OurTupelo

STARKVILLE — Tears well up in Donna Steelman’s eyes as she looks out at her flower garden, wilted from the first November frost, remembering her three closest friends. 

One passed away from cancer two years ago. Another is currently battling a terminal illness. The third is incarcerated in a facility 80 miles away, with an infection she fears could one day kill her, though it is highly curable. Steelman prays her friend — “one of the few I’ve got left alive” — will be released from prison, but worries her homecoming will be bittersweet. 

“I’ll probably have to take care of her, and watch her suffer, too,” Steelman said.

Her friend, Colleen, who asked that her name be changed due to a fear of retaliation from within the state’s prison system, is incarcerated at Delta Correctional Facility, a women’s prison in Greenwood. Medical records show that the 56-year old woman has chronic hepatitis C — an infection that can be cured in more than 95% of cases with an eight- to 12-week course of medication — but she has not received the treatment. She was diagnosed nearly two years ago. 

Medical staff told Colleen that her condition is not severe enough to warrant treatment, she said to Mississippi Today. Delaying treatment runs counter to recommendations from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the Federal Bureau of Prisons.

Most people with hepatitis C do not have symptoms, making the infection difficult to detect and hampering opportunities for early precautions to prevent its spread. The disease progresses slowly and about 1 in 4 people will spontaneously clear the infection without treatment, providing little incentive for prisons to administer treatment — which can cost tens of thousands of dollars for a single course — to patients when they are first diagnosed.

But left untreated, hepatitis C can wreak havoc on the immune system, yellowing skin and the whites of eyes from jaundice, bringing blood vessels that resemble a spider’s web to the surface of the skin and causing joint pain that renders some people immobile. Its long-term health consequences, such as liver failure and cancer, are life-threatening.

“It’s curable, but if you don’t offer treatment, for many people, it’s a death sentence,” said Lara Strick, a clinical associate professor at the University of Washington who also oversees the hepatitis C program in Washington’s state prison system.

Colleen is one of hundreds of people incarcerated in Mississippi diagnosed with hepatitis C who have not received treatment. A Mississippi Today report published earlier this year showed that only a fraction of over 800 people with documented hepatitis C diagnoses — less than 6% — received treatment between January and March of this year. 

House Corrections Committee Chairwoman Rep. Becky Currie, who has spent the past year pushing for reforms to health care in Mississippi prisons, previously called the prevalence of untreated hepatitis C in carceral facilities “a public health crisis.” 

At Delta Correctional Facility, there were 72 people with documented diagnoses of a total population of about 450 people — or 1 in 6 people — during that three-month period, according to public records. Across the entire state prison system, only 48 people received treatment out of about 19,000 people incarcerated by the state.

And in private, officials have sometimes cited a much higher caseload than public records show — as many as 5,000 prisoners and staff living with hepatitis C. Records from early 2025 show 845 people living with the disease, suggesting that documents may reveal only a sliver of a more widespread hepatitis C problem in Mississippi’s prisons. 

The Mississippi Department of Corrections did not respond to a request for comment for this article. But spokesperson Kate Head previously told Mississippi Today that the company the agency contracts for medical services “is responsible for providing appropriate medical treatment to inmates with all medical conditions, including Hep C.” 

Kansas-based VitalCore Health Strategies, LLC, the company that holds a three-year, $357 million contract to provide medical care to Mississippi prisoners, did not respond to a request for comment. 

Colleen said she does not know when, or if, her condition will merit treatment. 

“I just don’t want it to be too late,” she said. “I don’t want to die in here.” 

Left in the dark

Steelman and Colleen became fast friends when they were just 19. They spent their days smoking marijuana and riding around town together, according to Steelman, a routine that came to a halt when she graduated from a radiography technology program and moved to Jackson to work at a hospital. Colleen stayed in Starkville, and the friends lost touch. 

The women reconnected in their 30s when Steelman moved home. In the years leading up to Colleen’s prison sentence, they were inseparable. 

“She’s one of those people when you see her, it’s like you were with her yesterday,” said Steelman. “It’s not like it’s been a couple years or something.” 

But their time together was cut short. Colleen went to prison in 2023 after receiving a 20-year prison sentence for selling drugs. About four months into her sentence, she was diagnosed with hepatitis C. 

Hepatitis C abounds in state prisons in the United States, where its prevalence is about nine times greater than the general population. This is due in part to the fact that risk factors for the infection, like injecting drugs, are the same as those that make people more likely to face incarceration, Dr. Anne Spaulding, an associate professor of epidemiology at Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health who studies hepatitis C in prisons, previously told Mississippi Today. 

Colleen said she does not know how much damage the infection has caused to her liver. Medical staff do not share information about the disease’s progression, she said, leaving her largely in the dark about her condition. She receives “chronic care” check-ups every three months. 

In a year, she lost over a fifth of her body weight — a dramatic decline documented in her medical records — falling to 120 pounds in July. Colleen said her weight loss has continued since the summer.

“What are they going to do when I get down to 98?” she asked.

Weight loss is a possible symptom of hepatitis C, but it can be caused by a number of other factors. The only way to determine if a symptom like significant weight loss is connected to hepatitis C is to treat the infection, Strick said. 

The Department of Corrections’ hepatitis management policy obtained by Mississippi Today says it will provide treatment for people with hepatitis C diagnoses “when indicated.” But the Mississippi Department of Corrections has repeatedly declined to share information about how it determines which cases are worthy of treatment.

The limited information medical staff have shared with Colleen’s condition may be due in part to physicians’ own limitations on assessing the disease’s progression. 

It is difficult for doctors to determine the degree of damage hepatitis C has caused to a patient’s liver based on laboratory results until the disease is advanced, which is one reason it is best practice to treat the infection immediately, Strick said. By the time the test results clearly show liver scarring, the disease can have a higher risk of progressing to liver cancer or failure. 

“At that point, the harm is already done,” Strick said.

With little information about her own health, Colleen said she relies on Steelman, who has worked to obtain a copy of her medical records, researched her condition and contacted lawmakers to tell Colleen’s story in the hopes they might enact policy to help her. 

“She’s like my sister,” Colleen said. “Since I’ve been in here, she’s been my voice out there.” 

A ‘missed opportunity’

Colleen said the burden the infection has had on her mental health has been significant. 

“It makes me feel depressed,” she said. “Because, I mean, if I was at home, I could be treated.”

Untreated illness can also have severe mental health consequences for patients, Strick said, spurring “mental anguish” tied to not knowing what is causing one’s symptoms.

Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain said at a Sept. 24 legislative budget hearing that medical care is an important aspect of ensuring stability for people incarcerated in state prisons. 

“We have to doctor all the people that’s sick,” he said. “We stay on top of them about it because it’s also a stability thing for prison. If inmates are not seeing the doctor, then they’re complaining and griping and they’re upset and their families are, too. So it destabilizes us.” 

But Mississippi Today’s Behind Bars, Beyond Care series has uncovered alleged recurring instances of denied health care in Mississippi prisons, such as an untreated broken arm that resulted in amputation and delayed cancer screenings one woman said led to a terminal diagnosis. 

Incarcerated people also have a constitutional right to health care under the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.” But in Mississippi, prisoners have fought for years for access to the highly effective antiviral medication — a “miraculous” treatment, in Strick’s words — for hepatitis C. 

Not treating illnesses also has consequences after incarceration, spurring more instability for patients when they come home, experts said. 

Dr. Shira Shavit, a clinical professor of family and community medicine at the University of California in San Francisco and the executive director of the Transitions Clinic Network, said failure to treat patients for diseases like hepatitis C while they are in prison is a “missed opportunity” that can help infectious disease spread and undermine a successful reentry process. 

“If people are sick or have medical issues that haven’t been addressed, it really upends their ability to successfully reintegrate into the community,” she said. 

And not treating a highly contagious infection leads to further spread of the disease inside and outside of the prison. At least 95% of people incarcerated in state prisons will one day be released. 

“From a public health perspective, what we don’t want is diseases that may be concentrated with the incarcerated population spilling out into the general population as people come home,” State Health Officer Dr. Daniel Edney said in a presentation to the state Legislature on prison health care in January. 

‘You lose your humanity’

Steelman misses Colleen, who she has not seen in over two years. It’s hard to be so far away from one another, but she said she believes Colleen should be held accountable for what she did. 

“I know it’s wrong. And I had no problem — of course I didn’t want it — but I had no problem with them arresting her and sending her to the pen, because it was against the law, she knew it was and she did it.”

But just as Colleen should be held accountable for her actions, Steelman said she believes Mississippi must uphold its constitutional responsibility to provide Colleen with medical care. 

Watching Colleen suffer — physically and mentally — from the dearth of care she has received has been heartbreaking, Steelman said. It has changed her perspective on law enforcement and the prison system, in spite of her background growing up in a law enforcement family and her deep patriotism. 

“I don’t see what I used to see,” Steelman said. “And I don’t like feeling that way … I did not know that they knew people were suffering. And they didn’t care.”

Steelman has one son and five grandsons. Ever since they were little, she said, she taught them to own up to their mistakes and bear the consequences of their actions. Colleen’s experience in the prison system — which Steelman sees as devoid of grace or forgiveness — has changed that. 

“I don’t tell them that no more,” Steelman said. “Because I know if they go (to prison) and they need even basic medical care, they’ll never get it. Cause you lose your humanity. The whole state, everybody in it, doesn’t even see you as a human being anymore.”

Even with Colleen far away, Steelman thinks of her often. 

She stores a dozen porcelain heirloom “Gone with the Wind” dolls in a closet in her bedroom. They are one of the few possessions Colleen has lugged from house to house — “and trust me … she didn’t stay nowhere long,” Steelman said — to remember her mother, who also suffered from severe liver scarring.

Two years ago, Colleen asked Steelman to sell the dolls and put the money from the sale into her commissary account so she could afford to make phone calls to her family and friends. 

“I just couldn’t sell those dolls. I just couldn’t do it,” said Steelman, who said she knew how much they meant to Colleen.

Steelman, who lives on a limited income, said she sent Colleen $200 — her grocery money — and went to the food bank. 

“When she gets out of prison, I’m going to be there with her doll collection,” she said. 

But Steelman anticipates that day could come with more sorrow. 

Colleen “will be the only long-time friend I have left,” she said. “And I’ll probably have to take care of her and watch her suffer, too. And that’s not right. And then, here she is. Could be fixed. It’s not cancer, it’s something that could be healed.” 

Evan Turnage worked for years as a top aide for some of the most powerful Democrats in Congress. Now, the Yale-educated attorney from Jackson is launching a primary challenge aimed at ousting one of the body’s most long-entrenched members.  

Turnage, 33, a former aide to Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York and Senate Conference Vice Chair Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, will challenge U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson. Thompson has represented the 2nd Congressional District covering Jackson and the Delta since 1993. Thompson, a civil rights leader and former chair of the House Select Committee investigating the Jan. 6th Capitol attack, is a towering figure in state and national politics. 

The intraparty contest between a millennial first-time candidate with a polished resume and a baby boomer who is one of the longest-serving members of the U.S. House could reveal generational and policy debates simmering among Democrats as the party aims to reclaim a House majority in 2026.  

Turnage has positioned himself as a generational challenger focused on affordability, economic power and what he calls a “come home agenda” centered on reversing Mississippi’s brain drain problem. 

“This is the poorest district in the poorest state in the country,” Turnage said in an interview. “It was that way when I was 1-year old, when Congressman Thompson was first elected, and it remains that way today. We need real plans for real change.”

In a statement to Mississippi Today, Thompson said his record speaks for itself.

“Elections were created to give people the ability to make a choice,” Thompson said. “I am confident that my record on behalf of the people of Mississippi’s Second Congressional District will speak for itself. I will continue to run my campaign the way I always have. I trust the voters of the district to make their choice.”

Mississippi’s 2nd Congressional District stretches from the Delta through much of Jackson and along the Mississippi River. It is majority Black and has been reliably Democratic for decades, a product of both demographics and court-ordered redistricting under the Voting Rights Act, a key provision of which is now before the Supreme Court. If federal law changes, some leading Republicans have suggested that Mississippi should redraw the lines of Thompson’s district in an effort to remove him from office. 

Turnage lived briefly in Cleveland as a child before returning to Jackson, attending Murrah High School in the Jackson Public Schools system. His parents, Ellis and Ellie Turnage, are both attorneys. His father spent much of his early career litigating Voting Rights Act cases in Mississippi, Turnage said, while his mother now serves as general counsel for Jackson Public Schools.

Turnage described a family story shaped by his parents’ experience as children during the first wave of school integration in Mississippi. His parents both drew from those memories to pursue careers in public service. His father went on to work on judicial redistricting in the 1980s, which helped elect more Black judges in Mississippi who had been disadvantaged due to unfair maps, Turnage said. His mother went on to work for Jackson Public Schools, one of the largest districts in the state.

But Turnage did not have grand designs on a political career from an early age. 

Initially planning a career in science, majoring in physics at Morehouse College in Atlanta, he ultimately chose law school. His decision to enter law school at Yale and the political worldview he adopted while in school were sharpened amid the rise of the Black Lives Matter movement. 

While the movement focused squarely on policing and criminal justice, Turnage said he became increasingly concerned with what felt like an element of the story that had been overlooked: the economic conditions underlying inequality.

“I was equally enraged that a Black man in America felt he had to sell loose cigarettes,” Turnage said, referencing the 2014 death of Eric Garner in New York. “Missing from the conversation was economic rights.”

At Yale, Turnage was also a classmate of Lina Kahn, who would go on to become former President Joe Biden’s Federal Trade Commission chair. Turnage’s proximity to Kahn offers a window into his policy background and the way he might try to frame his agenda on the campaign trail. 

Kahn is credited with ushering in a resurgent interest in antitrust and the way corporate concentration leads to unfairness in the economy, particularly amid the ever-growing power of American technology giants such as Amazon and Google. 

She is perhaps the leading intellectual architect behind the “Neo-Brandeisianists,” a group of legal scholars, think tanks and activists jockeying for influence within the Democratic Party. Drawing inspiration from the anti-monopolist work of 20th-century U.S. Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis, these Democrats see increasing corporate concentration in the economy as a threat to democracy and individual freedom. Bringing corporations to heel through stronger antitrust enforcement and redistributive tax policy is at the center of this approach.

Another central figure close to this faction is Sen. Warren of Massachusetts. After law school, Turnage worked for Warren, helping her draft legislation aimed at curbing corporate power, including the Price Gouging Prevention Act. He later served as a top lawyer for Sen. Schumer of New York, working on Democratic leadership priorities.

Turnage currently leads the Southern Justice Project at the Open Markets Institute, an antitrust-focused think tank that also counts Kahn among its former employees.

Turnage places himself firmly in the wing of the Democratic Party pushing for aggressive antitrust enforcement and consumer protections, arguing that corporate concentration is driving high prices and public distrust.

“Affordability is at the top of mind for people,” he said. “It’s not enough anymore to just say you’re a Democrat or you’re not Donald Trump. People want real plans.”

That perspective, Turnage said, informs his “come home agenda,” aimed at stemming Mississippi’s long-running brain drain. He hopes to win economic incentives for young people to stay in or return to the state. He has also pledged to refuse corporate PAC money, support a ban on stock trading by members of Congress and push for tighter campaign-finance rules.

Turnage pointed to Thompson’s vote against the For the People Act, a sweeping Biden-era Democratic voting rights and ethics bill. Thompson was the lone Democratic “no” vote against the legislation in March of 2021. Thompson, who has long been a defender of voting rights, said he worried that the independent redistricting provisions in the bill might threaten majority-minority districts. 

Thompson has built his influence through decades-long seniority. He chaired the House Homeland Security Committee and later led the House select committee investigating the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, making him the most visible Mississippi politician in national Democratic politics.

Turnage acknowledged Thompson’s stature but said incumbency would not deter him from mounting a challenge. 

“Nobody’s entitled to this seat,” he said. “It belongs to the district, and they decide every two years who gets to hold it.”

Another candidate in the race, Bennie Foster, originally filed paperwork to run as a Democrat. He has since changed and is running as independent.

On the Republican side, Adams County Supervisor Kevin Wilson announced last week that he plans to challenge Ron Eller, who is running again for the GOP nomination after losing to Thompson by nearly 25 points in 2024.

Correction: Bennie Foster since his original filing to run for office has switched to run as independent. An earlier version of this story incorrectly stated his party affiliation.

Missisisppi’s appeals court on Tuesday rejected the state attorney general’s office request to vacate its decision to free a man, who later received clemency, for spending five more years in prison than the maximum for his crime. 

On Dec. 11, a day after Gov. Tate Reeves commuted the sentence of Marcus Taylor, the attorney general’s office asked the Court of Appeals to vacate its Nov. 18 opinion and dismiss Taylor’s post-conviction appeal, arguing clemency rendered them moot.

Taylor was convicted in 2015 for a drug sale charge that was meant to have a five-year maximum sentence. Instead, he received 15 years. 

The 43-year-old father of two was released from prison last week, according to his attorney, Joe Hemleben. 

On Tuesday, Hemleben said the court’s decision could create a path to relief for those in prison serving illegal sentences, even while there is a time limit to filing post-conviction relief claims. 

In court filings opposing the attorney general’s motion, he argued that dismissing Taylor’s case would have left Reeves’ clemency order without legal basis. Reeves cited the appeals court decision in granting Taylor’s clemency.

“The State’s motion effectively asks this Court to subordinate the Judicial Branch to post-decision action by the Executive Branch,” the response in opposition states. “That position is incompatible with fundamental separation-of-powers principles. Executive clemency does not divest the judiciary of its authority to decide cases, issue opinions, or preserve precedent.” 

A dismissal could have also prevented Taylor from being able to seek compensation for his wrongful sentencing, his attorney argued. 

The attorney general’s office has 14 days to file an appeal of the Tuesday decision with the Mississippi Supreme Court.  

State lawmakers and leaders of Mississippi’s public colleges and universities are examining ways to increase the number of adults who complete some form of education after high school, land a job and earn a living wage. 

The initial conversations, held Wednesday and Thursday during a joint meeting of the state House and Senate committees on universities and colleges, will likely continue during the 2026 legislative session. 

Here are four key takeaways from the committee meetings. 

Some lawmakers want to tie state funding to public universities based on post-graduation student success 

The goal is to get a better value for taxpayers to ensure college students are getting the best benefit of their education and the state is getting a return on investment for them to enter the workforce, said Sen. Nicole Boyd, a Republican from Oxford and the Senate committee chair.

Higher education systems in some states, such as Texas, Tennessee and Florida, use a performance-based funding model. Their models reward institutions for graduating students, placing them in jobs with median wage earnings,  and helping high need populations succeed. 

“Effective funding formulas focus on success within a six-month period of graduation,” Nathan Oakley, senior policy director for ExcelinEd, a national nonprofit think tank, said during a presentation to legislators. The means of success include “whether a student has found employment, enlisted in the military or enrolled at another post-secondary intuition or program.” 

Legislators acknowledge that Mississippi’s eight public universities operate under a broken funding formula. The amount of state funding awarded to the Mississippi Institutions of Higher Learning has decreased from 35% to 26% in the past decade, said LeAnn Robinson, director of the Legislative Budget Office. Those colleges and universities now rely heavily on tuition to generate revenue. 

The IHL Board of Trustees is working with the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems to review and define metrics of success for each of its public universities, Commissioner Al Rankins said. IHL’s current funding is based on a broad approach that allows universities to receive equal funding regardless of enrollment growth or post-graduation success.  

With a recommendation from the center, IHL is considering a few formulas including one based on enrollment and tuition revenue in anticipation of an “enrollment cliff,” a decline in the number of high school students applying to state universities, Rankins said. 

Public university enrollment increases overall, but some institutions have seen declines

Overall, the state’s public universities saw a 2.7% increase in student enrollment with more than 81,961 students on campuses this fall compared to 79,817 students enrolled in fall 2024, according to an annual report by the IHL board. 

But there’s been a general decline in enrollment for the past decade at  Delta State, Mississippi University for Women, Alcorn State and Mississippi Valley State, Rankins said. 

Some of the state’s research institutions, including University of Southern Mississippi and Jackson State, have also seen a slight decline in enrollment in the past 10 years, Rankins said. 

Mississippi State University and University of Mississippi, the state’s flagship institutions, are the only two institutions that have seen a growth in enrollment in the past decade. Public universities have to be more intentional with the impending challenges of the enrollment cliff in the next few years, Rankins said. 

Legislators are considering offering financial aid to nontraditional students

Jennifer Rodgers, executive director of the state’s financial aid office, suggested a way to meet the state’s education attainment goals, boost its financial aid system and create job opportunities for working-age adults: creating the Mississippi Workforce Promise Program. 

Boyd and other lawmakers plan to propose legislation in January for an adult workforce grant program, which would be piloted at a few community colleges.

The program would involve providing grants for nontraditional students, including those older than 24 and not enrolled in school full time, who are pursuing a degree or credential.

The state does not offer financial aid to nontraditional students, but they make up a large portion of the state’s post-secondary population, Rodgers said. 

In recent years, the state has also redefined its educational attainment and workforce goals to get more college graduates to stay in Mississippi and contribute to its labor force and economy. In 2022, the state Chamber of Commerce and AccelerateMS, the workforce development office, launched Ascent to 55%, an initiative to get more than half of Mississippi’s workforce college educated by 2030, on par with the national rate. As of January, 48.7% of Mississippians ages 25 to 64 have a degree, credential or industry certification beyond high school.

The state has also outlined a number of job shortages in high-wage, high-demand fields such as nursing and health care technicians, IT and cyber security specialists, welders, electricians and plumbers and manufacturing trades, according to AccelerateMS. By 2035, the state would need to produce an additional 19,000 skilled workers for these in-demand fields. 

The Mississippi Workforce Promise Program could be a chance to tap into a group of students to educate or offer job opportunities or training, Boyd said. Other states such as Tennessee and Michigan have used similar grant programs to expand their workforce and lower barriers for students to get their degrees, training or credentials, Rodgers said. 

Adults who complete the program are students who would likely stay in the state, especially if they’ve established families or work in Mississippi, Rodgers said. 

Empowering Mississippians with financial literacy resources can help the state’s future economy 

Combined with Mississippi’s low median income of $56,820, the average federal student loan debt — $37,552 — creates the worst debt-to-income burden in the nation, said Apryll Washington, deputy director of the Mississippi Office of Student Financial Aid. 

More resources and support are needed to educate college students on financial literacy, said Jean Massey, executive director of Ascent to 55%. 

Mississippi requires high school students to complete a college and career readiness course with a financial literacy component to graduate. The course covers topics including budgeting, saving, credit and completion of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA.

But after high school, many students are then saddled with debt such as rent, credit card and loan payments, Massey said. Requiring first-year students to take a money management course at universities and colleges could be a strategy to improve graduates’ financial future and help Mississippi’s economy. 

“I think we have to empower our students,” Massey said. “We can partner with local credit unions, banks and nonprofits to provide expertise and mentorship. We can give students access to digital tools for how to track, monitor and spend their money.”  

State institutions including the University of Mississippi, Jackson State, University of Southern Mississippi and Mississippi College offer financial literary courses or coaching for students. But state higher education leaders must examine ways to ensure students are set up for success, Massey said. 

“We need to give choices and opportunities for students to move forward,” Massey said. 

Editor’s note: A dedication worship service will be held at 11 a.m. Saturday for the restored Christ Church, located in the Church Hill Community north of Natchez in Jefferson  County. The public is invited.

Since I was a child, I’ve always loved old things.

About a dozen years ago, I was in southwest Mississippi especially to look at Wyolah, an 1830s house that was for sale.

On my way to Wyolah, I turned a curve on Mississippi Highway 553 and saw something that grabbed my heart.

It was Christ Episcopal Church — down on its heels, but still elegant and classic.

Soon after that, my partner, John Norris, and I bought, restored and moved into Wyolah. Every time I drove by the church, it called out to me for help.

John and I soon became active members of the historic and beautiful church. It has pure Gothic Revival architecture, the congregation dates back to 1820, making it the oldest Episcopal congregation in Mississippi, and we loved being part of that community of faith.

Everyone agreed with us that the church deserved to be saved. But who would take charge?

By then I had completed work on the films, “The Help,” “Get On Up” and “The Girl on the Train” and had some free time. I volunteered to help.

I knew I could refer to experiences and contacts I made after college, when I worked several years as a building contractor.

Christ Church leaders gave me the go-ahead.

Two things kicked off my work. My friend and neighbor, the late Jinny Patterson, said she wanted more than anything to see the original cross put back on top of the church. To do that, we had to replace the leaking roof.

All that happened in 2019, just in time for the church’s bicentennial celebration in 2020.

Another close friend, The Rev. Ken Ritter, Christ Church’s vicar, was miserable on hot summer Sundays when he had to wear heavy clerical vestments. Of course, there was no air-conditioning. We had to have a climate control system. It was soon installed.

Many of the original windows were badly damaged. We found the source of the original stained glass and etched glass in Germany. Experts at Pearl River Glass Studio in Jackson made the windows look like new.

Other successes followed, including masonry and plaster repairs on the interior walls and ceiling. That work was done by Curtis Anderson of Natchez and Jose Ramirez of Ridgeland and their talented crews. Once again, the walls look like they are made of marble blocks.

Jose scraped the ceiling one day and found the original color of paint from 1856.

Also exciting was seeing the date of 1856 hand-written under a pew. Tom Vigil of Natchez found that when all the pews were removed from the church so that he could repair and paint them.

In fact, Tom had to re-create several pews because they were totally unusable.

The last major project was the church floor, which had been painted decades ago. We found the original color of the floor and put it back.

Other newly completed work includes a specially designed handrail up the front steps, a handicapped ramp, a larger organ, upholstery on the kneelers and the placement of the font and its pedestal at its original location near the church entrance.

Thanks to the generosity of dozens and dozens of people, all the beautiful work at Christ Church has been totally donated or paid for.

To commemorate the restoration, a rededication Eucharistic worship service will take place at 11 a.m. Saturday.

It will be led by The Right Rev. Dr. Dorothy Sanders Wells, the Episcopal bishop of the Diocese of Mississippi.

We invite everyone to attend the service and the free reception afterward. 

The church is located 12 miles north of Natchez at the intersection of Mississippi Highway 553 and Church Hill Road.

Christ Church has worship services conducted by The Rev. Samuel B. Godfrey at 2 p.m. on second and fourth Sundays and is growing as a congregation. We welcome new members.

Bishop Wells perfectly captured the purpose of the restoration when she said, “May God grant this worshipping community many, many more years to shine the light of Christ from this hill.”

Tate Taylor, an award-winning movie actor, screenwriter, director and producer, was born in Jackson. After graduating from the University of Mississippi, he worked in Memphis where he was fascinated by the filming of “The Firm.” That led to a career in film making, first as a production assistant in 1996 on the set of “A Time to Kill.” Later he directed “The Help” in 2011, based on a novel by his childhood friend, Kathryn Stockett. The film, nominated for three Academy Awards, won the Best Supporting Actress Award for its star, Octavia Spencer. Other successful films are “Get on Up” in 2014, “The Girl on the Train” in 2016, “Ma” in 2019 and “Breaking News in Yuba County” in 2021. With a love for filming on location, Taylor is dedicated to bringing film making to Mississippi. His companies include Crooked Letter Picture Company and Sandbox Stages in Natchez, near his historic home in Church Hill.

As immigrants in southeastern Louisiana and Mississippi braced for this month’s U.S. Homeland Security operation, Cristiane Rosales-Fajardo received a panicked phone call from a friend.

The friend’s Guatemalan tenant, who didn’t know she was pregnant, had just delivered a premature baby in the New Orleans house. The parents lacked legal residency, and the mother refused to go to a hospital for fear of being detained by federal immigration officers.

“There’s blood everywhere, and the baby’s dead,” Rosales-Fajardo recalled her friend saying. Rosales-Fajardo put on her sandals, grabbed surgical gloves, and rushed to the house.

Rosales-Fajardo, herself an immigrant from Brazil, is a grassroots organizer and advocate in the New Orleans East community, where many immigrants live. She has no formal medical training, but she has experience with delivering babies.

She scanned the room when she arrived. A 3-year-old child stood to one side while the mother sat on the edge of the bed. The father held their swaddled newborn son, who wasn’t breathing and was wrapped in blood-soaked towels.

“The baby was completely gray,” Rosales-Fajardo later said.

Rosales-Fajardo wiped fluid away from his small mouth and rubbed his back before performing tiny chest compressions and breathing air into his lungs.

She told the parents she had to call 911 to get the mother and newborn to a hospital for care. The baby was out, but the delivery wasn’t over.

“I assured her. I promised her that she was going to be safe,” Rosales-Fajardo said.

Fear hung over the room. Still, she made the call and continued performing CPR. Finally, the newborn revived and squirmed in Rosales-Fajardo’s arms. When the ambulance arrived, the mother tried to keep her husband from riding with her, terrified they would both be arrested.

He went, anyway.

“These are hard-working people,” Rosales-Fajardo said. “All they do is work to provide for their family. But they were almost at risk of losing their child rather than call 911.”

Putting Safety Over Health

Nearly two weeks into the Department of Homeland Security’s Operation Catahoula Crunch, which launched Dec. 3, health professionals and community advocates in Louisiana and Mississippi report that a significantly higher-than-usual number of immigrant patients have skipped health care appointments and experienced heightened stress levels.

According to a press release, DHS said it had arrested more than 250 people as of Dec. 11. Though federal officials say they’re targeting criminals, The Associated Press reported that most of the 38 people arrested in the first two days of the New Orleans operation had no criminal record.

Since President Donald Trump took office in January, immigrant families nationwide have become more likely to skip or delay health care, due in part to concerns about their legal status, according to a recent survey by KFF and The New York Times.

The survey found that nearly 8 in 10 immigrants likely to be living in the U.S. without legal permission say they’ve experienced negative health impacts this year, from increased anxiety to sleeping problems to worsened health conditions such as high blood pressure or diabetes. The federal immigration raids in California, Illinois, North Carolina, and now Louisiana and Mississippi add to the health care barriers that these families already face, including access to services, language barriers, lack of insurance, and high costs. That hesitancy to receive even emergency care appears justified amid the ongoing raids.

Hospitals and health facilities generally must allow federal agents in areas where the public is allowed, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. In California this year, federal agents have staked out hospital lobbies, shown up at community clinics, and guarded detainees in hospital rooms. Even driving to and from appointments poses a risk, as traffic stops are a popular place for immigration agents to make arrests.

University Medical Center nurse Terry Mogilles said that immigrants typically make up at least half the patients in her orthopedic trauma clinic in New Orleans, many of them with construction-related, bone crushing injuries that require surgery. But now, Mogilles said, many of those patients aren’t coming in for follow-up appointments, despite the risk of infection.

“When we call, we can’t get through,” Mogilles said. “It is so upsetting because we have no idea what’s happening to them post-op.”

A Chill Spreads in the South

Federal officials said the Catahoula Crunch operation extends to southern Mississippi, though the bulk of the initial arrests have occurred in the Greater New Orleans area. Immigrant families throughout Mississippi are hunkering down in anticipation.

Michael Oropeza, the executive director of El Pueblo, a nonprofit serving low-income immigrant communities in Biloxi and Forest, said the organization has witnessed families delay care, cancel children’s checkups, and go without refilling medication.

“It’s not because they don’t value their health; it’s because they don’t feel safe,” Oropeza said. “When hospitals and clinics are no longer that safe place, people withdraw trust that took years to build up. It can disappear overnight.”

Maria, a Biloxi resident from Honduras, said, in Spanish, she and her two children have missed routine doctors’ appointments because they are “terrified” to leave the house amid an increased presence of federal immigration officers. Her husband, who is authorized to work in the U.S., was detained for two months this year.

Her children are U.S. citizens. They previously qualified for Medicaid, but Maria opted to disenroll them three years ago out of concern that using public benefits would jeopardize her family’s residency applications, she said. The family now pays for their children’s care out-of-pocket.

When it feels safe to attend doctors’ appointments again, Maria said, her priority will be seeking mental health care to address the stress her family has endured.

“I definitely need to see a doctor to get checked out, because I don’t feel well,” she said, describing her anxiety, depression, and insomnia.

In Louisiana, Marcela Hernandez of Familias Unidas en Acción, a nonprofit that provides direct aid to immigrants, said many of the families she works with live paycheck to paycheck. Sheltering at home and missing work only adds to the stress. Hernandez said she received 800 calls for food in two days from families afraid to leave home.

The federal operation in Louisiana and Mississippi could last more than two months, according to the AP. The longer it goes on, Hernandez said, the more she worries evictions will come next as people can’t pay rent, further traumatizing a community whose members often had to make difficult and dangerous journeys to flee hardships in their countries of origin to reach the U.S.

“You don’t leave your country knowing that you’re gonna get raped on the way just simply because you wanna come and meet Mickey Mouse,” she said.

Rosales-Fajardo, who runs a nonprofit called El Pueblo NOLA, said families tell her how children have started urinating on themselves due to stress and fear. Nationally, immigrants who are likely to lack legal status report that some of their children have had problems sleeping and that they’ve seen changes in school performance or behavior, according to the KFF and New York Times survey.

Community groups said they hope people step up locally to deliver food and hygiene products to immigrant homes, and that health care professionals provide more at-home or telehealth visits.

Like at other hospitals, UMC’s waiting rooms are considered public spaces, Mogilles noted. But the nurses union is calling for the hospital to create safe spaces for patients that federal agents can’t access and clearer policies to protect health care workers who shield patients. Post-op appointments can’t be done virtually, so patients need to feel safe enough to come in, Mogilles said.

Prenatal and postnatal care is also challenging to provide virtually, leaving the health of new and expecting mothers vulnerable, said Latona Giwa, the executive director of Repro TLC, a national sexual and reproductive health training nonprofit.

Since the Chicago immigration sweeps began in September, Giwa said, the clinics and health providers her organization works with have reported that 30% of patients had missed appointments. She said pharmacies saw a 40% drop in medication pickups.

“What we know about management of chronic conditions, especially in pregnancy, but in general, is that even missing one appointment can impact the trajectory of that condition and worsen a patient’s outcomes,” Giwa said.

In Louisiana, which already has poor maternal health outcomes, the fear of arrest could exacerbate the crisis worsened by the overturning of Roe v. Wade and threaten lives. She’s especially concerned about families with preterm babies in the neonatal intensive care unit, or NICU.

“Imagine your child is in the hospital, and so vulnerable, and you are terrified to go visit and care for your newborn infant because you’re worried about being deported,” Giwa said, noting that a newborn’s health partly relies on parental visits.

That’s the position the Guatemalan family in New Orleans is navigating.

On a recent day in December, Rosales-Fajardo acted as the family’s translator and advocate on their first visit to see their son in the NICU at a hospital on Lake Pontchartrain’s Northshore. Hospital staffers told the parents they would need to make the long and risky trip to the hospital repeatedly for at least a month to provide skin-to-skin contact and breast milk.

Rosales-Fajardo drove the parents, who were afraid to travel alone out of fear of being pulled over and arrested on a bridge. She said she’ll keep driving them as long as she needs to.

“Whenever they see a Hispanic driving or anything like that, that’s suspicious to them,” she said of federal agents.

But the baby is safe and healthy. And the parents have named Rosales-Fajardo his godmother.

Gwen Dilworth of Mississippi Today and Christiana Botic of Verite News contributed to this report.

HATTIESBURG – Brand new Southern Miss head football coach Blake Anderson, introduced to a ballroom-full of enthused Golden Eagle fans here Monday afternoon, faces extremely difficult tasks, both immediate and long-term.

The immediate: His Eagles, who lost three of their final four regular season games, have little more than a week to prepare a date with the Western Kentucky Hilltoppers in the Dec. 23 New Orleans Bowl. 

Long-term: As it stands now, Anderson must replace 32 seniors – including 18 of 22 starters – before the 2026 season in which USM faces Auburn and Tulane in September road games. 

The good news at Southern Miss: Anderson, a 56-year-old Texan, has been there and done that before. What’s more, he has done it twice. Athletic director Jeremy McClain was absolutely correct when he called Anderson “the most accomplished head football coach we’ve ever hired at Southern Miss.”

And, yes, that includes Charles Huff, who recently departed Hattiesburg for Memphis. Huff had won one NCAA Division I conference championship before taking the job here. Anderson has won three.

“I am the right guy for this job,” Anderson said. “I am supposed to be here, We will not waste this opportunity.”

For the most successful coaches in Southern Miss history – Thad “Pie” Vann, Bobby Collins and Jeff Bower – the job here was their first crack at being a head coach. Anderson has 10 seasons as a Division I head coach under his belt – seven at Arkansas State and three at Utah State. Nine of those 10 seasons ended with bowl games. Three ended with conference championships.

The first goal for any Southern Miss coach is to win the Sun Belt Conference championship. Anderson, at Arkansas State, already has won two, plus another division championship. He also won the Mountain West Conference championship at Utah State. 

Dive deeper his two previous head coaching jobs and you find in each case Anderson inherited less than ideal situations. Arkansas State had five coaches in the previous five seasons before Anderson took over. In his second year there, Anderson won nine games and the Sun Belt title.

At Utah State, Anderson produced one of the most dramatic turn-arounds in college football history. He inherited a team that had won one game the previous season. Anderson’s first Utah State team won 11 games, including a 24-23 win over Oregon State in the LA Bowl.

Anderson was no stranger to Southern Miss when he joined Huff’s staff as offensive coordinator before this past season. He had served four seasons (2008-2011) as first the quarterbacks coach and the offensive coordinator. In fact, he was the play-caller on the last Southern Miss team to win a conference title in 2011, serving under Larry Fedora. Those Golden Eagles won a school-record 12 games, averaged 36 points a game and stunned undefeated and seventh-ranked Houston at Houston 49-28 for the Conference USA championship. That Houston team would go on to trounce Penn State in the Cotton Bowl. That USM team would beat Nevada in the Hawaii Bowl.

Those four previous years in Hattiesburg were a primary reason Anderson joined Huff’s staff last year, he said. “There’s a sense of family here that you don’t have everywhere,” Anderson said. “This is a place I loved and really enjoyed my time here.”

Anderson said he has learned from his two Hattiesburg experiences, both under Fedora and Huff. Indeed, he had nothing but praise for Huff. He called Huff as “meticulous and detail-oriented” as anyone he had ever been around and added, “I wouldn’t be surprised to see him coaching for a national championship somewhere down the line.”

As for Anderson, 24 hours in a day aren’t enough currently, between recruiting, hiring assistants, preparing for a bowl game and getting ready for the two-week transfer portal window that begins Jan. 2. He talked like a man who relishes the task.

“Nobody is gonna out-work us, I promise,” he said. “I’ve done this before.”

RIDGELAND – Two child-sized bikes stood propped at the end of a driveway next to a house in a mobile home community last week. A poinsettia garland twined around a staircase bannister, and a red and gold Christmas wreath adorned the facade. A grey and white cat mewed at the front door, asking to be let in. No one answered a knock at the door. 

Federal immigration enforcement detained the family that lived at the house in Harbor Pines Mobile Home Community — a mother, father, and at least two young children — on Dec. 4, a neighbor told Mississippi Today. 

A video circulated among neighbors that morning showed several people, including one wearing a law enforcement vest, approaching the home. The video, along with accounts of families detained by immigration enforcement shared on social media in the area, has kindled fear among some members of the community. 

Rick McKay, who has lived in Harbor Pines for about 20 years, said he wasn’t aware of the arrests but that the neighborhood has been quiet lately, possibly due to a fear of intensified immigration enforcement. 

“It might be a little quiet, but it’s winter,” he said. 

Fear and uncertainty are spreading through immigrant communities across Mississippi as reports emerge of immigration agents detaining individuals and families. Although this month’s arrests have been more sporadic than those in nearby Louisiana — where federal agents launched the latest immigration crackdown Dec. 3 — their effects have swiftly rippled throughout Mississippi.

The number of people detained in Mississippi is unknown publicly. Immigration and Customs Enforcement did not respond to Mississippi Today’s request for comment Friday. And, it’s unclear how or if the recent arrests made in Mississippi are connected to the operation based in New Orleans, dubbed “Catahoula Crunch.” 

Tracking arrests of people swept up by federal immigration agents has proven difficult for advocates and families because the agencies directing the crackdown have offered little information about the operation. Nor have local and state law enforcement, even though some have agreements to cooperate with ICE.

Catahoula Crunch, also referred to as Operation Swamp Sweep in planning documents, is the U.S. Department of Homeland Security’s third major immigration enforcement action this year, following Midway Blitz in Chicago and November’s Charlotte’s Web in Charlotte, North Carolina. Early reports showed the campaign aimed to arrest roughly 5,000 people across Louisiana and southeastern Mississippi.

Federal agents have made more than 250 arrests across southeast Louisiana this month, according to The Associated Press. 

DHS said the sweep in New Orleans continues its efforts to arrest “rapists, thieves, gang members, human smugglers, and abusers,” though an AP report identified criminal histories for less than a third of the 38 people arrested in the operation’s first two days. 

Some Mississippi leaders, including Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, have embraced the operation, while immigrant communities and advocates said they are bracing themselves.

“We support the president’s efforts in trying to get law and order in our state and in our country,” Reeves said to WAPT Nov. 21.

Lea Campbell, an Ocean Springs resident and member of the Mississippi Gulf Coast Mutual Aid Collective, said the community advocacy group has seen an increased presence of federal immigration officers on the Coast.

“We kind of are preparing for the worst,” Campell said.

‘Something better for their daughters’

Debbie Pierce is one of five women who founded Adelante, a Jackson-based group that provides support to the immigrant community. In recent weeks, she said members have learned that several people they were assisting were detained by ICE, leaving behind empty cars. 

The group is also supporting a Brandon woman caring for three children younger than 3 after immigration agents arrested their mother at the end of November while she was on her way to work. ICE records show the woman, Ana Lucas-Pedro, is detained at the Richwood Correctional Center in Monroe, Louisiana. 

Kitzia, an Adelante member who asked to be identified by her first name, said she has taken donations of food and diapers to the neighbor and children. 

“I don’t think she was prepared in any way, shape or form,” Kitzia said of the mother. She said the same of the stand-in caretaker, who is now burdened with caring for three children in addition to her own.

In Ridgeland, a neighbor who asked to remain anonymous for fear of being targeted by law enforcement, identified one person arrested at Harbor Pines Mobile Home Park as Rolando Quintero de la Cruz. ICE records show he was born in Mexico and is being held at the LaSalle Detention Facility in Jena, Louisiana. 

His wife, Jennifer Luis-Hernandez is being held at the South Texas Family Residential Center in Dilley, Texas, according to ICE records. Mississippi Today was not able to locate the children, and immigration detention records are not available for minors.  

ICE did not respond to questions about how many people, or if any children, were detained in the arrest. 

The South Texas Family Residential Center was built in 2014 to house families, but President Joe Biden’s administration halted the practice of family detention, and the facility held only adults until it closed in 2024. It reopened in March, retrofitted to house children again. 

The family moved to the U.S. a few years ago to improve their quality of life and “look for something better for their daughters,” Maricruz Nostroza Dionisio, a family friend, said in Spanish in a message to Mississippi Today. 

Alex Gibert, a spokesperson for the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services, said the process for bringing any child, regardless of immigration status, into state custody remains the same. 

Concern for a child’s safety would need to first be reported to a statewide hotline, which would lead the department to conduct an investigation, she said in a Friday statement. From there, the agency can make recommendations for the youth court, and a judge can issue a custody order. 

How sightings affect the community

Immigration agents in unmarked vehicles and vests have been spotted from the Jackson metro area to the Coast, community advocates say. 

Campbell said people have seen an uptick of Customs and Border Protection vans and trucks, especially by exits along Interstate 10, and in downtown Biloxi and Gulfport. 

Pierce, of Adelente, said agents have been seen in Canton, Madison and Pelahatchie in Madison and Rankin counties in central Mississippi. 

Jeremy Litton, an immigration attorney, said ICE or CBP agents continue to be seen in Forest, which is an hour east of Jackson, weeks after two back-to-back sightings of officers near businesses that serve the Latino community.  

The increased presence of federal immigration officials, paired with news of detainments, has led to some immigrants staying home and not attending school or church, advocates said. 

Michael Oropeza, executive director of El Pueblo, a nonprofit serving low-income immigrant communities in Mississippi, said the organization cancelled its annual Hispanic festival fundraiser and stopped holding in-person education events out of fear for the community. 

News of immigration raids ripples beyond the place where enforcement activity occurs, she said.  

“When there’s a raid in one town, fear is going to spread to others in real time,” Oropeza said. 

Advocates respond with aid, information

Advocates and community groups say they are helping immigrants in a variety of ways: bringing groceries to them so they don’t have to go to the store, offering assistance with transportation and connecting them to legal services. 

Pierce, of Adelante, is helping to tutor the children of immigrants in the Jackson area. She hopes the church they are using can continue to be a safe space for them. 

Campbell said volunteers for the Mississippi Gulf Coast Mutual Aid Collective take students home from a Biloxi afterschool program, so parents do not have to risk contact with immigration agents. 

The Gulf Coast group also collects information about the presence of immigration agents in public spaces and shares the reports through social media.

Community groups are also offering resources and education for the greater community, such as “know your rights” training. 

The presence of federal immigration officers in Mississippi creates a climate of fear that undermines immigrants’ sense of safety, even among those not directly being targeted, Oropeza said. 

“It just breaks down institutional trust with schools and hospitals and even local law enforcement, which is scary,” she said. 

If you have a news tip about the immigration enforcement presence in the state, please contact Mississippi Today on Signal at +1-601-281-8952. You can also email us at  info@mississippitoday.org or tips@mississippitoday.org.

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear the appeal of a Black death row inmate from Mississippi whose case was handled by a prosecutor with a history of dismissing Black jurors for discriminatory reasons.

A federal judge had previously overturned the murder conviction of the inmate, Terry Pitchford, but an appeals court reversed that ruling.

The justices stepped into the case involving the same prosecutor, former District Attorney Doug Evans, who was at the center of a high court case that resulted in a 2019 decision that overturned the death sentence and conviction of Curtis Flowers.

The case involving Pitchford will be argued in the spring.

U.S District Judge Michael P. Mills held that the judge who oversaw Pitchford’s trial didn’t give the man’s lawyer enough chance to argue that the prosecution was improperly dismissing Black jurors.

Mills wrote that his ruling was partially motivated by Evans’ actions in prior cases.

Pitchford was sentenced to death for his role in the 2004 killing of Reuben Britt, the owner of the Crossroads Grocery, just outside Grenada in northern Mississippi.

In Pitchford’s case, judges and lawyers whittled down the original jury pool of 61 white and 35 Black members to a pool with 36 white and five Black members, in part because so many Black jurors objected to sentencing Pitchford to death. Then prosecutors struck four more Black jurors, leaving only one Black person on the final jury.

The Supreme Court tried to stamp out discrimination in the composition of juries in Batson v. Kentucky in 1986. The court ruled then that jurors couldn’t be excused from service because of their race and set up a system by which trial judges could evaluate claims of discrimination and the race-neutral explanations by prosecutors.

When the Supreme Court ruled in favor of Flowers, Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote that Evans had engaged in a “relentless, determined effort to rid the jury of Black individuals.”

Flowers was tried six times in the shooting deaths of four people. He was released from prison in 2019 and the state dropped the charges against him the following year, after Evans turned the case over to state officials.

Evans resigned in mid-2023, after more than 30 years on the job and six months before the end of the four-year term he was then serving.

The Mississippi Court of Appeals has ordered a new murder trial for Tameshia Shelton, a 47-year-old mother of four who has long insisted on her innocence in the death of her sister’s boyfriend.

Judges vacated her conviction and ordered the new trial. The state attorney general’s office has not said whether it plans to appeal the ruling to the Mississippi Supreme Court.

“We are hopeful that the attorney general’s office will accept the Court of Appeals’ decision as final,” Shelton’s attorney, Sandra Levick, said. “After 10 long years in prison, it is time for Ms. Shelton, who did nothing wrong, to come home.  The charges should be dismissed.  If there is a new trial, the jury should hear all of the evidence, including the evidence of Ms. Shelton’s innocence that the original jury never heard.”

In 2024, Clay County Circuit Judge James Kitchens Jr. rejected Shelton’s request for a new trial, despite the state pathologist reversing his original ruling and saying the death was more likely a suicide.

The appeals court concluded Kitchens erred in denying Shelton’s request for a new trial. The court cited the pathologist’s reversal and the failure of defense lawyer Rod Ray to introduce the victim’s apparent suicide note into evidence at the murder trial.

Mississippi Innocence Project lawyers wrote that if it “offends the 8th and 14th Amendments to execute a person who could prove his actual innocence, then it offends the Constitution as well to consign her to prison for the remainder of her natural life for a crime she did not commit.” 

“It’s been a long time coming,” said Shelton’s sister, Shenikia. “Finally, I feel like our voice is getting heard and they’re seeing that an injustice was done. We’re extremely happy, and we’ve been thanking God ever since.”

She said her sister is “very happy and very excited” at the news.

In 2015, a Clay County jury convicted Shelton of murder in the 2009 shooting death of her sister’s 21-year-old boyfriend, Danelle Young. Shelton, who was sentenced to life, won’t be eligible for parole until 2043.

The prosecution never presented a motive for why Shelton would have killed Young.

In April 2022, Kitchens presided over the last of three days of hearings over whether Shelton deserved a new trial. Those hearings revealed evidence never shown to the jury, including an apparent suicide note Young wrote.

In 2009, forensic pathologist Dr. Liam Funte ruled Young’s death a homicide, basing that decision on the trajectory of the bullet from the front of the chest to the back “without significant deviation to left or right.”

Under questioning byLevick, Funte said at the time he had not seen that in a suicide, but he said he has seen such cases since and was “leaning toward suicide.”

In reversing the original ruling, he cited scientific studies on bullet trajectories in suicides and homicides. In one study, more than 36% of suicides had bullet trajectories that did not deviate to the left or right.

After a verbal argument in which Shelton’s sister said she told Young that she didn’t want to live with him, Young walked to Shelton’s trailer.

Shelton told authorities she was already in bed with her infant daughter when Young knocked on the window of the trailer. She went to the front door, and she said he told her that he only needed one bullet to kill a raccoon.

She said she replied that he might need more than one bullet and loaded her small .22 pistol and gave it to him.

After she heard a shot and he failed to return, she said she went outside, found him collapsed on the gravel driveway and called 911.

In the autopsy report, Funte concluded Young had been shot in the chest and that the gun was fired from less than an inch away.

Both he and another forensic pathologist, Dr. Randall Frost, demonstrated at hearings how the small gun could fire a self-inflicted shot, following the same path the bullet traveled through Young’s body.

Funte said he would now rule the death “undetermined.”

Kitchens never addressed the apparent suicide note in his 15-page decision. In that note, Young wrote, “I have no life without her (Shelton’s sister Ketina). … These are my last words. … Tell (your daughter) Treasure about me one day. Bye. Bye.”

At the hearing, Funte testified that the note would have been relevant to determining the manner of death.

“Considering the potentially exculpatory nature of this letter, we find it difficult to conclude that its absence did not prejudice Shelton’s defense,” Judge C.J. Barnes wrote for the appeals court in its 7-3 decision.

In his dissent, Judge John Emfinger wrote that a study provided by Shelton’s lawyers actually supports Funte’s original opinion of a homicide. That study showed that 82.4% of suicides were shots to the head and 16.3% were shots to the chest.

“So, according to that study, looking at those numbers, if it was a suicide, it would have been much more likely to be a shot to the head than to the chest, correct?” Special Assistant Attorney General Jackie Bost II asked Funte at the hearing.

“Yes,” Funte replied. “According to the study.”

This is why the trial judge determined that Funte’s change of opinion and the evidence used to support the changed opinion didn’t support reversal of the case, Emfinger wrote.

Updated 12/15/25: This story has been updated with comments from Shelton’s sister and attorney.