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The Mississippi Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously ruled in favor of Attorney General Lynn Fitch in a dispute she had with State Auditor Shad White over which of them has the legal right to try to claw back state welfare money they believe was misspent.
Justice Jenifer Branning wrote that Mississippi law tasks the attorney general with being the “chief legal officer” of the state, while the state auditor’s duties include accounting, auditing and investigation.
“The attorney general must be an attorney, and the auditor has no such requirement,” Branning wrote.
Mississippi Supreme Court Justice Jenifer Branning asks questions of attorneys representing Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office and State Auditor Shad White, Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2026, in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
All six of the other current justices agreed with Branning’s opinion. There are currently two vacancies on the nine-member court.
White, in a statement, said now that the Supreme Court has ruled Fitch has the sole authority to file lawsuits to recover misspent taxpayer money, he can only assume she will “now change course and begin to aggressively fight in court for the recovery of all the welfare money.”
“Maybe she will fight as hard to do that as she fought to stop me from recovering the money,” White said. “Mississippi taxpayers deserve nothing less.”
Fitch’s office declined to comment, other than pointing to a passage in the ruling that stated state law.
The issue at the center of the legal fight between the two statewide officials is about $730,000 that White claims Pro Football Hall of Fame athlete Brett Favre owes the state because of unpaid interest.
Fitch’s office, on behalf of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, sued dozens of defendants, including Favre, to try to recoup allegedly misspent welfare money. But it did not include funds that White’s office is pursuing.
White, then, attempted to sue Favre to recoup a portion of allegedly misspent welfare money, which prompted Fitch to sue White to block the suit from going forward.
The legal disagreement between the two offices stems from a section of Mississippi law stating that the auditor is “to institute suit, and the attorney general shall prosecute the same in any court of the state,” when recovering misspent money.
Fitch, as the state’s top legal officer, wrote in court papers that she had the exclusive right to file a civil lawsuit on behalf of the state, and it would be unrealistic to compel the attorney general to file litigation she doesn’t believe is legitimate.
White’s attorneys said in court earlier this year that the plain reading of the state law clearly gives him the authority to initiate lawsuits and requires the attorney general to follow through and prosecute on his behalf.
A Hinds County chancery judge initially sided with White, so the attorney general appealed to the state’s high court.
The two officials have said they’re considering running for governor and have clashed in recent years over the handling of Mississippi’s massive welfare scandal, which has seen multiple people plead guilty to state and federal crimes.
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Alabama’s plans to execute a death row inmate using nitrogen gas appeared to be thwarted by a federal judge permanently blocking the state from using that method, declaring it violates the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
U.S. District Judge Emily C. Marks issued the decision Tuesday, permanently enjoining the state from executing Jeffery Lee by nitrogen gas. Lee was scheduled to be executed Thursday at an Alabama prison.
A spokesman for Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said the state is appealing the decision. The case will likely end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, which has previously let nitrogen executions proceed.
The appeals court ruling marks the latest potential shift in the United States’ ever-evolving use of capital punishment. States with the death penalty have a variety of execution methods on the books, including lethal injection, electrocution, lethal gas and firing squad.
Here’s a look at the execution methods currently in use and the ones that have fallen out of favor:
Lethal injection is most states’ primary method
Twenty-eight states and the federal government authorize the use of lethal injection, in which an inmate has one or more deadly drugs injected into their bodies as they are strapped to a gurney, according to the Death Penalty Information Center, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit center.
But lethal injection has been plagued by problems. States often struggle to obtain the necessary drugs, in part because pharmaceutical manufacturers have banned the use of the lethal injection components for executions.
Some execution teams have struggled or failed to find suitable veins, needles have become clogged or disengaged and in some cases multiple doses of the drugs have been needed to kill the condemned person.
Those problems have prompted some states to experiment with different execution methods. After a botched execution attempt in 2024, Idaho lawmakers made death by firing squad the state’s primary execution method.
Two-way mirrored windows look in at the lethal injection room at the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, Miss., shown in this July 12, 2002, photo. Credit: AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis
Lethal injection was first proposed in New York in the late 1800s, though that state eventually opted to go with electrocution, said Fordham Law School Professor Deborah Denno. The very thing that made lethal injection appealing to death penalty proponents — its relatively sanitized appearance — appalled medical societies around the country, Denno said.
“It’s what people would expect when they walk into a hospital, what you would expect doctors to do who are really concerned that you don’t suffer,” Denno said. “So, you transplant that idea onto a method that’s designed to kill somebody, and that’s a really good marketing tool for the public.”
Firing squads rarely used, but that may be changing
Six people have been executed by firing squad since 1976, according to the Death Penalty Information Center. The use of firing squads is rare, but support for the approach appears to be growing in some regions.
Five states — Idaho, Mississippi, Oklahoma, Utah and South Carolina — have authorized the use of firing squads, and Florida and North Carolina both have laws allowing any constitutional method of execution to be used if necessary. Tennessee authorizes the use of methods like firing squads if its primary methods are found unconstitutional.
The U.S. Justice Department announced in April that it is adopting firing squads as a permitted method of execution as President Donald Trump’s administration moves to expedite capital punishment cases.
“Not to get political, but there is a strand in our culture that is showing a greater acceptance of the use of violence in this particular context,” said Denno. “In this country’s history, we’ve never had that many states adopt firing squads ever.”
In firing squad executions, a condemned person is usually bound to a chair and is shot through the heart by execution staffers standing up to 25 feet away. The method is meant to quickly stop a person’s heart, but it can be botched.
Attorneys for death row inmates in South Carolina say a man put to death by firing squad last year was conscious and likely suffered in extreme pain for as long as a minute because the bullets struck Mikal Mahdi lower than expected.
Electrocution executions are declining
Nine states authorize the use of electrocution, including Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Tennessee. Since 1976, 163 electrocutions have been carried out. But only 19 have been done since 2000.
In this method, a person is strapped to a chair and has electrodes placed on their head and leg before between 500 and 2,000 volts run through their body. The last electrocution took place in 2020 in Tennessee.
Texas killed 361 inmates by electrocution from 1924 to 1964, according to the state’s Department of Criminal Justice.
Since 1976, 163 people have been executed by electrocution, according to the Death Penalty Information Center.
Electrocution executions have been rife with problems, particularly in Florida, where in some executions the condemned person actually caught on fire or was left with deep burns, Denno said. Two states, Georgia and Nebraska, have rendered electrocution unconstitutional.
Still, at least some death row inmates have chosen electrocution or firing squad when offered the choice between those methods and lethal injection. Those choices likely reflect more about the number of botched lethal injection executions in the U.S. than any endorsement of the other methods, said Denno.
US appeals court questions lethal gas executions
Nitrogen gas has been used in eight executions nationally. Seven of those were in Alabama and one in Louisiana.
Other states that include lethal gas as an authorized method are Arizona, Arkansas, California, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma and Wyoming. In lethal gas executions, a condemned person is typically strapped to a chair or gurney in an airtight chamber before it is filled with a lethal gas. A mask is placed over the prisoner’s face and nitrogen gas is pumped in, depriving the person of oxygen and resulting in death. From 1979 to 1999, 11 inmates were executed using cyanide gas.
Smith shook violently for several minutes during the execution, and a lawsuit filed by another death row inmate contends the process was tortuous and “a human experiment that officials botched miserably.”
The federal judge’s ruling in Lee’s case means nitrogen gas is no longer an option for executions in Alabama, but that could change if the state moves forward with its promised appeal, and if the U.S. Supreme Court agrees to consider the matter.
Lawsuits lead states to switch execution methods
Hanging was the primary method of execution around the world for centuries, said Denno, and that didn’t change in the U.S. until lawmakers became concerned that it might be struck down in the courts.
Data collected by researchers of U.S. executions from 1608 to 2002 found 9,322 people were put to death by hanging. But in capital punishment’s modern era, only three people in the U.S. have been executed that way, one each in the years 1993, 1994 and 1996.
“Hangings are really gruesome, and they were also getting increasingly out of control with huge crowds,” said Denno. “That raised a lot of public concern over what this was doing societally, and there was pressure to come up with something more humane. Parallel to all of that, there was concern among some politicians that this could lead to getting rid of the death penalty entirely, so we better come up with something else.”
That same pattern continues today, said Denno.
“States typically change for one of two reasons: One, there’s a series of botches in their particular state and they think the method is going to be constitutionally challenged or it is being constitutionally challenged,” said Denno. “The other reason is that they look at what other states are doing. If you have a bunch of states adopting a new method, and one particular state fears their method may come under challenge, then they’ll switch for that reason.”
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Former Associated Press reporter Juan A. Lozano contributed to this article.
Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story.
Hinds County’s underpaid public defenders will temporarily earn more through the end of the year after the Board of Supervisors scrounged up money left over from construction on the new jail.
The roughly $261,000 boost to the Hinds County Public Defender’s Office will narrow the pay gap between the county’s prosecutors and public defenders for the next six months, but it’s far from the $1 million that advocates say is needed to achieve equity between the offices.
The Hinds County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the stopgap last week following years of denied requests for additional funding and a monthslong campaign by the advocacy group Defend Mississippi. The coalition brought attorneys, legislators and advocates together to argue that better compensation for public defenders would help the cash-strapped county save money elsewhere by reducing case backlogs and, therefore, the number of defendants sitting in jail at the county’s expense.
Salaries for the county’s public defenders come in at virtually half of what their state-funded counterparts in the district attorney’s office make, even though they handle similar caseloads. Advocates have long argued the lower pay drives public defenders out of the job, weakening a critical part of the justice system in a county where most defendants can’t afford a private attorney.
Gail Wright Lowery Credit: Courtesy photo
“This funding is essential for our office to carry out our constitutional mandate,” Gail Wright Lowery, the county’s head public defender, told the board during the coalition’s initial push in March. “Poor people are entitled to a speedy trial, they’re entitled to an attorney and they’re entitled to a system that is fair.”
Supervisors responded that the county didn’t have the money within its existing budget, but planned to look for ways to boost the office’s funding.
“We’ve heard the pleas from everyone,” Supervisor Robert Graham, the board president who represents northeast Jackson and the town of Pocahontas, told Lowery at the meeting. “We want to assist, but we have to be good stewards of taxpayers’ dollars and money.”
The public defender’s office overwhelmingly relies on county funding while the DA is mostly backed by the state.
Lynn Seals, who was appointed county administrator earlier this year, said she found a way to lift public defenders’ salaries from her previous experience managing the county’s $45 million in federal pandemic relief. On her first day in office, Seals presented the board with a short-term solution: money leftover from a multimillion-dollar water tower project at the new Hinds County jail, funded through the American Rescue Plan Act.
She said the money was recently freed up after the county finished paying off contractor invoices for the water tower, which were less than expected. The structure will also supply water to south Jackson neighborhoods surrounding the new detention center on McDowell Road, according to WLBT.
“Obviously, the public defender’s office needed additional funding to put them close to where the DA’s office is, so this is a temporary fix,” Seals told Mississippi Today. “It was pretty much a no-brainer.”
‘Temporary fix’ passes, but fate of long-term funding remains unclear
Now, money leftover from the project will be used to provide temporary pay raises for the 23 employees at the public defender’s office, including attorneys, investigators and office staff. The team handles one of Mississippi’s busiest criminal dockets within the state’s patchwork public defense system, with attorneys juggling hundreds of cases at a time.
But the new money falls short of the $350,000 in “emergency equity” funding that Lowery requested from the board earlier this year to bring her attorneys’ starting salaries from $65,000 to $80,000. That would bring pay for public defenders in line with the only assistant district attorney position also funded by the county.
Starting pay for the rest of the county’s assistant district attorneys, who are funded by the state, is even higher than that benchmark at $120,000, according to State Public Defender André de Gruy. But the money that the board approved won’t be enough to reach that goal, according to Lowery.
She said she is calculating how much more each of her employees will earn with the temporary increase.
The temporary boost is even farther from Defend Mississippi’s funding goal of $1 million, which the coalition says is necessary for the public defender’s office to achieve equity with the district attorney’s office and hire “adequate” staff.
CJ Lawrence, an attorney with the coalition, called the temporary boost a “meaningful first step.” But advocates are still seeking a long-term solution.
Lowery plans to ask for money to “stabilize” the public defender’s office from next fiscal year’s county budget, according to Defend Mississippi. The board will start hearing funding requests later this summer for the new budget year that begins Oct. 1.
Pay increases for the county’s public defenders have historically been short-lived, as cost concerns have pushed the board to balk on committing long-term funding.
While this isn’t the first time the board has turned to federal pandemic-relief aid to temporarily raise pay for public defenders, the county won’t be able to lean on this windfall once the aid expires at the end of the year.
In a column published in Mississippi Today, Lowery wrote that after the board used $250,000 in pandemic-relief aid to boost her office in 2022, it became the only year she didn’t lose an attorney over low pay. During her six years leading the public defender’s office, she said she’s seen staffing shortages persist and nearly 20 attorneys resign.
After that boost expired in 2023, supervisors narrowly voted down Lowery’s proposal for a longer term solution: five new staff members and an annual $20,000 per-attorney pay raise for her office. Again, supervisors said the county didn’t have the money in its budget.
Even after the request was scaled back to just a $10,000 pay raise for the office’s attorneys, the board rejected it again.
Cost concerns
Public defenders’ pleas for more money have often clashed with supervisors’ concerns over mounting costs within the detention system — even as advocates contend that increased investment could help curb those expenses.
When Lowery came before the board in March to request additional funding for the public defender’s office, some supervisors pointed to the cost of housing inmates at the crowded Raymond jail and a Delta prison as reasons the county couldn’t afford it.
Hinds County is estimated to have spent at least $15 million since September 2023 on keeping inmates in the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility, which the county turned to after closing a unit in the Raymond jail where federal court monitors found dangerous and poor living conditions. At the Raymond jail, crowding has become so severe that the board declared a state of emergency there in October.
District 2 Hinds County Supervisor Tony Smith at his office in the Chancery Courthouse, Tuesday, Aug. 26, 2025, in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
“If we can get these people out, then we can have extra money to give you guys a raise,” Supervisor Tony Smith, who represents western rural Hinds County, told Lowery. “So the problem is, I understand you need more money. I wish we had (it) to give it.”
Defend Mississippi argues additional money would better equip public defenders to ease crowding by fighting for defendants to remain out of jail while their cases proceed through the courts.
“That’s what we do, and that’s what we advocate for in the public defender’s office because they are innocent until proven guilty,” Lowery told the board.
All five of the county’s circuit court judges wrote the board letters in support of her call for additional money.
As advocates hope to carve out more long-term funding from the upcoming county budget for the public defender’s office, Defend Mississippi is now organizing a campaign to collect signatures for a “thank you” letter to the supervisors.
“We are so grateful to the Hinds County Board of Supervisors for hearing the community’s call and taking this step,” Lawrence said. “This vote reflects real leadership that we don’t take for granted.”
Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story.
Even as President Donald Trump boosts coal over clean energy, solar power is hitting new milestones in the U.S. and remains the leading source of new power.
Data released Wednesday by global energy think tank Ember, along with a report by the Solar Energy Industries Association and analytics firm Wood Mackenzie, show the continued growth of solar and decline of coal in the United States despite federal policy. In May, for the first time, solar supplied more of the nation’s electricity than coal, or 12.8%, Ember said. Coal supplied 12.2%, its fourth-lowest monthly share ever.
“For years solar power has risen in the U.S. electricity mix,” said Nicolas Fulghum, senior energy and data analyst at Ember. “At the same time, coal power has lost its status, first as the largest source in the U.S. mix, and then gradually over the years has fallen even further.”
Solar also became the third-largest source of electricity in the U.S. in May, behind natural gas and nuclear, Fulghum said. Coal generation hit an all-time monthly low in April and rebounded only modestly in May, allowing increasing solar generation to overtake coal, he added.
Electricity is produced by converting sources of energy — fossil fuels, renewable resources and nuclear — into electrical power. Burning coal, oil and natural gas for electricity emits carbon dioxide, trapping heat in the atmosphere and warming the planet. By contrast, solar, wind, geothermal, hydropower and nuclear are carbon-free.
After about two decades of essentially flat electricity consumption in the U.S., electricity demand is increasing to power artificial intelligence, grow domestic manufacturing and electrify transportation and heating. Fulghum said he expects to see more months when solar exceeds coal generation, before overtaking it on an annual basis in a few years.
These milestones signify that solar “has staying power” at a time when there’s less support for renewable energy at the federal level, he added.
Wind and solar combined have overtaken coal in the past, and wind power alone has outpaced coal during spring months when wind speeds pick up. Ember gets its hourly and monthly data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration.
Globally, electricity generation from renewables is growing rapidly. Renewables will become the largest global energy source, used for almost 45% of electricity generation by 2030, according to the International Energy Agency.
Trump helps the struggling US coal industry while curtailing solar and wind
Last week, Trump, a Republican, announced a plan to boost the struggling U.S. coal industry by spending nearly $700 million to support coal-fired power plants and coal exports. Trump said at a White House event that “coal’s a great business” and that “in terms of power, there’s really nothing like it.”
Martin Pochtaruk, CEO and founder of Canadian-based solar panel manufacturer Heliene, said Trump can say that coal is coming back but investors will invest their money in whatever brings the best return. And for power generation that is solar, making it the fastest-growing fuel, he added.
A White House spokeswoman defended the Trump administration’s overall energy policies, saying they were geared toward strengthening the country’s security.
“The President has reversed the Left’s devastating policies, saved the American coal industry, prevented the retirement of more than 17 gigawatts of power, and saved lives during heightened demand periods,” Taylor Rogers said in a statement.
While Trump is trying to reverse the coal industry’s decline, solar has been the top source for new power for five years, SEIA said. SEIA and Wood Mackenzie said solar and battery storage were practically the only energy resources being built in the first quarter, making up 91% of all new generating capacity.
As power demand skyrockets, political and regulatory attacks are slowing down the exact resources we rely on,” Darren Van’t Hof, interim president and CEO of SEIA, said in a statement. “Impeding the only sector that is actively building new power is a reckless gamble that will only drive electricity bills higher.”
Several groups sued the Environmental Protection Agency over canceling the Solar for All program. A district court dismissed the case last week citing lack of jurisdiction. The plaintiffs have another filing pending in the Court of Federal Claims.
In a ruling Saturday, a federal judge struck down guidance from the Internal Revenue Service restricting tax credits for wind and solar projects.
Trump has blamed renewable energy sources such as wind and solar power for skyrocketing energy costs. But energy analysts say recent price hikes are based on growing demand, aging infrastructure and increasingly extreme weather events that are exacerbated by climate change. Most recently, the war in Iran that Trump launched has also led to a spike in energy costs.
Blaming clean energy is “nonsensical,” said U.S. Rep. Jared Huffman. The California Democrat said that “not even lighting $700 million of taxpayer money on fire” can save the dying coal industry.
“The rest of the world will move ahead toward a clean energy future with countries other than the United States leading the charge, unfortunately,” he said Wednesday. “Trump will fail in this agenda. But, he will do enormous damage to our global leadership on clean energy and to the cost of living for struggling Americans.”
Top states for solar voted for Trump
States won by Trump in the 2024 election accounted for 74% of all solar capacity installed in the first quarter of 2026, with Mississippi, Texas, Florida, Ohio, Indiana, Michigan and Arizona ranking among the top 10 states for new solar additions, SEIA said. The U.S. now exceeds a total of 6 million installations nationwide across all solar sectors, which includes large-scale solar arrays, commercial, community solar and residential or rooftop solar.
Johanna Neumann, at the Environment America Research and Policy Center, said it’s “good news for our health and our planet that solar continues to grow,” and also, not surprising.
“Today we can harness solar more affordably than any other energy source. It’s scalable. And it’s also our most abundant renewable energy source,” said Neumann, senior director of the center’s campaign for 100% renewable energy. “So I think it’s hard to keep the lid on a good idea, especially if the economics are tilting in your favor as well, which they are in the case of solar.”
Environment America’s renewable energy dashboard shows that 32 U.S. states generated at least 10% of their retail electricity sales from solar, wind and geothermal energy last year, compared to 18 states in 2016. Clean energy in the South is booming, particularly in Florida, Arkansas and Mississippi, Neumann said.
“I think there is a misconception in the United States that clean energy is something for the coasts and liberal cities,” she said. “The true story of renewable energy is a 50-state story.”
Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story.
Mississippi Today is challenging a judge’s sealing of court filings in a case in which over 100 pieces of DNA evidence have gone missing.
On Monday, Andrew Coffman, an attorney for the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, made a motion to Circuit Judge Richard A. Smith to unseal the records and restore public access to information on whether Washington County Circuit Clerk deputies or employees of the district attorney’s office in Greenville bear blame for the evidence’s disappearance.
Coffman argues on behalf of Mississippi Today that the move also violates the right to review court records, which are generally public record.
“It’s important that Mississippians be able to see exactly how courts exercise the enormous powers granted to them by the state’s constitution,” Coffman said. “Judicial transparency is essential to promoting trust and confidence in the justice system.
“Without access to the record of the underlying arguments in this case, the public simply will not be able to understand the basis of the court’s ultimate decision to determine if justice has been done.”
A photo of a memorial to Robernisha Webster in H.T. Crosby Park in Greenville, November 21, 2025. She was found dead after disappearing from the park. Credit: Leonardo Bevilacqua/Mississippi Today
The missing evidence is tied to a rape and manslaughter appeal in Washington County. Attorneys for King Young Brown Jr., are appealing his 2005 conviction for the rape and killing of Robernisha Webster, who was 6 years old. (Editor’s note: Mississippi Today does not usually identify victims of sexual assault. However, Robernisha’s family previously agreed to the use of her name.)
Brown is serving two consecutive sentences — 30 years for rape and 20 for manslaughter — at the Marshall County Correctional Facility. He was 15 years old when he was first arrested and charged and has maintained his innocence. His attorneys are appealing his convictions and hope a new analysis of the evidence will help to clear their client’s name. Brown was tried three times for the crimes. The first two trials resulted in hung juries. At the third trial, after over 13 hours of deliberation, a jury found Brown guilty of rape and manslaughter.
Last year, Smith ordered Washington County Circuit Clerk Barbara Esters-Parker to ship the biological evidence, ranging from a sexual assault kit to fingernail scrapings and strips of masking tape, to a Virginia lab for testing. But officials including Esters-Parker, her deputies and district attorney’s office employees have been unable to account for the materials. Instead, they have shifted blame, or in some cases blamed each other, for the missing evidence.
On April 9, Smith canceled a hearing that had been scheduled in part for the following day to determine the chain of custody of the missing evidence and sealed all evidence in the case.
Documents and other filings have already been removed from the public court docket since April. Deputy Clerk Cynthia Lakes told Mississippi Today that she was instructed by the court to remove further filings by the two main parties per the judge’s order.
A document filed on April 30 by prosecutor Austin Frye was removed from public view the next day. Additional sworn testimonies in May from Washington County Circuit Clerk deputies were filed directly with the judge. A notice of filing by one of Brown’s defense attorneys was scrubbed.
Public officials responsible for storing evidence were expected to testify at the April 9 hearing. Smith said he canceled the hearing in part to save the witnesses from “undue embarrassment” and harassment.
With the case sealed, the public may never know what became of the evidence and whether public officials had a hand in its dissapearance. That’s also true for the family of Robernisha, whose killing and rape is at the center of the case.
“Mississippi Today is seeking to intervene to open this case because the public deserves to know how courts are operating,” Editor-in-Chief Emily Wagster Pettus said. “Transparency in government is important.”
Incomplete court filings have further complicated the timeline of events that led to the evidence going missing from a Greenville courthouse.
Deputies in the Washington County Circuit Clerk’s Office were first unable to find the box of DNA specimens in September.
The recollections of circuit clerk deputies and district attorney’s office employees diverge after this point.
Deputies implied, in a series of affidavits, that Frye and District Attorney Dewayne Richardson visited the evidence room before the materials disappeared.
The district attorney’s office officials refuted that claim.
H.T. Crosby Park in Greenville, at the intersection of Legion Drive and Dublin Street, on Nov. 21, 2025. Beneath the sign for the park is a memorial for a 6-year-old girl who was last seen at the park in 2002 before she was later found dead nearby. Credit: Leonardo Bevilacqua / Mississippi Today
Frye questioned how Lakes, the deputy circuit clerk, was able to confirm that Richardson and he visited the evidence room based on a colleague’s description of them. He said her and her colleagues’ testimony included “hearsay” and “speculation.”
As Frye indicated in a since sealed document, testimony differed among circuit clerk deputies that observed similar events.
Frye’s analysis is no longer accessible to the public because it is under seal. Attorneys for Brown filed additional deputy circuit clerk testimonies, which are also expected to remain hidden from public view unless the seal is lifted.
Their responses to Frye’s comment may never be known.
“The public simply cannot understand the basis of any argument or decision without access to the underlying facts,” Coffman wrote. “Secrecy promotes distrust.”
‘A right to know’
Coffman also argued that sealing records prevents news outlets from reporting accurately on a case of great public interest. For many Greenville locals, Brown’s case dominated headlines and shocked a generation of parents and children.
“The public has a right to know how its elected officials and government employees maintain public safety and how its courts administer justice,” the motion reads.
Coffman said that sealing court records shuts the victim’s family out of the conversation, too. Robernisha’s family told Mississippi Today that recent developments in the case have brought up painful memories and put off closure.
“We shouldn’t be in the dark about this,” Addie Cannon, Robernisha’s aunt, said of the judge sealing the filings. “I’m still so upset about it, and I don’t think it’ll go away until we get some kind of justice and are able to read what’s going on.”
“We need to know what they’re saying because this is very important to my family, and we don’t have anything to go by.”
Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story.
OMAHA, Neb. – A look at the eight teams competing in the College World Series, which starts Friday at Charles Schwab Field in Omaha, Nebraska. (Capsules in order of CWS opening games. Coaches’ records through super regionals):
Troy (38-30)
Coach: Skylar Meade (186-119 in 5 years at Troy and overall).
Road to Omaha: Won Gainesville regional: lost to Miami 10-5, beat Rider 15-7, beat Miami 9-6, beat Florida 16-11, beat Florida 10-2. Won Troy super regional: beat Little Rock 12-2, beat Little Rock 7-2.
2026 record vs. CWS teams: 2-2 (1-1 vs. Georgia, 1-1 vs. Alabama).
Last CWS appearance: First.
All-time record in CWS: 0-0.
Meet the Trojans: C Jimmy Janicki (.341, 19 HRs, 85 RBIs), 1B Blake Cavill (.279, 13, 50), 2B Sean Darnell (.249, 4, 45), SS Aaron Piasecki (.346, 10, 48), 3B Josh Pyne (.291, 10, 37), LF Drew Nelson (.307, 6, 49), CF Steve Meier (.321, 9, 44), RF Houston Markham (.324, 3, 12), DH Jabe Boroff (.264, 11, 32). Starting pitchers: LHP Benjamin Stubbs (6-3, 4.93 ERA), RHP Tommy Egan (6-5, 5.38), LHP Hayden Smith (4-0, 2.94). Relievers: RHP Noah Thigpen (0-5, 6.29), LHP Zach Crotchfelt (7-2, 3.50), RHP Matt Dill (4-2, 5.50), RHP Dylan Alonso (4-3, 4.63), RHP Cooper Ellingworth (2-4, 6.15)
MLB alumni: Danny Cox, Clint Robinson, Mike Rivera, Brandon Lockridge, Chase Whitley, Mike Perez.
Short hops: Troy is the third Sun Belt Conference team to reach the CWS, joining 2000 Louisiana and 2025 Coastal Carolina. … First 30-loss team to reach the CWS. One of last four at-large teams selected for NCAA Tournament. … Pyne’s 81 career doubles are among in Division I among active players. … Boroff, who entered the tournament batting .185, is batting a team-best .462 and has hit six of his 11 homers in the postseason. … Six-game win streak is Trojans’ longest of the season.
Quotable: “It’s what you put everything into, everything you do you do for this. You don’t sleep, you don’t stop thinking about it. We have a lot of work to do and we will get to it, but I think that last out (in super regionals) was the first time my mind has taken a breath in years.” – Meade.
West Virginia (45-15)
Coach: Steve Sabins (89-31 in 2 years at West Virginia and overall).
Road to Omaha: Won Morgantown regional: beat Binghamton 10-1, lost to Kentucky 11-9, beat Wake Forest 10-5, beat Kentucky 11-9, beat Kentucky 6-5. Won Morgantown super regional: beat Cal Poly 12-2, beat Cal Poly 17-1.
2026 record vs. CWS teams: 0-0.
Last CWS appearance: First.
All-time record in CWS: 0-0.
Meet the Mountaineers: C Gavin Kelly (.384, 17 HRs, 57 RBIs) or Matthew Graveline (.293, 6, 36), 1B Armani Guzman (.312, 1, 41), 2B Brodie Kresser (.298, 2, 33), SS Matt Ineich (.296, 4, 35), 3B Tyrus Hall (.278, 7, 34), LF Matthew Graveline or Brock Wills (.280, 2, 23), CF Paul Schoenfeld (.342, 4, 50), RF Wills or Guzman, DH Sean Smith (.320, 9, 53). Starting pitchers: LHP Maxx Yehl (9-2, 2.10 ERA), RHP Chansen Cole (10-1, 2.85), RHP Dawson Montesa (5-5, 5.78). Relievers: RHP Ian Korn (5-1, 3.07), RHP Reese Bassinger (4-3, 3.23), RHP Carson Estridge (4-0, 3.27), RHP David Hagen (4-1, 3.48), LHP Joshua Surigao (0-0, 3.60), LHP Ben McDougal (1-0, 3.65).
MLB alumni: JJ Wetherholt, Victor Scott, Michael Grove, Alek Manoah, Ryan McBroom, John Means, David Carpenter, Joe Hudson.
Short hops: Mountaineers’ 45 wins are a program record. … Outscored Cal Poly 29-3 in two super regional games and averaging 10.7 runs per game in NCAA Tournament. … Staff ERA of 3.79 is best among CWS teams. … They’ve drawn 47 walks over seven regional and super regional games, most in the tournament. … Guzman, who was batting .290 entering the tournament, is batting a team-best .438 through regionals and super regionals. … Kelly is team’s season leader in batting average (.384) and home runs (17). … Cole (106) and Yehl (105) have combined for 211 strikeouts.
Quotable: “Mountaineers are going to Omaha. Hundred and thirty-five years in the making, so pretty special to be part of something that’s never been done in history before.” – Sabins.
Mississippi (41-21)
Coach: Mike Bianco (990-585-1 in 26 years at Mississippi, 1,090-656-1 in 29 seasons overall).
Road to Omaha: Won Lincoln regional: beat Arizona State 7-6, 14 innings, beat Nebraska 6-3, beat Arizona State 5-4, 10 innings. Won Auburn super regional: beat Auburn 6-4, beat Auburn 5-3.
2026 record vs. CWS teams: 3-6 (1-2 vs. Texas, 1-2 vs. Georgia, 1-2 vs. Alabama).
Last CWS appearance: 2022 (won national title in 2022).
All-time record in CWS: 10-11 in 6 appearances.
Mississippi starting pitcher Cade Townsend throws against Ohio State during an NCAA baseball game on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2026, in Houston. Credit: AP Photo/Michael Wyke
MLB alumni: Don Kessinger, Jeff Fassero, Lance Lynn, Mike Mayers, Drew Pomeranz, David Dellucci, Bobby Kielty, Matt Tolbert, Chris Coghlan, Jeff Calhoun, Ryan Rolison, James McArthur, Tim Elko.
Short hops: First CWS appearance since 2022 team won national championship. … Bianco’s third CWS appearance with Rebels, tying Tom Swayze for school record. … Randle, batting .225 entering regionals, is 8 of 16 with five RBIs in five tournament games. … Bissetta’s 23 homers are third in SEC. … Rabe is third nationally with an 8.91-to-1 strikeout-to-walk ratio, and he has struck out 17 over his last 13 innings. … Rebels finished ninth in the SEC standings at 15-15.
Quotable: “Their road to this point hasn’t always been easy. But man, the way they’ve hung in there, stuck by one another early on. Just great teammates, then developed into great leaders and the faces of the program.” — Bianco.
North Carolina (50-12-1)
Coach: Scott Forbes (250-116-1 in 6 years at North Carolina and overall).
Road to Omaha: Won Chapel Hill regional: beat VCU 8-0, beat East Carolina 7-5, beat East Carolina 9-3. Won Chapel Hill super regional: lost to USC 9-5, beat USC 4-0, beat USC 4-3.
2026 record vs. CWS teams: 0-0.
Last CWS appearance: 2024.
All-time record in CWS: 19-25 in 12 appearances.
Meet the Tar Heels: C Colin Hynek (.271, 9 HRs, 55 RBIs), 1B Erik Paulsen (.296, 11, 54), 2B Gavin Gallaher (.285, 12,54), SS Jake Schaffner (.358, 6, 46), 3B Cooper Nicholson (.262, 16, 48), LF Rom Kellis V (.306, 4, 19), CF Owen Hull (.390, 7, 81), RF Carter French (.232, 0, 13), DH Macon Winslow (.293, 10, 57). Starting pitchers: RHP Ryan Lynch (5-4, 4.22 ERA), RHP Jason DeCaro (11-2, 2.28), RHP Caden Glauber (10-0, 2.20), LHP Folger Boaz (3-3, 7.03). Relievers: LHP Jackson Rose (4-0, 2.35), RHP Walker McDuffie (8-3, 3.44, 6 saves), RHP Matthew Matthijs (3-0, 5.34), RHP Cameron Padgett (0-0, 6.56).
MLB alumni: Michael Busch, Cooper Criswell, Tim Federowicz, Zac Gallen, Matt Harvey, Chris Iannetta, Andrew Miller, Colin Moran, Mike Morin, Ryder Ryan, Kyle Seager, Jacob Stallings, Trent Thornton, Adam Warren.
Short hops: Hull matched the national season high for doubles in a game with his fourth against USC, giving the Tar Heels a 4-3 walk-off win to wrap up the super regional. Hull has 24 doubles for the season. … Super regional-clinching win over USC was Forbes’ 250th victory at North Carolina. … Ninth CWS appearance since 2006, tied for most. … .982 team fielding percentage is best in the CWS field and 56 double plays are most.
Quotable: “We’re not done yet. We got a lot more baseball left to play.” – French.
Oklahoma (38-22)
Coach: Skip Johnson (305-197 in 9 years at Oklahoma and overall).
Road to Omaha: Won Atlanta regional: beat The Citadel 8-3, lost to Georgia Tech 9-3, beat The Citadel 15-5, beat Georgia Tech 15-8, beat Georgia Tech 8-7, 10 innings. Won Lawrence super regional: beat Kansas 8-1, beat Kansas 13-2.
2026 record vs. CWS teams: 1-5 (0-3 vs. Texas, 1-2 vs. Alabama).
Last CWS appearance: 2022.
All-time record in CWS: 18-18 in 11 appearances (won national titles in 1951, 1994).
Meet the Sooners: C Deiten Lachance (.332, 15 HRs, 62 RBIs), 1B Dayton Tockey (.259, 8, 22), 2B Kyle Branch (.225, 3, 21), SS Jaxon Willits (.290, 6, 48), 3B Camden Johnson (.309, 9, 47), LF Brendan Brock (.293, 12, 52), CF Jason Walk (.269, 4, 22), RF Dasan Harris (.362, 4, 23), DH Trey Gambill (.293, 10, 35). Starting pitchers: LHP Cord Rager (5-3, 5.20 ERA), RHP Xander Mercurius (0-2, 5.82), LHP Cameron Johnson (6-1, 4.36). Relievers: RHP Nick Wesloski (1-1, 4.03), LHP Nate Smithburg (2-0, 3.06), RHP Jason Bodin (5-1, 5.45), RHP Jackson Cleveland (3-2, 5.68), RHP Reid Hensley (1-0, 5.20), RHP Michael Catalano (3-4, 7.02), RHP Mason Bixby (2-0, 6.75), LHP Gavyn Jones (1-0, 5.18).
MLB alumni: Mickey Hatcher, Greg Norton, Greg Dobbs, Jason Bartlett, Joe Simpson, Bobby Witt, Danny Jackson, Mark Redman, Bob Shirley, Sheldon Neuse, Jack Mayfield, Steve Okert, Jon Gray, Chase Anderson, Burch Smith.
Short hops: Sooners have hit 18 homers and scored 70 runs over seven NCAA Tournament games. … Tockey has homered six times in nine games since May 16, including five in the tournament. He has driven in 11 runs over the last nine games after not recording an RBI over his previous 19 games. … All 15 of Lachance’s homers have come in the last 28 games. … OU is 17-0 when scoring at least 10 runs. … .350 team batting average in NCAA Tournament is best in CWS field.
Quotable: “Where does it go from here? I don’t know. But I can tell you this: We’ll go up there and fight and claw. We went through a lot of adversity all year long, and (our players) fought through it and never wavered, and kept battling and kept battling and kept battling.” – Johnson.
Alabama (42-19)
Coach: Rob Vaughn (116-61 in 3 years at Alabama, 299-178 in 9 seasons overall).
Road to Omaha: Won Tuscaloosa regional: beat Alabama State 21-3, beat South Carolina Upstate 7-5, beat Oklahoma State 9-7, 11 innings. Won Tuscaloosa super regional: beat St. John’s 8-0, beat St. John’s 7-2.
2026 record vs. CWS teams: 6-5 (1-1 vs. Troy, 2-1 vs. Oklahoma, 1-2 vs. Texas, 2-1 vs. Mississippi).
MLB alumni: Joe Sewell, Dave Magadan, Alex Avila, Butch Hobson, Dustan Mohr, Dave Robertson, Al Worthington, Tommy Hunter, Frank Lary, Greg Hibbard, Wade LeBlanc, Lance Cormier.
Short hops: Lebron has 41 steals in 42 attempts and is one behind school record holder G.W. Keller, who had 42 steals in 1999. … The Tide swept four SEC regular-season series, most since 2002. … Fay pitched Tide’s first individual no-hitter since 1942 on March 20 against Florida. Fay’s hometown is Doniphan, Nebraska, 150 miles from Charles Schwab Field. … Team’s 2.30 ERA in NCAA Tournament is best in CWS field. … Tide averaged 10.4 runs per game in regionals and super regionals after averaging 6.43 up to that point.
Quotable: “What a day, what a year, what a season, man. Twenty-seven years in the making, I couldn’t think of a better group to be able to kick that door down.” – Vaughn.
Texas (45-13)
Coach: Jim Schlossnagle (89-27 in 2 years at Texas, 1,035-482 in 25 seasons overall).
Road to Omaha: Won Austin regional: beat Holy Cross 19-1, beat Tarleton State 16-2, beat UC Santa Barbara 6-4. Won Austin super regional: beat Oregon 11-3, beat Oregon 6-5.
2026 record vs. CWS teams: 7-2 (2-1 vs. Mississippi, 3-0 vs. Oklahoma, 2-1 vs. Alabama).
Last CWS appearance: 2022.
All-time record in CWS: 88-65 in 38 appearances (won national titles in 1949, 1950, 1975, 1983, 2002, 2005).
Meet the Longhorns: C Carson Tinney (.333, 22 HRs, 58 RBIs), 1B Ashton Larson (.280, 1, 16), 2B Temo Becerra (.318, 6, 42), SS Adrian Rodriguez (.306, 4, 40), 3B Casey Borba (.269, 18, 57), LF Anthony Pack Jr. (.359, 11, 52), CF Dariyan Pendergrass (.222, 0, 6), RF Aiden Robbins (.342, 24, 64), DH Ethan Mendoza (.269, 10, 47). Starting pitchers: LHP Dylan Volantis (10-1, 2.03 ERA), RHP Ruger Riojas (5-2, 4.04), LHP Luke Harrison (6-3, 4.29). Relievers: LHP Ethan Walker (1-1, 2.65), RHP Brody Walls (2-0, 5.76), RHP Thomas Burns (2-0, 5.64), RHP Sam Cozart (6-0, 1.65, 9 saves), RHP Brett Crossland (1-2, 3.57), RHP Max Grubbs (2-0, 5.52), RHP Cody Howard (1-1, 9.22).
MLB alumni: Burt Hooton, Keith Moreland, Ron Gardenhire, Spike Owen, Roger Clemens, Calvin Schiraldi, Greg Swindell, Shane Reynolds, Brooks Kieschnick, Huston Street, J.P. Howell, Brandon Belt, Corey Knebel, David Hamilton, Kody Clemens, Bryce Elder.
Short hops: Schlossnagle is one of only four coaches to guide three different schools – TCU, Texas A&M and Texas – to CWS. His clubs have played in Omaha eight times in the last 16 years, including a nation’s best seven trips since 2014. … This is Texas’ 39th CWS appearance, most of any team. … Volantis is the D1 active career leader with a 2.00 ERA. … Texas’ 658 strikeouts are its most in a season. Riojas (113) and Volantis (126) are the first Texas duo with 100 strikeouts in a season since 2011.
Quotable: “The standard is the national title, and we’ll do our best to win that. I have to walk by that sign that says ‘38 trips to Omaha’ and 38 has been sitting there for a while. So I’m glad we’ll be able to change it to to 39.” – Schlossnagle.
Georgia (51-12)
Coach: Wes Johnson (137-46 in 3 years at Georgia and overall).
Road to Omaha: Won Athens regional: beat LIU 18-2, beat Liberty 6-2, beat Liberty 6-1. Won Athens super regional: beat Mississippi State 13-12, beat Mississippi State 11-9, 10 innings.
2026 record vs. CWS teams: 3-2 (1-1 vs. Troy, 2-1 vs. Mississippi).
Last CWS appearance: 2008.
All-time record in CWS: 10-11 in 6 appearances (won national title in 1990).
Meet the Bulldogs: C Daniel Jackson (.396, 31 HRs, 86 RBIs), 1B Brennan Hudson (.296, 21, 50), 2B Ryan Wynn (.342, 9, 37), SS Kolby Branch (.297, 19, 58), 3B Tre Phelps (.364, 19, 58), LF Kenny Ishikawa (.333, 2, 18), CF Rylan Lujo (.374, 13, 45), RF Ryan Black (.298, 9, 32), DH Michael O’Shaughnessy (.294, 20, 55). Starting pitchers: Joey Volchko (10-2, 4.07 ERA), RHP Dylan Vigue (4-1, 4.73), RHP Caden Aoki (9-1, 4.04). Relievers: RHP Zach Brown (2-0, 3.53), RHP Matt Scott (7-0, 3.88), RHP Justin Byrd (5-2, 3.95), RHP Paul Farley (8-1, 4.53), LHP Caleb Jameson (2-0, 6.11), RHP Grant Edwards (1-1, 5.79).
MLB alumni: Gordon Beckham, Glenn Davis, Jeff Keppinger, Jeff Treadway, Cris Carpenter, Jim Nash, Derek Lilliquist, Mitchell Boggs, Spud Chandler, Jonathan Cannon, Kyle Farmer, Emerson Hancock, Cole Wilcox.
Short hops: Bulldogs have won 19 of their last 20. … Hit 25 homers over five NCAA Tournament games and season total of 174 leads nation. … Jackson, the SEC player of the year, has the most home runs among CWS players (31) and ranks third nationally. He is first SEC player to hit at least 25 homers and steal at least 25 bases in a season. … Team’s season .324 batting average and 9.4 runs per game are highest among CWS teams.
Quotable: “The chemistry on our team, it’s hard to talk about. It’s just incredible. I think a big factor of that is, as silly as it sounds to say, winning. When you’re winning together, it’s fun and it’s true. The locker room is a much happier place after a win.” – Jackson.
Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story.
“Voter Voices” is a series of Mississippians sharing their thoughts on voting rights, the state’s history of voter suppression and the new gerrymandering push embroiling Mississippi, the South and the nation.
It was as if they killed Deborah Griffin’s grandfather again.
That’s how Griffin said she felt when she heard that the U.S. Supreme Court had struck down part of the Voting Rights Act and cleared the way for the widespread elimination of majority Black electoral districts.
Her grandfather, Lamar “Ditney” Smith, a World War I veteran who organized Black Americans to vote, was shot dead in broad daylight on the courthouse lawn in Brookhaven, Mississippi. He had been helping other Black voters get to the polls to vote absentee, so they could vote without becoming victims of violence.
Instead, he became the victim.
So when Griffin, 69, learned about the Supreme Court’s decision in Louisiana v. Callais, she called her sister.
“I said they killed Ditney again. The Supreme Court killed Ditney again,” Griffin told her sister. “I said, ‘Call everybody, because we’ve got to have another funeral for him.’ Those are the words I told her. I couldn’t believe it.”
Griffin never had a chance to meet her grandfather. He was murdered on Aug. 13, 1955, and she was born in 1956. But the mission to which he dedicated his life, and the way his life was cut short, have loomed large in her mind.
Growing up near Petal, she remembers standing up to store clerks who refused to cash her mother’s checks. Civil rights icons such as Vernon Dahmer, whose daughter Bettie was friends with her sister, feature prominently in her childhood memories. Griffin would go on to earn her doctorate and two master’s degrees, which led to a long career at Jackson State University.
Dozens of people saw the shooting but denied being able to identify Smith’s killer. Two weeks after his killing, a 14-year-old named Emmett Till would be abducted and lynched about 170 miles north of where Smith perished, a case that would go on to epitomize the brutality of Jim Crow-era Mississippi.
NAACP leader Medgar Evers investigated Smith’s assassination, and authorities arrested three white men in connection with Smith’s killing. But an all-white grand jury refused to indict, despite the fact the sheriff saw one of the men covered in blood at the scene. Those men arrested have since died.
The 63-year-old Smith was a member of the Regional Council of Negro Leadership, a civil rights organization that pledged an “all-out fight for unrestricted voting rights.”
Griffin plans to continue that fight, regardless of whether the state Legislature ends up redrawing Mississippi’s electoral maps.
“If they want to draw a map and it’s not equal, it’s just not right,” Griffin said. “But as long as I have breath in my body, I’m going to be at these high schools, and when they turn 18, I’m going to get people to register to vote.”
Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story.
Southaven residents filed a class action lawsuit against billionaire Elon Musk’s xAI and its subsidiary, MZX Tech, on Tuesday in federal court over the company’s use of mobile gas-powered turbines at its plant.
In the filing, residents said they have been harmed by noise from the large-scale generators. They allege that residents have dealt with “near-constant noise, vibrations, and other nuisance-level harms” since the middle of last year and it has hurt their quality of life and their property values.
This lawsuit is the latest brought against the billionaire’s artificial intelligence company. Earlier this year, the NAACP, represented by the Southern Environmental Law Center, brought a lawsuit against xAI over a lack of environmental permits. In Mississippi, temporary/portable turbines are allowed to operate for one year without an air permit but the SELC and NAACP say that the lack of permits violates the federal Clean Air Act.
The number of turbines has continued to increase, despite complaints from residents. The company built a sound barrier to try and mitigate the sound but residents say it has done little to help. As of May, there were 47 turbines on the site, up from 18 last year.
Initially, the company bought a vacant power plant in Southaven and set up natural gas turbines to fuel its data centers in Memphis. It has since announced that it was investing a total of $20 billion to build a data center in Mississippi.
This lawsuit comes as SpaceX, xAI’s parent company, is expected to go public on June 12 with an estimated $1.8 trillion valuation.
Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story.
After becoming the fourth police chief in six months and following a federal investigation that led to policing reforms, Lexington’s new leader, David Simmons, said establishing trust in the community is a major goal of his.
The Board of Aldermen appointed Simmons as chief May 5, less than three months after appointing Kenneth Gee, an officer in the department, as interim and beginning a search for a permanent chief.
Simmons acknowledged the lack of stability in police leadership during the first half of the year, and he said he was brought on to rebuild trust within the police force and the community.
“The community needed someone that they could trust and build a relationship with. They knew me from the past, everyone knew me from around here,” he said Tuesday. “They wanted someone they could trust and be treated right by.”
David Simmons, Lexington police chief Credit: Courtesy of David Simmons
Simmons has worked in law enforcement since 2005 in police departments around Holmes County and in Yazoo City. Simmons was also a patrol officer in Lexington in 2008.
Since becoming chief, he said he has worked on revamping the department’s policies and procedures. He is also looking for ways to attract and hire more officers, which requires higher pay.
Simmons became chief of the Cruger Police Department in 2015and will continue to serve in that part-time capacity. The Holmes County town of 368 is about 20 miles from Lexington.
Simmons also is an emergency medical technician, has worked with the Holmes County School District for over a decade and owns a consulting business in the county. He is also a member of the board that oversees the Dr. Arenia C. Mallory Community Health Center, which has seven locations across Holmes, Leflore and Madison counties.
The last permanent police chief in Lexington was Charles Henderson, whom the board let go in January when the Department of Public Safety suspended his law enforcement certification.
After Henderson, the Board of Aldermen appointed interim chief Robert Kirklin, who left less than a month later. Kirklin previously worked for and retired from Lexington police and came out of retirement for the interim role. The board then appointed Gee as interim.
Henderson’s departure also happened around the time when the Board of Aldermen voted to adopt police reforms recommended by the U.S. Department of Justice. Those reforms were based on a 2023 pattern and practice investigation that found constitutional violations and a practice of jailing people for unpaid fines without determining if they could pay them.
Simmons said he is working closely with the mayor and the board to implement the DOJ recommendations.
Years earlier, residents alleged Lexington police used discriminatory policing practices, excessive force and retaliation against critics. Some of those actions resulted in lawsuits, including one filed by the legal organization JULIAN.
Henderson became chief in 2022 after the former chief, Sam Dobbins, who is white, was fired after a leaked recording captured him using racial and homophobic slurs when describing how he used force while on the job.
After several years of turmoil in the department, Simmons said he hopes to treat everyone equally.
“I give respect and I expect to be respected,” he said. “You will be treated right when you come to Lexington in the city, but you also will be held accountable.”
Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story.
Lawmakers and advocates inflated a 20-foot statue of an IUD outside the state Capitol Tuesday. Speakers gathered around the replica, called Freeda – as in “Free Da Womb” – and called for the Legislature to guarantee Mississippians’ right to contraception amid shifting political winds across the country.
Freeda, a symbol of reproductive autonomy, has been taken to six countries, over 20 states and more than 50 cities – even being displayed at Burning Man twice. Americans for Contraception, the group touring Freeda, is making its way across the South in honor of the anniversary of a 1965 U.S. Supreme Court decision that established a constitutional right to contraception by recognizing the right to privacy.
In 2022, after the right to abortion was overturned, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas called on the Supreme Court to review the 1965 case, prompting some states to pass laws protecting contraception access.
“My children will have less rights than I had if we don’t do something about it,” said Rep. Zakiya Summers, a Democrat from Jackson who introduced legislation to guarantee access to contraception the last two years. The bill died both years.
Sen. Kamesha B. Mumford, D-Jackson, speaks to a reporter across the street from the state Capitol in Jackson on Tuesday, June 9, 2026. “Freeda Womb,” a 20-foot inflatable IUD, was in Jackson to mark the anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, which established a precedent of a constitutional right to contraception. Credit: Richard Lake/Mississippi Today
Summers and her colleague, Sen. Kamesha Mumford, also a Democrat from Jackson, intend to try again next year to pass a Right to Contraception Act.
In April, after Mississippi lawmakers criminalized a common women’s health medication because of its association with abortion, Mumford spoke out about her personal experience using it to start a family. Threats to contraception are part of the same fight, Mumford said, adding that doctors prescribed her birth control as the first step in her journey with in vitro fertilization, or IVF.
“I’ve never taken birth control to prevent a pregnancy. I’ve always taken it to try to get pregnant,” Mumford told Mississippi Today.
Reproductive health post-Dobbs
In recent years, the reproductive health landscape has shifted considerably, said Mary Ziegler, a law professor and abortion historian at the University of California, Davis. Anti-abortion activists have found common ground with other groups such as pronatalists, who believe people aren’t having enough babies, and people in the Make America Healthy Again movement, who oppose Big Pharma.
Social media helped fuel the connections between these disparate groups, but it was the overturning of the right to abortion that made contraception a natural target.
“What’s politically possible, and what the next big thing is, changed once the right to abortion went away,” Ziegler said.
Those groups also found sympathy with a subset of people who are dissatisfied with their current birth control options, but wouldn’t want to see them disappear. Among sexually active women not using contraception, 1 in 5 don’t use birth control because they dislike or worry about the side effects, according to an analysis by KFF. Anti-abortion activists have capitalized on the dissatisfaction and used it as an opportunity to push alternatives to chemical contraception, such as fertility tracking apps – some of which are connected to pro-life ideology.
“There’s history there,” Ziegler said. “Early formulations of the pill were not safe for a lot of people. Early IUDs were not safe for a lot of people. There’s a grain of truth in all of this that they’re using for very different ends.”
Today, birth control methods are safe, but research has stagnated in recent years, Ziegler said. Improving birth control would involve expanding access and research, she said. Instead, it’s likely that the attack on birth control will have the opposite effect.
All of this is unfolding against the backdrop of an overhaul of Title X, a federal program that has been providing money for family planning services to states for over 50 years. In April, the Trump administration introduced preliminary guidelines that would shift the focus from contraception to conception for clinics that receive Title X funding.
“It allows women to control so many aspects of our lives – from finishing school to ultimately having healthy pregnancies and healthy births,” said Dana Singiser, a reproductive health strategist representing the nonpartisan organization Americans for Contraception.
That’s especially important in a state such as Mississippi, which consistently has some of the worst health outcomes for mothers and babies. Mississippi earned an ‘F’ grade for its rate of preterm births in 2024, according to a 2025 report card from the March of Dimes, a national nonprofit aimed at improving the health of mothers and babies.
Restrictions on it won’t just stop Mississippians from choosing not to parent. Restrictions may also stop some from starting families.
“It is very rare that a medication only serves one purpose,” Mumford said. “People aren’t one dimensional, and neither is the science that we use to improve their quality of life.”
