuse – must have two election documents signed in front of a notary public to do so. In many cases, the mail-in ballot request must be notarized and then the envelope that is used to return the ballot via mail also must be notarized.

So, in 2020, the small step of providing some protection to ensure mail-in ballots would be counted even if there was a postal office snafu was celebrated.

And it seems a bit perplexing that the Republican National Committee would challenge the five-day rule in Mississippi since many other states – 14 – had similar laws and in some cases have had the laws for some time. Even more states – 29 – allow military and overseas ballots that are postmarked by Election Day to be counted after Election Day, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. It is not clear what a Supreme Court ruling striking down the Mississippi law would do to the overseas and military ballots.

Most believe that if the law is found unconstitutional in Mississippi, it would mean the other states that allow mail ballots to be counted after Election Day – as long as they are postmarked on or before that day – also would be null and void.

Such a change could be important in a so-called swing state where the elections are often close and a few thousand late-arriving ballots could make a difference in determining the next president.

But the only problem with that thinking is that most of the states that allow late-arriving ballots to be counted are not swing states. Some are blue states while others are red. Nevada is perhaps the only swing state that allows late-arriving ballots to be counted if they arrive after Election Day, excluding the additional states that allow late-arriving military and overseas ballots to be counted.

The Mississippi five-day rule has a certain symmetry. After all, people who try to vote without the required government-issued photo identification have five days after the election to prove they are who they say they are. So, it makes a certain amount of logic to allow election officials to also count late-arriving ballots for five days as long as they were postmarked by Election Day.

Plus, the five-day rule must help a little for people voting by mail who must get two documents notarized.

Various groups have routinely listed Mississippi at the top or near the top in terms of the most restrictive states to vote.

Now, will the nation’s highest court rule that one of the state’s few efforts to improve access is unconstitutional?

Many acres of wetlands across the vast Mississippi River basin would lose federal protection under a new rule proposed by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. 

Agricultural and builders’ groups have called it a win for private property owners. Environmental groups warn that it will exacerbate costly challenges like flooding that already plague the river and its tributaries. 

The new rule, proposed Monday, is the latest in a convoluted, decades-long fight over which streams and wetlands qualify as “Waters of the United States” and thus are regulated by the federal government under the Clean Water Act. Environmental advocates claim more expansive federal protections are needed to preserve the country’s natural resources, while some farmers and homebuilders argue the government is overstepping its authority to control how they use their land. 

A landmark 2023 U.S. Supreme Court case, Sackett v. EPA, used a narrow definition to determine which wetlands get federal protections. EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin promised earlier this year that the agency would adjust its definitions to comply. The proposed rule delivers on that promise.

The proposal will be open for public comment for 45 days before it moves forward.

Wetland advocates are still parsing details of the proposal but say they’re concerned with the impacts it could have. 

“This does not help any of the issues the basin is facing,” said Kelly McGinnis, executive director of One Mississippi, a group that advocates for the river. “Whether we’re talking water quality and pollution, trying to mitigate the impact of the more frequent floods and droughts we’re seeing — removing even more wetland protections … is devastating.” 

States along Mississippi River have varied wetlands protections 

In Sackett v. EPA, a couple asked the Supreme Court to restrict federal regulations of wetlands so they could build a home on their northern Idaho property. The court ruled in their favor, saying only wetlands that have a continuous surface connection with another r protected water body — such as a permanent, navigable waterway — qualify for protections under the Clean Water Act. 

The Clean Water Act protects the “Waters of the United States” but it does not define them. That has fallen to the EPA, which has changed its definition repeatedly since the law’s passing in 1972. The murkiness and scope of the definitions has long frustrated stakeholders. 

In a news release, Zeldin said the new EPA rule follows the Sackett decision closely, granting protections only to wetlands that touch another protected water body and have visible water for at least part of the year.

Experts say a wetland is doing work even if it doesn’t usually have water in it or is isolated. The benefits of wetlands lie in their ability to relieve flooding, purify water, mitigate drought and provide wildlife habitat. Experts say in an era of increased storms, droughts and floods wrought by climate change, they’re needed now more than ever. 

Many groups have attempted to predict how many wetlands will lose protections following the Sackett decision, but the actual impact is yet to be understood. What is clear is that with more limited federal regulation, states will have different rules governing wetlands. 

Along the Mississippi River, Minnesota, Wisconsin, Tennessee and Mississippi have wetland protections that go beyond the Clean Water Act, a Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk analysis found. Mississippi, which has 4 million acres of wetlands, protects these areas beyond the federal progam with state laws, such as the Coastal Wetland Protection, which specially targets coastal areas.

Iowa, Illinois, Missouri, Kentucky and Arkansas do not have more protective wetland laws on the books. Louisiana extends state protections to its coastal wetlands, but not inland ones.

And state laws are still moving targets. Tennessee lawmakers, for example, voted this year to roll back protections that had been in place since the 1970s requiring developers and landowners to seek state permission and pay for mitigation before draining or altering isolated wetlands. In Illinois, where researchers have estimated about 72% of the state’s remaining wetlands could lose federal protections under Sackett, lawmakers have drafted legislation beefing up their state’s regulations, though they have not passed it, yet.

There are also unanswered questions about how the Sackett decision would affect areas along the Mississippi and other rivers where the river’s main channel is separated from the floodplain by built levees — a concern Justice Brett Kavanaugh mentioned directly in his concurring opinion on the case. 

Wetland-rich Louisiana, in particular, relies on manmade flood control structures to try and hold back floodwaters from low-lying communities. State legislation passed in 2025 made wetland areas behind levees ineligible for state protection. 

Should those areas lose federal protection, it opens them up to “a ton of risky development,” said Haley Gentry, assistant director at the Tulane Institute on Water Resources Law and Policy in New Orleans. 

“The reason to not build in a wetland shouldn’t have been, ‘Oh, you have to get this pesky federal permit,’” Gentry said. “It’s that wetlands flood … this is not creating more affordable housing, if you’re building risky homes in flood zones.” 

Mississippi River basin wetlands are already in trouble 

Groups like the American Farm Bureau Federation and the National Association of Manufacturers, whose members faced the potential of hefty fines if they altered federally regulated wetlands, have reacted positively to Zeldin’s proposed rule. 

The groups have complained that the previous definition, which was published in early 2023 and protected a broader swath of wetlands, left farmers confused about things like what constitutes a continuous surface connection between a wetland and a water body, said Courtney Briggs, senior director of government affairs for the American Farm Bureau Federation. 

“The fact that this administration has come in and given definitions to those terms already improves the situation significantly,” Briggs said. “It gives our farmers more confidence in using their own land.” 

Environmental groups, however, say that there will be consequences of the administration’s effort to make it easier for people to drain and fill wetlands for their own purposes. 

“They have, in this rule-making, completely ignored the costs of fewer wetlands and more polluted water to communities around the country,” said Mark Sabath, a senior attorney at the Southern Environmental Law Center.

In Mississippi, protecting wetlands is at the heart of the fight against the Yazoo Pumps, a flood relief project that the U.S Army Corps of Engineers has touted for decades. The project now also has the backing of the Environmental Protection Agency, whose veto killed a previous iteration in 2008 because of the pumps’ potential to harm 67,000 acres of valuable wetland habitat. In a Jan. 8 letter, the EPA wrote that proposed mitigation components are “expected to reduce adverse effects to an acceptable level.”

However conservationists, including a group of former EPA employees, are not convinced. 

The Mississippi River basin is home to many different types of wetlands, from Minnesota’s peatlands to the swamps of the Gulf South. In some places, they carry economic benefits of their own — like in Arkansas, where they provide crucial habitat for waterfowl that hunters spend big money to shoot. 

According to data from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, 132,000 acres of wetland across the basin were lost between 2009 and 2019, the equivalent of about 100,000 football fields. 

The last time EPA was reworking its definition of the“Waters of the United States,” in 2022, the  Mississippi River Collaborative, a consortium of environmental groups focused on the river,  wrote that the link between continued destruction of wetlands and increased nutrient pollution, a persistent problem for the Mississippi River, “is very clear.” 

“One cannot protect waters like the Illinois, Mississippi, and Ohio Rivers and the Gulf of Mexico without protecting wetlands and small streams,” they wrote. 

Alex Rozier with Mississippi Today contributed to this report.

This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation.

The Walton Family Foundation is also a Mississippi Today donor. Donors do not in any way influence our newsroom’s editorial decisions. For more on that policy or to view a list of our donors, click here.

After more than 25 years on death row in Louisiana, Jimmie Duncan inched one step closer to freedom Friday when Judge Alvin Sharp of the 4th Judicial District in Ouachita Parish granted him bail, setting it at $150,000.

The decision comes nearly seven months after Sharp vacated Duncan’s 1998 first-degree murder conviction for killing his former girlfriend’s 23-month-old daughter, Haley Oliveaux, finding that it was based in part on bite mark evidence now considered by experts to be junk science.

The Ouachita Parish District Attorney’s Office has opposed Duncan’s release, arguing that Duncan is guilty of the murder. But in his bail ruling, Sharp pointed to evidence that the girl, who drowned, was at risk of seizure, meaning she could have died accidentally while in the tub. Sharp also noted the lack of blood or semen at the scene, contradicting the state’s position that Duncan raped Haley. And, he wrote in the ruling, there was a video, not presented at the trial, that Duncan’s legal team has alleged is evidence that — along with being based on debunked science — the bite-mark analysis in the case may have been fabricated.  

The “presumption is not great” that Duncan is guilty, Sharp said.

“This ruling acknowledged the clear and convincing evidence showing that Mr. Duncan is factually innocent,” his attorneys said in a prepared statement. “Although Mr. Duncan’s ordeal is not over, today marks a significant step forward for Mr. Duncan’s complete exoneration.”

His attorneys said they were working to get Duncan out of prison over the weekend. 

This week’s ruling is yet another chapter in a nearly three-decade legal odyssey that has spotlighted Louisiana’s troubling history with wrongful convictions, as well as its long-held reputation as one of the country’s most punitive states.

As ProPublica and Verite News reported in March, Duncan’s conviction was based largely on now discredited bite mark evidence presented by forensic dentist Michael West and pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne, whose longtime partnership as state experts has been questioned following concerns about the validity of their techniques. West and Hayne also worked on several disputed court cases in Mississippi.

Over the past 27 years, nine prisoners have been set free after being convicted in part on inaccurate evidence given by West and Hayne. Three of those men were on death row. Duncan was the last person awaiting an execution based on the pair’s work.

Duncan, 56, has maintained his innocence since first being arrested in 1993 after Haley’s death. In the ensuing years, Haley’s mother, Allison Layton Statham, has come to support Duncan’s release. At Duncan’s first bail hearing in July, Statham testified that she believes Duncan to be innocent and demanded his release from prison.

Efforts to free Duncan have become even more urgent given the state’s recent moves, under conservative Gov. Jeff Landry, to restart executions following a lapse of more than a decade. 

Louisiana had not carried out a death sentence since 2010 as it has been unable to procure the drugs necessary for an execution. To overcome that obstacle, the state Legislature, at Landry’s urging, recently approved an alternative method: the use of nitrogen gas, a controversial method allowed in only three other states.

That opened the door to Louisiana’s first execution in 15 years. And on March 18, the state used nitrogen gas to put Jesse Hoffman Jr. to death. 

To criminal justice reformers, Landry’s execution push is even more concerning given the state’s history in convicting and sentencing to death people later found to be innocent. In the past three decades, the state has exonerated 11 people facing execution, among the highest such numbers in the country, according to The National Registry of Exonerations.

Despite Sharp’s finding in April that Duncan is factually innocent, Ouachita prosecutors continue to insist that Duncan raped and murdered Oliveaux and should be executed without delay. The district attorney’s office, in urging Sharp to keep Duncan locked up, has argued that Duncan is “a safety risk to not only the victim’s family, but also the general public.” The office has appealed the decision to the Louisiana Supreme Court. 

Duncan was arrested Dec. 18, 1993 after he reported finding Haley’s lifeless body floating in the tub of the home he shared with the girl’s mother in West Monroe. Duncan, who was babysitting that night, told authorities he had put the toddler in the tub to take a bath, then went downstairs to wash dishes. When he heard a noise coming from the bathroom, he rushed upstairs to check on her and found Haley floating face down in the water. She was pronounced dead a few hours later.

Prosecutors enlisted the assistance of Hayne, who had worked on hundreds of criminal cases in Mississippi and Louisiana over his decades-long career. Hayne conducted Haley’s medical exam and claimed he found evidence that she was sexually assaulted and intentionally drowned. He also claimed he found bite marks on her body.

Hayne’s frequent partner, West, then analyzed the marks and found that they were a match for Duncan’s teeth. Based in part on those findings, Duncan was charged with first-degree murder. After about two weeks of testimony in 1998, the jury found Duncan guilty and sentenced him to death.

Duncan’s post-conviction attorneys, however, later uncovered a trove of evidence which, they said, proves he is innocent and was wrongfully convicted, the most damning of which calls into question whether the bite marks Hayne said he found on Haley’s body were manufactured.

In a video of West’s 1993 examination of Haley — which was not shown to jurors at the trial — the dentist can be seen taking a mold of Duncan’s teeth and grinding it into the girl’s body. (West has previously said he was simply using what he called a “direct comparison” technique — in which he presses a mold of a person’s teeth directly onto the location of suspected bite marks.)

In his April ruling vacating Duncan’s conviction, Sharp said the work Hayne and West did on Duncan’s case was “no longer valid” and “not scientifically defensible.” Sharp also stated in his ruling that he found “very compelling” the September testimony of an expert medical witness who said that the child’s death was not the result of a homicide but of an accidental drowning. Prior to her death, Haley suffered several head injuries that could have caused seizures resulting in her drowning, according to the testimony.

Robert S. Tew, district attorney for Ouachita and Morehouse parishes, has argued that despite experts now dismissing bite mark evidence as “junk science,” it was an accepted methodology at the time of Duncan’s trial and that some experts still consider it to be valid. He has also noted that Hayne, who died in 2020, served as the pathologist for the district for over a decade and during that time “there has been no cases overturned because of Dr. Hayne’s autopsy.”

Tew’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment. 

An initial bail hearing for Duncan held in July was delayed after prosecutors filed a motion to recuse Sharp, claiming he was biased given his earlier decision to set aside Duncan’s conviction. Sharp declined the request. In an October ruling, the Louisiana Supreme Court rejected the state’s appeal in a 6-1 vote. The court has yet to take up the state’s appeal of Sharp’s decision to set aside Duncan’s conviction.

As of publication time, it was not clear when Duncan may be released. 

Full food assistance benefits are now being issued to recipients after a software glitch delayed the payments for a week, the Mississippi Department of Human Services announced Friday. 

“Clients can expect their total benefit balance to be available as soon as today,” the agency said in a press release. 

The slowdown was the result of a software system issue. December benefits are expected to be issued on time. 

The nation’s largest food assistance program was paused beginning in November after the federal government said it would not use emergency funds to pay for the program, even though benefits have continued to flow to states in past shutdowns. 

Confusion ensued after more than a dozen states sued the Trump administration for its refusal to issue benefits. Mississippi said it would begin issuing partial benefits Nov. 10 in accordance with guidance from the United States Department of Agriculture, the federal agency that administers the program.

The state Department of Human Services announced that food assistance benefits were set to resume as normal on Nov. 13 after the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history came to an end. 

About 1 in 8 Mississippians — over 350,000 people — receive food assistance through SNAP. More than 67% of participants are in households with children, and about 41% are in households with older adults or adults with a disability. In four Mississippi counties, over a third of residents rely on the program to purchase food, according to a report from WLBT.

The state Department of Human Services awarded a contract to Deloitte Consulting LLP to improve the agency’s software system in May. Most MDHS eligibility systems were created over 35 years ago, according to the press release announcing the award. The software upgrades are set to be complete in 2027, according to Jones.

MDHS encourages SNAP clients to check their account balance to confirm receipt of benefits. The agency also recommends registering for a ConnectEBT account and saving ConnectEBT to their cell phone home screen to change their PIN after every use to reduce the risk of fraud.

Editor’s note: 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.

On my first day of school in Mississippi, a boy pinned me to the ground and made me eat dirt. I was a California kid dropped into the Deep South in the 1980s and learned quickly that I didn’t belong. That moment set the tone for the rest of my years there.

My family was multiracial. My sister had been adopted from Korea. Back home, that didn’t raise eyebrows. In Mississippi, people would ask where we “got” her, as if she were something that came with a label. I saw people living in tarpaper shacks just down the road from our home in Madison.

Even as a kid I could feel something settled in the ground and in the air. A weight. A history. A tension that told me everything I needed to know without anyone saying it out loud. I understood early that the place was not built for someone like me.

When I finally left after seventh grade, I made myself a promise: I would never set foot in Mississippi again. And for almost 40 years, I’ve kept that promise. I planned my life around avoiding the state, even once choosing to vacation in Europe so I wouldn’t have to attend a company retreat in Biloxi. Mississippi was a closed chapter. A place I ran from and never looked back.

Then came Lane Kiffin.

The irony is obvious. I grew up in a UCLA and San Francisco 49ers household. Lane Kiffin is USC and the Raiders. He survived getting fired on an airport tarmac while coaching the University of Southern California football team. He survived Raiders owner Al Davis publicly dressing him down like he had no business holding a headset.

Yet, he looks calmer in Oxford than anywhere he has ever been. Maybe he has found his elusive peace in Mississippi. And I respect that deeply. Peace was not something Mississippi ever offered me.

Kiffin and I are opposites, but we share one thing. We have lived like vagabonds. Always on the move. Always trying to outrun something. For him, it was pressure, expectations and the shadow of his own potential. For me, it was a childhood I wanted to forget and a place I refused to return to. Mississippi wasn’t my place, but maybe it’s his. And there is something admirable about seeing a man find a home in the last place anyone expected.

He has made me rethink things I didn’t think were up for reconsideration. I find myself rooting for him to stay, and in a strange way, rooting for the people of Mississippi to win this one. LSU and Florida can circle all they want. I hope he stays right where he is.

I’m not saying I’m ready to book a ticket back or retrace the streets of my childhood. But I can say that I no longer feel the hard line I once drew. Mississippi will probably never be my place, but I can appreciate that it has become someone else’s. And in watching Lane Kiffin settle into the life he has built there, I’ve felt something I never expected.

A softening. A shift. A recognition that even the places we leave can still hold something worthwhile.

So, yes, I’m rooting for him to stay. I’m rooting for Ole Miss to keep its coach. And for the first time in my life, I’m rooting for Mississippi, too.

Lance J. Mayhew is a published author who writes about food, wine, travel and spirits. He runs a celebrity-backed gin distillery, appears regularly on Portland’s top-rated morning drive radio show and serves as honorary consul for the Republic of Namibia. He lived in Mississippi during the 1980s before building his career in the Pacific Northwest.