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A Hinds County grand jury has indicted the Madison man accused of setting fire to Mississippi’s largest synagogue on a charge of first-degree arson against a place of worship, an offense the state accuses him of committing because of its “actual or perceived religion.” 

Stephen Spencer Pittman,19, who usually goes by his middle name, is charged with burning the Beth Israel Congregation synagogue in northeast Jackson. He is alleged to have broken into the building before dawn Saturday and to have doused a lobby in gasoline before setting it on fire. The blaze charred parts of the building and left smoke damage throughout.

The Hinds County Circuit Court indictment was announced Tuesday, a day after Pittman’s federal arson charges were filed. While the federal government has not so far filed hate-crime charges against Pittman, the Hinds County indictment recommends that if he is convicted, his sentence be enhanced under a Mississippi law punishing “offenses committed for discriminatory reasons.” 

The state charges for arson of a place of worship carry a prison sentence of five to 30 years, as well as restitution for damages caused by the arson.

A Hinds County press release announcing the indictment says that because it “alleges the offence was motivated by hate,” Mississippi law allows enhanced punishment, including up to 60 years in prison, double the term otherwise permitted by law.

In an unusual move for local law enforcement, Pittman did not make an initial appearance in Jackson municipal court before his case was taken to a grand jury Monday.

The Hinds County indictment did not include a photograph of Pittman. Federal authorities also have not released a photo of him.

Pittman remained hospitalized Monday and his first appearance in federal court was done by video conference. He was accompanied by a federal public defender and at times appeared to be leaning back in a chair, gazing away from the camera. Both his hands were heavily bandaged. 

The prosecutor, Matt Allen, moved to have Pittman detained as he awaits trial. Pittman is scheduled to be released from the hospital Wednesday and to return to federal court for a preliminary hearing Jan. 20. 

If convicted on the federal charges, Pittman faces five to 20 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. 

The predawn fire Saturday was set in the same part of the one-story brick building that Ku Klux Klan members bombed in 1967 because the congregation’s rabbi supported civil rights. 

Federal investigators alleged in an affidavit that Pittman sent text messages to his father in the course of setting the fire on Saturday. The father pleaded for his son to return home, the affidavit says, but Pittman “replied back by saying he was due for a homerun and ‘I did my research.’” 

His father later contacted the FBI and provided GPS data showing Pittman was at the synagogue early Saturday morning. 

The son “laughed as he told his father what he did and said he finally got them,” says the affidavit from Nicholas Amiano, an FBI agent in Jackson. 

State leaders have condemned the attack, and the news also reverberated internationally. Harmeet Dhillon, the Justice Department’s assistant attorney general for civil rights, wrote on X that she was “personally involved and my team is in touch with the US Attorney’s office locally.”

Other officials who publicly condemned the attack include the Democratic leaders in Congress, Sen. Chuck Schumer and Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, and New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani. 

On Monday, U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson of Mississippi called on the FBI to investigate the incident as a federal hate crime.

In a news release Monday, U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi called the attack a “disgusting act of anti-Semitic violence,” but did not say whether federal prosecutors would seek to charge Pittman with a hate crime. 

“I have directed my prosecutors to seek severe penalties for this heinous act and remain deeply committed to protecting Jewish Americans from hatred,” Bondi said. 

Editor’s note: Federal and state authorities had not released a booking photograph of Stephen Spencer Pittman before publication of this article.

Editor’s note: This essay, which is republished with permission from Rooted magazine, 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.

Fire is an important and sacred part of Judaism. We light candles at the beginning and the end of the sabbath and one for each night of Hanukkah. We burn Yartzheit candles to remember loved ones on the anniversary of their deaths. We hold our fingertips up to the light of the braided Havdalah candle as we recite the blessing over the flame. Just last month, at our temple’s Hanukkah celebration, I looked around the darkened social hall at no less than a dozen lit menorahs and felt chills go down my spine. It was a beautiful sight. When the email went out Saturday morning that there had been a fire at the synagogue, and that our religious school would need to be held off-site the next day, I truly wondered if someone had left a candle burning overnight.

That evening, I learned that the fire was not started by a candle or a random electrical fire; it was arson. A man we now know to be the pimply and hateful nineteen-year-old Madison resident Stephen Spencer Pittman broke into my synagogue with an ax and set it on fire. There’s a video of him online now, his face covered with a mask, dousing the Beth Israel lobby with gasoline. I’m not sure how Pittman came to believe our small congregation of 150 families was the “synagogue of Satan” or how he reconciled his actions with his Christian faith. From what I’ve read, he is a shallow, unserious and sloppy young man whose interests included weightlifting and hating Jews. But none of that matters. What matters is that he chose gasoline and a fire torch. The flame followed the path of the accelerant. Nobody blames the fire for what happened next. The fire did what fires do: it burned.

Flames devoured the lobby, where our religious school kids grab their slices of challah and cups of apple juice from a rolling cart. The air inside the lobby was so hot that it busted out the glass of the lobby’s circular skylight. Among the photos of the wreckage, this image of the skylight was almost beautiful in its contrast and composition: the bright circle of daylight against the charred background of the ceiling.

The flames burned the administrative offices where sometimes I’d find a student sneaking a piece of hard candy off Ms. Sheila’s desk. It couldn’t have taken much encouragement for the flames to make their way to the adjacent library, whose walls were lined with wood and books, aka fire starter. The books and two Torahs in the room would have have incinerated within seconds.

Just the week before, our rabbi-in-training Ben Russell had taught the Sunday school kids how to kiss a prayer book that falls to the ground. Accidents and drops happen, Ben explained, but any text that contains G-d’s name must be treated with tenderness. We hadn’t discussed what happens when a sacred book, let alone a Torah, burns. That violence would be unthinkable.

Even now, it’s clear how all this could have been so much worse. The fire department and law enforcement responses were swift and effective. Beth Israel’s leaders were on site within hours. And the sanctuary – though covered in a thick layer of black soot – was not burned down. After the flames were extinguished, a congregant was able to find his way the ark, through halls darkened with ash and without power, to wrap the smoke-damaged Torahs in plastic trash bags before transporting them home. The Torah that survived the Holocaust and was behind glass remained miraculously unscathed. The classrooms, the synagogue archives (which coincidentally I had just spent time with in October), and the Institute of Southern Jewish Life offices are smoky and sooty but mostly untouched by fire. A layer of black grime coated my students’ Hebrew workbooks, but was easily scrubbed away with damp paper towels. From the outset, the emphasis of our congregation has been on rebuilding, bolstered by support from the wider Jackson community and from Jewish congregations around the country.

What Spencer Pittman will never understand is how much harder, and how much more satisfying, it is to build than to destroy.

At Sunday school, we always start the morning with Havdalah. Typically practiced after nightfall on Saturday, Havdalah a ritual of separation, meant to mark the end of Shabbat and the beginning of the new week. This Sunday, instead of in our sanctuary, we were in the bright, sunlit room of a local museum, chairs facing one another in a circle. With Ben out of state at rabbinical school, there was some bickering among the children over who got to hold and light the Havdalah candle, but it was quickly decided that it would be Eli, who, after all, had been the one to run and cut a sprig of rosemary in place of the temple’s now soot-covered spice box. We sang the blessing over the fruit of the vine, we smelled the rosemary, we praised G-d for creating the lights of the fire. Then came everyone’s favorite part: the satisfying sizzle as Eli extinguished the candle’s flame in grape juice in the kiddush cup. After the proper amount of sizzle appreciation, we sang the last part of the Havdalah blessing, hamavdil bein kodesh l’chol, marking the separation of the sacred from the mundane, the light from the darkness.

For Jews, only the sabbath – starting Friday evening and ending Saturday evening – is considered sacred as far as days of the week go. But this Sunday felt anything but “mundane.” Our temple had burned and with it our naiveté that hatred couldn’t destroy the same building twice. But we were together, and it was a sacred togetherness.

After Havdalah, Rachel, our religious school leader and temple board member, showed us the photos she had taken from the wreckage. Some of the children were silent. Many clamored with questions. It looks like a haunted house, Emry said, referring to a photo of a charred hallway. Everyone agreed. Eli pointed, See this is where the couch was, and there was the Tree of Life on the wall. And that’s the skylight in the lobby, Evie added. Rachel asked the kids what they wanted in a newly rebuilt library. Comfier chairs! Pink and purple books! A cotton candy machine! She showed us pictures of the aftermath of the bombings of the temple and of Rabbi Perry Nussbaum’s house by the KKK in 1967. The part of the synagogue that the bigots destroyed then is the same part that we’ll be rebuilding again.

What should we do now? Rachel asked the kids. Be Jewish! Addie shouted. Be more Jewish than ever!

We all agreed that was a good plan.

—

Author’s postscript: Just want to add a final note of gratitude to all the friends and family (and friends of friends and friends of family!) who have checked in and showed support in small and large ways. The Jackson community has showed up strong, too. So grateful to live in this city. If you want to support, you can donate to the Beth Israel Re-Building Fund. More information is on the Beth Israel Congregation and the Institute of Southern Jewish Life’s websites.

Bio: Originally from Denver, Lauren Rhoades has served with AmeriCorps, started Mississippi’s first fermentation company and helmed the Eudora Welty House & Garden. In 2022, she founded Rooted Magazine, an online publication dedicated to telling unfiltered stories about what it means to call Mississippi home. She holds an MFA in creative writing from the Mississippi University for Women. Her debut memoir, Split the Baby: A Memoir in Pieces was published in June 2025.

Mississippi’s former welfare director and his former professional wrestler buddy sometimes discussed how their ideas – funded with millions of federal public safety-net funds – might help the lives of others. 

But they mostly talked about their own prosperity, exhibits read in federal court Monday demonstrated.

“Man you get me excited with all those money bags,” former Mississippi Human Services Department Director John Davis once texted former WWE star Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr.

DiBiase is standing trial for his alleged role in a broader welfare fraud scandal that auditors found resulted in the loss of roughly $100 million in federal funds meant to assist the needy from 2016 to 2020. And Davis, who pleaded guilty in 2022 and is cooperating with the prosecution as he awaits sentencing, finished his second day testifying against the wrestler Monday.

The trial deals specifically with the charges against DiBiase – 13 counts ranging from conspiracy, wire fraud, theft and money laundering. The trial could last weeks. But five days in, testimony and exhibits have at times touched on the broader network of people at play.

“I have seen first hand with my own eyes what a letter with the state seal & endorsement from the Governor himself can do,” DiBiase texted Davis, according to a government exhibit displayed in court. “What’s crazy is when you put that letter in a quazi (sic) educated quazi (sic) celebrity’s hands who genuinely and sincerely wants to change the world. The doors of the decision makers and gold brick shares fly open off the hinges. Like a Baptist church when their 60min Jesus fix is up and they got football and chicken waiting at home.”

Several inquiries begged to be explored, such as when the prosecutor asked Davis to identify the eight different agency employees or attorney general’s office lawyers who reviewed and authorized one of the agreements used as a vehicle to pay DiBiase. 

Or when Davis explained that a federal director from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services traveled to Mississippi “all the time because he liked what we were doing.” 

Davis is set to return to the witness stand for cross-examination by the defense Tuesday.

MORE TRIAL COVERAGE:

DAY 4: Feds ask disgraced former welfare director ‘million-dollar question’: Why? Loneliness and love

DAY 3: Wrestler’s multimillion dollar ‘self-help curriculum’ helped crack open a wider welfare scandal

DAY 2: Opening statements in welfare scandal trial paint former director as villain who doled out millions over infatuation

DAY 1: 83 witnesses could enter the ring in Mississippi welfare scandal trial

TRIAL PREVIEW: Ex-WWE wrestler faces feds in first – and potentially only – criminal trial in Mississippi welfare scandal

The first day of Davis testimony lingered on the bizarre and sentimental relationship between the two men, who bonded quickly and intensely over their shared religiosity and elaborate plans for their futures.

The second day, the prosecution kept pummeling the jury with text messages that suggested Davis and DiBiase aimed to use their access to the nation’s welfare delivery system to generate lifelong security for themselves and their families. 

While DiBiase was receiving large payments totaling more than $3 million from the state’s welfare and food assistance programs, the two men were discussing buying property and starting a compound together in order to “enjoy life the way it’s meant to be,” one text read.

Some seemed like passive fantasies, while others were more specific: Should Davis buy the orange Kubota or the green John Deere tractor? Had DiBiase seen this property for sale on Magnolia Drive? Davis said he’d give up the main house for a cottage in the lower 40.

Meanwhile, in one of the most poverty-stricken states in the nation, Davis’ department was denying up to 98% of people applying for cash assistance from the same pot of funds they were using. Out of the roughly $86.5 million Mississippi receives annually from the federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, it doles out about $4 million to families in need. 

Davis testified Monday that DiBiase was aware of the source of the funds he received.

Davis had worked for the department, starting out as a county-level eligibility worker assisting welfare applicants, for over two decades by the time DiBiase came along. When they met, Davis was also working as an adjunct professor and DiBiase was vice president of business development for a Christian insurance company called One Life America.

Both of their roles dealt with leadership development, Davis said. They texted about their desire to go into business together, combine the training concepts they’d devised and shop the product to businesses and other states as consultants. They pumped each other up.

“Your vision is so crystal clear and synergistic with mine that it’s got to be illegal,” DiBiase texted Davis.

When asked what DiBiase was doing alongside Davis on a day- to-day basis, Davis described him as “being a shadow and a person who could take notes and keep things straight.” 

“Taking meetings, going to things with the governor, the Governor’s Mansion, governor’s office,” Davis said. “… Anything I went to, he went to.”

While he was paid sporadically, DiBiase received an average of about $30,000 per week. 

Some employees at MDHS were earning annual salaries of $18,000, Davis testified Monday, about $350 a week.

Davis said his boss, then-Gov. Phil Bryant, had been receiving complaints about those workers delivering poor customer service, and that’s why Davis hired DiBiase to deliver talks to encourage them.

Bryant, a Republican, was in his second and final term when he nominated Davis to lead MDHS in January 2016, and Davis was later confirmed by the state Senate. Davis resigned in July 2019.

Jackson Mayor John Horhn gives an update on city issues to “The Other Side,” including an arrest in the Beth Israel Congregation arson attack, the latest on the water system, the search for a new police chief as crime rates move in a positive direction and what the city hopes to get from the state legislative session. Hohrn says e many challenges are ahead for the state’s capital city, and “We are a city that is a prototype for what ails America.”

This article is part of a collaborative investigation into Mississippi’s Deadly Prisons.

An investigation by The Marshall Project-Jackson, Mississippi Today and other local reporting partners found that understaffing and gang violence in Mississippi’s prisons led to dozens of incarcerated people being killed in the last 10 years. Their killers seldom face consequences, and their families are often left without answers. 

Of the nearly 50 homicides we identified, just eight killers have been convicted.

Over the course of a year, reporters from The Marshall Project, Mississippi Today, the Clarion Ledger, the Hattiesburg American and The Mississippi Link reviewed thousands of pages of court records, incident reports, and federal and state government death records. We interviewed families who have lost loved ones behind bars, formerly incarcerated people, former guards, attorneys and corrections experts.

Following our investigation, Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain said in October 2025 that the department would review unprosecuted homicides and deaths ruled to be of undetermined causes. 

Yet three months later, there have been no additional indictments or convictions in open homicide cases.

The 2026 legislative session began Jan. 6. So far, House Corrections Chair Rep. Becky Currie stated that she plans to introduce legislation to advance prison health care reform. No legislation addressing prison violence, understaffing or homicides has been introduced. 

Here are five key points from our investigation — and what the federal government and other states have done to stem their own prison violence:

1. Prison homicides are not isolated incidents. They are the result of long-documented failures of the state to protect those in its custody. 

Many of the violent, preventable deaths we investigated showed the same factors: Chronic understaffing, lax oversight and gang control. These issues have been documented for decades in civil lawsuits and in investigations by the U.S. Department of Justice. 

2. The killings have not stopped. 

After the stories were published in September, our reporting team identified three additional men who were killed behind bars in 2025. At East Mississippi Correctional Facility in Meridian, 41-year-old Aaron Harrison was killed in July. According to an incident report, Harrison was receiving medical treatment after appearing pale and yellow. A nurse practitioner observed bruising on his lower abdomen. The incident report stated that Harrison’s cause of death was unknown, but the state medical examiner later determined his death to be a homicide caused by blunt force trauma. 

Three months later, 23-year-old Cameron Roby succumbed to injuries following an assault at the same facility. Also in October, 29-year-old Donald Jones was beaten to death by his cellmate at Wilkinson County Correctional Facility, according to prison incident reports. No one has been criminally charged in connection with any of these deaths. 

3. The chief problem is prison understaffing.

Most of the documented killings were beatings or stabbings that occurred when staff were either absent, outnumbered or poorly trained to handle the violence. 

From 2015 through 2025, we discovered multiple accounts of a victim being beaten, killed and not found until hours later. In February 2025, officials at Wilkinson County Correctional Facility received a call that an incarcerated person had died in the prison. They found Jonathan Havard strangled to death in his cell, according to an incident report.

In December 2021, Ronnie Graham was beaten in the early hours of the morning. He spent nearly five hours passing in and out of consciousness before being found foaming at the mouth, according to prison incident reports and a Justice Department investigation. He died shortly after. 

When there is not enough staff in a prison, functions like security counts are neglected. Gangs and violent individuals take advantage of these security gaps. 

Deputy Corrections Commissioner Nathan Blevins told lawmakers in September that about 30% of the funded corrections officer positions were vacant. 

“No prison can operate safely with that kind of staffing,” said David Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project.

4. Investigations into prison killings are shrouded in secrecy.

Families are often left without answers. When they did get answers, they typically learned details about their loved ones’ deaths through a whisper network of incarcerated people, insiders, advocates, and, in some cases, from journalists. Family members report little communication with state prison officials. 

Mississippi’s public records law also makes it difficult to find out what happened. The Mississippi Public Records Act exempts law enforcement investigative documents. It is up to the law enforcement agency — in this case, the Department of Corrections — to decide if a document is investigative. MDOC officials used this exemption broadly throughout our investigation, but reporters were able to obtain information through other sources.  

5. Official accountability is elusive. The federal government and other states enacted more oversight. 

Mississippi prison death investigations are handled internally. The corrections department ultimately decides whether to pass its investigation to the local district attorney’s office for prosecution. 

An individual who kills another incarcerated person can either be held accountable through a criminal charge or an internal prison write-up called a rule violation report. Often, they receive neither. Of the 42 homicides examined in our investigation, just eight cases led to suspects pleading guilty in criminal court. A few received a rule violation that led to a loss of privileges, including the use of the phone and buying items from the commissary. 

Outside of the prison system, there is scant oversight to hold corrections officials accountable for misconduct, root out corruption and investigate allegations of abuse. In some states, there are independent oversight bodies or officials who handle these tasks.

For example, Virginia created an ombudsman’s office to inspect its prisons and investigate complaints. The office received more than 500 complaints from June through August last year, which included excessive force, prolonged isolation and delayed medical care. 

New York’s prisons are monitored by an independent agency. The Correctional Association of New York conducts inspections and interviews with incarcerated people and prison staff. The organization publishes reports and maintains a public dashboard with data on staffing, deaths, suicide attempts and more. 

In 2024, the Federal Prison Oversight Act was enacted, creating an ombudsman office and granting the Justice Department’s inspector general office authority to inspect federal prisons. The legislation comes after investigations found rampant sexual abuse, preventable deaths and neglect in federal prisons. 

In Mississippi, the Legislature established a Corrections and Criminal Justice Oversight Task Force in 2014, but it has virtually no authority, said André de Gruy, the state public defender and a task force member. The task force offers criminal justice policy recommendations to the Legislature that are focused on reducing the prison population.

De Gruy said he often receives calls from former clients and their family members about the dangers in prison.

“Not everybody has that ability to call and have a connection to somebody who can actually look into something, and put (it) on the commissioner’s radar,” he said. 

He proposed the creation of an ombudsman’s office for Mississippi, similar to those for Virginia and federal prisons. 

Victims’ families in Mississippi have also sued the prisons. However, such cases are difficult to win, civil rights lawyers said. There are legal protections like qualified immunity, which can shield officials from being held responsible for the deaths.

A person splashed liquid along a wall and onto a couch inside the lobby of Mississippi’s largest synagogue shortly before a fire ignited and destroyed parts of the building in northeast Jackson, according to internal security-camera video footage reviewed by Mississippi Today.

The predawn fire Saturday reduced the Beth Israel Congregation’s library and administrative offices to charred ruins and left smoke damage throughout the building. The destruction occurred in the same part of the building that was damaged when Ku Klux Klan members bombed the temple in 1967 because of the rabbi’s outspoken support of civil rights. 

Local and federal law enforcement made an arrest Saturday night after the suspect was found at a Jackson hospital with burns that were not life-threatening, said Charles Felton, a chief investigator with the Jackson Fire Department.

The fire was ruled an arson, meaning it was intentionally set. By Sunday afternoon, law enforcement had not released the suspect’s name, the exact charges he will face or a possible motive. It was not immediately clear whether investigators consider this a hate crime. 

A Mississippi Today reporter watched a segment of the congregation’s security-camera footage only hours before the arrest was announced Saturday. It showed a person wearing a hooded shirt and a mask over most of his face. The person was holding what appears to be a plastic container while dousing the inside of the lobby with liquid, including a wall adorned with the synagogue’s Tree of Life, an installation that marks special occasions for congregants such as bar and bat mitzvahs.

The video footage has become part of a joint federal, state and local investigation.

The fire was reported shortly after 3 a.m. Saturday, and firefighters extinguished it before sunrise. No congregants or firefighters were injured.

Beth Israel’s congregation president, Zach Shemper, said in a statement Sunday that damage assessment continues, and several churches have extended offers for Beth Israel congregants to use their buildings for worship space. He said the congregation has established a donation fund for rebuilding, with a link on the congregation’s website.

“We are a resilient people,” Shemper said. “With support from our community, we will rebuild.”

Jewish congregations have been attacked in the U.S. in the past several years, including in Pittsburgh, the San Diego area and Colleyville, Texas. The attacks have come amid a rise in  anti-Semitic rhetoric in public spaces and on social media.

News of the fire at Beth Israel prompted an outpouring of support from the Jackson metro area, including from Mayor John Horhn and local religious leaders.

The Rev. CJ Rhodes, pastor of Mount Helm Baptist Church in downtown Jackson, said on social media Sunday that Beth Israel Congregation “holds a sacred place in Jackson’s moral history” because of its courageous support of the Civil Rights Movement. 

Rhodes also said that attacks on houses of worship “strike at the heart of our shared moral life.” He called on people to pray for the Beth Israel Congregation and stand in solidarity with them.

“An injury to one faith community is a concern for us all,” Rhodes said.

Mississippi also has a history of bombings at Black churches. Those reached a peak during the Civil Rights Movement, including the June 1964 arson of Mount Zion Church in Neshoba County — a Ku Klux Klan conspiracy that drew civil rights workers Michael Schwerner, James Chaney and Andrew Goodman to the area to investigate the fire. 

Chaney was Black, and Goodman and Schwerner were Jewish. After the three young men were jailed a few hours in Philadelphia on an accusation that Chaney was speeding, they were released. Waiting Klansmen chased them on a rural highway, pulled them over and shot them to death. 

Beth Israel is Jackson’s only synagogue, with about 150 families. The congregation does not have a count of individual members but says a family could be one person or multiple people. 

Two Torahs were destroyed and five were damaged in the flames that erupted during Shabbat, the weekly Jewish day of rest, according to temple leaders. One Torah that survived the Holocaust was in a glass case and was undamaged in the fire.

The day after the fire, Beth Israel held children’s Sunday school at a museum in Jackson. 

News of the fire drew international attention, and the Simon Wiesenthal Center is among several groups condemning the attack. 

“We owe gratitude to law enforcement for their swift response, and to civic and religious leaders from other faiths who made it clear that the Jewish community would not stand alone,” the center’s CEO, Jim Berk said in a statement Sunday. “Their leadership is a signal that hate will be met head-on, not met with silence.”

Mississippi Today reporter Allen Siegler contributed to this report.

1/12/2026: This story has been updated to add video clips from a Beth Israel Congregation synagogue security camera.

One variation of an old saying goes, “If ifs and ands were pots and pans, there’d be no work for tinkers,” and another goes, “If a frog had wings he wouldn’t bump his backside when he jumps.”

Those sayings are meant to dissuade people from hypothesizing about an event that is not likely to happen.

They are adages for a reason. They hold elements of truth.

Despite the warnings established by those adages, it is still worth noting that if the Mississippi electorate follows the pattern established by voters in other states in recent elections – even in solidly Republican areas – the Mississippi contest for the U.S. Senate later this year could be closer than expected.

Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith, a close ally of President Donald Trump, is a heavy favorite to win reelection this November and continue serving in the nation’s Capitol as Mississippi’s junior senator. Heck, a Democrat has not won a statewide election in Mississippi since Jim Hood garnered reelection as attorney general in 2015.

But in 10 special elections, granted district elections not state contests, held across the country since Dec. 9, Democrats have performed on average 13% better than they did in the previous elections in those same districts.

Even in statewide elections – gubernatorial elections in New Jersey and Virginia – the Democrat did better in 2025 than in the previous election in 2021– by 9.4% in Virginia and by 5.6% in New Jersey.

If (there is that word) the Democrat running against Hyde-Smith could do as well this November, the election would be exceedingly close and she could even lose.

In her last election in 2020, she defeated Democrat Mike Espy 54% to 44%. When the pair ran against each other in a special election in 2018 months after Hyde-Smith had been appointed to temporarily fill the Senate seat, Espy garnered 46.4% of the vote.

This time around, Lowndes District Attorney Scott Colom is the favorite to win the Democratic primary on March 10 and face Hyde-Smith in November. He faces opposition from Albert Littell and Priscilla W. Till. Hyde-Smith, for that matter, is being challenged in the Republican primary by Sarah Adlakha and Andrew Smith.

Ty Pinkins, who has run for statewide office in the past as a Democrat, will be vying in the Senate contest in the November general election as an independent, creating an additional headwind for the Democratic nominee. 

Democrats have exceeded their performances in recent elections presumably because of voter disenchantment with Republican President Trump.

A key question is whether voters in Mississippi, where Trump has historically been popular, feel the same disenchantment?

Trump faces various headwinds right now. Many voters are still struggling with economic woes. Plus, Trump still faces questions concerning his closeness to sex offender Jeffrey Epstein and the fact that the U.S. Department of Justice seems to be violating the law to slow-walk the release of files that perhaps could shed light on that relationship. Then, there are questions about Trump’s strange obsession with controlling or acquiring other countries, even making threats of military action against longtime allies.

And there is always the issue of his inappropriate comments regarding the deaths of people he did not like. 

Will all of those issues and others impact elections in Mississippi, like they have affected elections in other states?

Heck, even in Mississippi, there was at least one recent special election where the Democrat did much better than in past contests.

In a Nov.10  special election in state Senate District 19 in northwest Mississippi, incumbent Kevin Blackwell won by only 6.6%. In the 2023 regular election, Blackwell won by a sizable margin of 31.4%. Granted, Blackwell ran in 2025 in a new court-ordered district that increased the percentage of Black voters, who tend to vote Democratic, but the increase was minimal from 25.4% to 27.5%.

If (there is that word again) those election trends hold true, Hyde-Smith could be in for a challenge this November.

If frogs had wings…

A fire heavily damaged Mississippi’s largest synagogue before dawn Saturday – the same house of worship in northeast Jackson that the Ku Klux Klan bombed in 1967 because the rabbi supported civil rights.

The Jackson Fire Department, the FBI and the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives arrested a suspect Saturday night in the latest blaze after the fire department ruled it arson, according to chief fire investigator Charles Felton. Investigators did not immediately release the name of the suspect or the charges the person could face.

The fire was reported shortly after 3 a.m. at Beth Israel Congregation on Old Canton Road. No congregants were injured.

The library and administrative offices of Jackson’s only synagogue were reduced to charred ruins. Two Torahs were destroyed and five were damaged in the flames that erupted during Shabbat, the weekly Jewish day of rest, according to temple leaders. One Torah that survived the Holocaust was in a glass case and was undamaged in the fire.

Beth Israel has suspended services indefinitely. 

“We have already had outreach from other houses of worship in the Jackson area and greatly appreciate their support in this very difficult time,” the congregation president, Zach Shemper, said in a statement. 

Arson is a criminal act of intentionally setting fire to a structure, Felton, the JFD division fire chief, told Mississippi Today. 

Investigators did not immediately know a possible motive, such as whether it was a hate crime. Jewish congregations have been attacked in the U.S. in the past several years, including in Pittsburgh, the San Diego area and Colleyville, Texas.

The state Homeland Security Office is also assisting in the investigation, said Mississippi Department of Public Safety spokesperson Bailey Martin Holloway.

Mayor John Horhn said he had spoken with Shemper and hoped for a “swift resolution as to the origin of these actions.”  

“I would hope that all Mississippians and all Jacksonians would commit themselves toward moving beyond such behavior and activity and find a way where we can all get together and get along,” Horhn said. 

Felton said firefighters had responded shortly after 3 a.m. in response to a report about a possible “church fire.” After they could not determine the origin of the flames, he said his arson investigators were called to the scene and began to collect video surveillance. He said he received calls Saturday morning from the FBI and the ATF, as a matter of course when a fire occurs at a religious institution. 

On Saturday evening, reporters could smell soot outside the temple and observed a melted camera on the northeast wing of the building and six windows covered in plywood. 

An FBI agent standing next to yellow caution tape began collecting pictures and videos from people in the parking lot. Congregants and synagogue leadership had been at the temple all day, assessing the damage. 

Some had gone inside the building, stepping over ash-filled puddles of water to retrieve sacred religious objects from the temple, including Torahs. One of the holiest objects in the Jewish religion, the scrolls typically weigh dozens of pounds and stand a couple feet tall.

The fire also burned the synagogue’s Tree of Life, a plaque that honors and records special occasions for congregants such as bar and bat mitzvahs. 

One congregant, David Edelstein, typically attends Saturday morning services. He did not know the synagogue had been burned when he arrived, but he immediately tried to figure out what had happened. 

Initially, congregants believed lightning from thunderstorms the night before had started the fire, so Edelstein said he flew a drone over the top of the synagogue and determined that had not happened. 

The hours moved by fast, he said. As Edelstein, wearing a protective breathing mask, helped measure one of the broken library windows, he looked inside and spotted a book lying face up. He stepped into the library to look closer. 

It was open to the Shema, one of the most important prayers in the Jewish faith that reads, “Hear, O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one.” 

“Everything’s charred and stuff but one of the books was on top, opened up right to that,” he said.

Similar to Saturday’s blaze, the 1967 bombing and fire heavily damaged the synagogue’s administrative offices and library but injured no congregants. The rabbi at the time, Perry Nussbaum, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that “bigots” were responsible for the fire, and he believed they might have been inspired by anti-Semitic campaign materials used extensively in that year’s Democratic primary for governor.

Mayor Horhn, 70, said he has some recollection of the 1967 attack, when he was 12.

“I do remember that the Jewish community and the African American community in those days formed alliances and partnerships to fight racism, to fight injustice, to fight mistreatment of citizens for whatever reason,” Horhn said.

Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens filed hundreds of pages of documents in federal court Monday containing salacious quotes from undercover agents, an interview with a now-convicted felon, a transcript of a federal grand jury interview and a photograph of an undercover FBI agent smiling at an open fridge full of alcoholic drinks. 

The federal government swiftly filed an emergency request for the judge in Owens’ federal bribery case to permanently seal the motion and the attached exhibits, claiming it violated a protective order in the case and could “influence the jury pool.” 

Owens is charged with eight criminal counts, including conspiracy, bribery, racketeering, wire fraud, money laundering and making false statements. He has pleaded not guilty, and his 68-page motion points to his likely defense — entrapment. 

“In its unrestrained zeal to ‘get something’ on Owens, the Government made material misrepresentations in the indictment; concealed evidence; lied to the Grand Jury; induced Owens after he rejected criminal overtures and exhibited reluctance; strategically used alcohol to target Owens, who is a diagnosed alcoholic, to break down his resistance, overcome his reluctance, and elicit incriminating statements,” the motion reads.

READ MORE: Yacht, strip club, bags of cash: The traveling FBI sting that set the stage for bribery charges against Jackson officials

Former Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and former Jackson City Councilman Aaron Banks have also pleaded not guilty, and a trial is scheduled for July. 

The FBI sting began in 2023, when agents came to Jackson impersonating wealthy, out-of-state developers seeking to invest in downtown. 

In the course of their operation, Owens allegedly helped the developers bribe Lumumba by translating the agents’ cash into checks from multiple supposed campaign donors, and forking over the funds while on a yacht in south Florida. According to documents obtained by Mississippi Today, the fictitious developer group had invited Lumumba to Fort Lauderdale, just outside Miami, under the guise of a fundraising event, including a sunset cruise.

Lumumba then allegedly called his planning and development director in exchange for the money and asked him to move up a deadline in a bid for proposals, theoretically giving Owens’ new developer friends an advantage. Photos of Lumumba talking on the phone and Owens handling cash appear inside the indictment.

The federal government also accused Owens of bribing Banks with $10,000 for his future vote on the project.

The federal indictment is chock full of quotes from Owens, taken from hours of tape the undercover agents recorded during their conversations with the district attorney. Owens’ brow-raising remarks – which he described as “cherry-picked” and “drunken, locker room banter” – extend to topics far beyond the alleged bribery scheme. 

“We can take dope boy money,” Owens is quoted in the indictment as saying, “… but I need to clean it and spread it.”

The indictment alleges Owens told the agents he was mixing their cash with “dope money and drug money and more than a million dollars” and storing it at the district attorney’s office. 

But the indictment does not include charges related to these comments. This is another thing Owens’ motion challenges. 

“The Government intentionally used a ‘speaking indictment’ to foment public anger and acrimony toward Owens resulting in widespread conclusions of guilt with no regard for due process,” the motion reads.

Owens’ motion includes similarly detailed descriptions of the FBI’s attempts to learn about his activities, despite the government’s claims in grand jury testimony that Owens “inserted” himself into its investigation. 

Months before the real estate developers came to town, the motion claims, the FBI had set its sights on broaching Owens’ network by turning a law enforcement officer and former candidate for Hinds County Sheriff, Torrence Mayfield, who was also working as the district attorney’s bodyguard. 

With the help of a jailhouse informant and a convicted felon who runs a Jackson nightclub, Owens’ motion claims the feds indicted Mayfield on federal firearm charges in 2022 after he bought a rifle for the nightclub owner. In 2025, Mayfield pleaded guilty to one charge of making false statements to a gun dealer. 

Owens’ motion says the feds sat on the indictment until they got to town. Then, Owens claims they used it to pressure Mayfield, arranging a SWAT team to arrest the unsuspecting man in April 2023 as he was “leaving a health club wearing a plastic suit to help him lose weight.” 

For more than three hours, the motion says agents interviewed Mayfield as he “sat handcuffed in the backseat sweating profusely in his plastic suit.” He told them about his suspicions of corruption in city government and local law enforcement. 

“And you got to understand, we have heard all those things from the County, the City, like everything,” one of the agents told him. “We just are now hearing a position where you could get something.” 

The motion repeatedly cites this interaction, claiming it shows the government wanted to “get something” on Owens. The motion also alleges the federal government concealed this transcript from the defense. 

“To coerce Mayfield, the FBI agents repeatedly reminded him that prison was in his immediate future unless he could ‘come up with something,’” the motion reads.

Owens’ motion lingers on a paragraph from the indictment in which the government asserts the undercover agent initially made contact with the district attorney after casually happening on his lounge, Downtown Cigar Company. 

The government claimed a lobbyist the agent was meeting with while in town recommended the establishment. The inclusion of that detail puzzled some onlookers when the indictment was unsealed in November 2024.

And Owens alleged in his motion that it was a misrepresentation by the government. Instead, his lawyers assert that the informant knew what he was doing when he stepped into Owens’ establishment.

The motion claims the FBI began investigating Owens long before the cigar shop scene. Specifically, it pointed to a September 2022 email in which a local FBI agent discussed Owens’ businesses and wrote, “Also, we are getting Jody added as a subject to one of our investigations but that hasn’t happened yet.” 

But when a U.S. Department of Justice lawyer asked FBI special agent Lawrence Correll during an October 2024 federal grand jury proceeding whether Owens had been a target of the FBI “as somebody that had been previously mentioned as somebody who was taking bribes” at the launch of the investigation, Correll said Owens was not, according to the transcript reviewed by Mississippi Today. 

Correll answered affirmatively when the attorney asked whether the initial FBI agent had “just happened to kind of run into Owens.”

“And is it accurate to say that Owens kind of then inserted himself into this bribery scheme?” the attorney asked, and Correll responded, “That’s correct.”

The filing includes several images of Owens with a beverage in his hand, including one in which he appears slumped over, holding his head in his hand, and two with his face on the table. 

The undercover sting carried out in Jackson from 2022 to 2024 resembled FBI operations that ensnared public officials in other cities. The agents treated a councilman from Cincinnati to the same treatment, a yacht ride and an outing to a Miami cabaret club, according to news reports.