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Multiple people have received letters giving notice of an anticipated civil lawsuit by the family of Nolan Xavier Wells, a community college football player whose body was found near Horn Island off the Mississippi Gulf Coast two days after he went there with friends to celebrate the Fourth of July. 

A copy of the letter was provided to some news organizations by recipients, and was published. The attorney who sent the letter, Gary Bufkin, was not immediately available for comment Tuesday and he did not confirm that he sent the letter to the other outlets. 

The letters direct recipients to immediately preserve all evidence in their possession, control or custody in their original form. They are also directed to suspend any automatic deletion or overwrite functions on cellphones, computers, video cameras and other devices. 

Most of the letter’s pages are dedicated to the types of evidence recipients should save, broken down by nearly 20 categories, which generally fall into communications; photos, audio and video recordings; metadata for content; records about place and location; and law enforcement and prosecutorial records. 

Bufkin is representing Wells’ estate in Jackson County Chancery Court. The teenager’s mother Christine Wonsley was appointed administrator the week of his funeral. 

Ridgeland-based Carroll Bufkin PLCC, Bufkin’s firm, is working with national civil rights attorney Ben Crump, whom Christine and Elmore Wonsley hired days after Wells’ death. 

Crump’s firm is investigating the death of the Black teenager and pushing for autopsy and other investigative records. A Mississippi-based firm is handling estate matters in state court because Crump is not admitted to practice law in Mississippi. 

A spokesperson from Crump’s office did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday. 

The letters are dated July 20, the same day of the 18-year-old’s funeral in Ocean Springs attended by hundreds of people, including family, friends, teammates and community members. 

On Tuesday, the estate’s attorney sent several subpoenas to technology companies that run social media applications including Facebook, TikTok and SnapChat.  

Wells celebrated the Fourth of July with others by taking a boat to Horn Island, a Gulf Coast barrier island where people dock boats, wade in the water and walk on the shore of the barrier island. Hundreds of people were on the island that day, according to photos and videos.

He was reported missing after he did not return to Ocean Springs. Investigators have said his friends told them he wanted to stay behind to talk with a woman and that he planned to get a boat ride off the island. Two days later, a U.S. park ranger found his body off the northwestern tip of the barrier island that is about 8 miles offshore.

Last week, a few county and state officials commented about Wells’ case, some for the first time.

Jackson County District Attorney Angel Myers McIlrath, who previously met with Wells’ parents,  repeated in a Thursday video statement what she previously relayed to the family, that the state’s autopsy report would not be released publicly until grand jury review. 

McIlrath said state rules direct investigators and prosecutors not to make comments or release information that could affect the integrity of those processes.

“I understand the public’s urgency to understand what happened to Nolan. But we are not taking time for time’s sake,” she said. “We are taking the time required to complete the work this investigation demands.” 

Grand juries listen to evidence presented by prosecutors to decide whether anyone should be indicted on criminal charges and potentially go to trial. Their proceedings are not open to the public, and jurors are prohibited from talking about grand jury proceedings and disclosure of any indictments cannot be made until six months after final adjournment, according to state rules.

McIlrath did not say in the video whether the law enforcement investigation is complete or when the next grand jury will be convened. Generally, grand juries meet a few times a year across the state, and its members are chosen randomly from a list of registered voters in the county.  

Jackson County does not list its grand jury terms online. Neighboring Harrison and Hancock counties are in a separate circuit district and their grand juries meet twice a year, according to the circuit court directory and terms list published by the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office. 

The same day McIlrath released her statement, state Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell spoke with Mississippi Public Broadcasting about the Wells case, including how law enforcement handles investigations and why updates are generally not quickly shared with the public. 

He mentioned that the FBI is investigating threats against people involved in the case, including witnesses, Wells’ family, and local and state public officials. Tindell reminded people that intimidating witnesses and public officials is a felony. 

Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch released a statement after Tindell’s interview extending prayers to Wells’ family and standing by the professionalism of law enforcement, the district attorney and other local leaders working on the case. 

Like Tindell and McIlrath, Fitch asked for people to respect the integrity of the investigation process, saying that efforts to intimidate, disrupt or interfere with the work of law enforcement and prosecutors or threaten their well-being “will be taken seriously and we will hold those who make them accountable.”

Also on Thursday, Gov. Tate Reeves made his first public comments about Wells on X, but he did not mention the teenager or offer condolences to his parents. 

Instead, Reeves accused the family’s attorney, Crump, of lying about facts in the case and about Mississippi. The governor extended the criticism to the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has spoken in support of Wells’ family, including at the funeral. Reeves wrote that “Crump, Sharpton and their ilk don’t care about facts” – facts that he is confident will be released from the Jackson County investigators and the State Medical Examiner’s Office. 

The Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame’s induction weekend is this weekend and the Clevelands discuss all of the Class of 2026, including former Mississippi State and NFL great Glen Collins. Collins joins us in studio to discuss his career, which began at at Whitten Junior High, continued at Jim Hill High School and then State. His second year at Mississippi State coincided with Rick’s first year at the Clarion Ledger when Rick was the Mississippi State beat writer. They share some poignant memories.

As public opposition to data centers has grown in Mississippi, the government economic incentives available to companies have come under increasing scrutiny online and in city hall meetings. 

Data centers are eligible for state and local tax incentives that proponents and some officials say are essential to bring projects to the state, but critics disagree.

Standard data center tax exemptions

Most data centers, such as xAI, Compass and AVAIO, have opted for the data center tax exemption created by the Legislature. This does not require further special legislation for a company to receive it.

The standard incentive includes a 10-year exemption on sales and use taxes for certain initial construction materials and equipment needed to operate a data center, exemptions on income taxes and franchise taxes. 

To qualify for these incentives, the company needs to be approved by the Mississippi Development Authority, make a minimum investment of $20 million, create at least 20 full-time jobs that pay 125% of the average annual state wage. The average state salary is currently about $49,700.

These tax exemptions are similar to others Mississippi offers to qualifying agricultural, industrial and aerospace companies. 

A sales tax exemption is the most common exemption states offer to data centers. Servers are usually a data center’s most expensive equipment and must be replaced every few years. 

Data center sales tax exemptions are part of a long history of sales tax exemptions for manufacturing equipment, according to Dan Diorio, vice president of state policy for the Data Center Coalition, an industry group. He says that not taxing what a business uses to create its products allows it to continue investing in the facility, generating more economic activity. 

According to the National Coalition of State Legislators, a nonpartisan group that provides policy and research support to state legislators, 38 states offer direct tax incentives to data centers. While the length, breadth and terms of these incentives vary broadly, all 38 offer some sales tax exemption on information technology equipment.

The Mississippi statute requires certification from MDA, contracts with recapture clauses, documentation proving the company’s financial position and an annual review. If an audit finds the company is not following the requirements, it can lose its exempt status and may face additional penalties. While some states do not have end dates for their incentives, salary requirements or claw-back provisions, Mississippi does. 

“This is a performance contract, and MDA administers it as one. Legislative oversight, annual review and state Auditor jurisdiction provide additional layers of accountability. The system is designed to function in the public interest even when no one is watching closely,” MDA said in a statement.

However, some critics say the state’s data center incentive program is too generous.

“You’re abating the majority of taxes by not taxing equipment because equipment is the most expensive thing,” said Kasia Tarczynska, a research analyst at Good Jobs First, a nonprofit research center focused on economic development accountability, especially government incentives for private businesses.

The Center for Economic Accountability, an advocacy organization, named Compass data center in Meridian the “Worst Economic Development Deal of the Year” due to the “breadth and length” of the tax breaks the company would receive. 

“It’s deeply irresponsible for Mississippi’s politicians and bureaucrats to give away a decade’s worth of tax revenues just so they can brag to voters about ‘high-tech job creation,” John Mozena, the center’s president, said.

“The Mississippi program is in a way unique because this program also exempts companies from income tax and property tax,” Tarczynska said.

In 2019, a few years before the AI boom, the Legislature lowered the requirements for data centers to qualify for Mississippi’s tax incentives. The minimum investment was lowered from $50 million to $20 million. The minimum number of new jobs was lowered from 50 to 20 and the average salary required was reduced from 150% to 125% of the average annual state wage.

At the time, legislators said this change was necessary to attract more data centers to the state and was requested by MDA. MDA did not comment on why the change was needed.

Tarczynska believes the change was likely because the data center industry looked very different from today.

“Back then the data center industry was much smaller, the projects were tiny, they were not as capital intensive as what we are experiencing now. Therefore, you have this requirement of $20 million. So basically this was created for an industry that doesn’t exist anymore,” Tarczynska said.

Another concern for Tarczynska is local agreements that she says provide a “huge property tax abatement” to companies.

Local tax incentives 

Data centers and other companies often sign an agreement with local governments to receive an abatement on property, or ad valorem, taxes. 

Each year a county tax assessor estimates the value of all real and personal property, which for data centers includes the land, buildings, servers and other computing equipment. That valuation determines the property taxes owed. Property taxes make up 75% of a typical Mississippi county’s revenue according to the Mississippi State University Extension. 

Under the fee-in-lieu agreements, a company can pay as little as one-third of the taxes owed for that year. The money is then distributed to the school district, city and county based on the tax rate for that year.

The agreements begin once an investment of at least $60 million has been made and a center is operational. The company can receive property tax abatements for up to 30 years but each individual piece of property can only receive the abatement for up to 10 years.

Amazon will start making fee-in-lieu payments to Madison County in 2027 for its five completed data centers. The company will pay an estimated $28 million in 2027 with payments increasing as the company opens additional buildings over the next few years. In the first 10 years, it’s estimated the data centers will bring in over $1 billion for the county, school districts, city and community college. 

Madison County is the only county in Mississippi to tie the fee-in-lieu percentage to specific project benchmarks. The company must create 700 jobs by 2036 and maintain that number for five years and invest $10 billion by 2030 or it will pay a higher fee. It is also the only county to make the estimated fee-in-lieu payments public. 

Amazon’s 2024 incentive package

Senate bill 2001, the 2024 incentive package the Legislature passed for Amazon Web Services, grabbed headlines with the announcement the company was investing $10 billion in the state, at that time the largest investment in state history. Since then, other companies have taken the state’s more automatic, statutory incentives.  

“AWS’s project did not come through the standard data center program. It came through a special session of this Legislature that started in January 2024, and it was different by design,” said Bill Cork, the executive director of MDA, at a recent state AI task force meeting.

While the bill does not explicitly name Amazon, to qualify for the incentives another company would need to invest at least $10 billion, create 1,000 new jobs paying at least 125% of the state’s average annual wage, among other requirements. So far, Amazon is the only data center developer meeting those requirements. 

The legislation was passed under the Mississippi Major Economic Impact Act. Legislators use the act to provide incentives tailored to individual projects, such as Continental Tires and Amplify Cell Technologies. 

In the bill, the Legislature approved $44 million through appropriations, mostly for workforce development; a $215 million loan to Madison County for infrastructure work and other incentives. Most notably, a permanent exemption on sales and use taxes for equipment purchases was provided.

It also includes clawback provisions for the state to recoup money if Amazon does not hold up its end of the deal. 

“They require annual performance to unlock each successive year. The state built in the equivalent of a continuous performance review, giving it ongoing leverage throughout a multi-decade relationship,” MDA said in a statement to Mississippi Today.. 

A report from the state economist’s office found the initial investment would bring in $41.3 million in state revenue during the construction phase and $153.7 million in the first 15 years of operation. Amazon has since announced an additional $15 billion investment to build more centers in the state. MDA estimates that the Amazon data centers have a $3.3 billion impact on the state’s annual GDP, which was $165 billion in 2025. 

Pros and cons of incentives

Data centers can be a significant source of revenue for local governments by directly paying taxes and experts say that they generate additional business and tax revenue in the community.

“You’re generating a significant amount of local property tax revenue and local business tax revenue. Data centers create these significant ecosystems around them that far outweigh the cost of the sales tax exemption program itself,” Diorio said.

A report from the accounting firm PwC, commissioned by the coalition, estimated that existing data centers in Mississippi directly contributed $141 million in state and local taxes in 2024, a 29% increase year over year.  

“We very much see the economic activity that data centers generate far surpass the cost of the exemptions that they get. But it’s a critical tool helping to ensure that the state remains competitive, especially in comparison to its neighbors,” Diorio said.

“The incentive is not a gift. It is the entry fee for a competition that Mississippi did not design and cannot sit out,” according to MDA. 

“Tax incentives, the primary tool used in large corporate deals, do not redirect existing revenue away from small businesses or anyone else. They represent revenue the state would not have collected if the company had located elsewhere,” MDA added.

But some analysts argue that companies decide where to locate for a range of factors and that local tax incentives are not a primary one.

“Oftentimes public officials are providing what we call subsidies to projects that would happen even without these subsidies,” Tarczynska said.

A 2025 report from the Georgia Department of Audits and Accounts, estimated that 70% of data centers in that state would still have been built without tax exemptions. It calculated the state lost out on $474.2 million in fiscal year 2025 from the exemption. However, the report also found that the exemption resulted in over $1.2 billion value added to the state economy.

The report acknowledged that while incentives might not be the first consideration for where to locate a data center, “a lack of incentives, or a repeal of existing incentives, may signal a negative business climate and may create an atmosphere of uncertainty for firms planning to relocate or expand.”

What’s next for incentives in Mississippi?

Other states are starting to reevaluate their data center incentives. In June, Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker paused the state’s data center incentive program and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott suggested a repeal of sales tax exemptions for data centers. 

While some Mississippi leaders have begun to consider whether there needs to be additional data center regulations, many have said the incentive structure is working well with data centers bringing in transformational tax revenue for cities, counties and school districts.

“It’s going to greatly impact our total operating budget. We’ve seen some flat revenues the last year or so,” said Meridian Mayor Percy Bland at a July meeting of an AI task force the Mississippi Legislature created. “We see over the next eight to 10 years our budget doubling in size with what Compass’s investment is going to be for the city of Meridian.”

Dirty blankets lined the rails of the Grand Chateau apartments, left behind by residents after power to their homes was shut off by Entergy last week.

The owner of the apartment complex said the building was supposed to be vacant. But when power got disconnected, at least a dozen people still living there were left vulnerable to the heat.

City officials have stepped in to help the residents escape the near triple-digit temperatures by giving them access to a cooling center and, now, temporary housing.

“Nobody needs to live in those circumstances. So I got into action and helped those people get out,” said Ward 2 City Council Member Tina Clay.

She visited the apartment complex Friday night and called the situation heartbreaking. That’s when she stepped up not as a city council member, she said, but as a concerned citizen. 

Other city residents began bringing water and ice for the complex’s residents. The situation became more alarming when one resident had to be transported to the hospital for heat exertion. 

Soon after, efforts began to relocate residents from the dilapidated brick building on West Capitol Street. With the help fo state officials, Jackson Mayor John Horhn opened a cooling center Monday at the Jackson Police Training Academy on St. Charles Street, nearly two miles from the apartment complex, and is available to all Jackson residents. 

The city found money to help relocate displaced residents but it was not immediately clear how much money and where it came from. By Sunday, the complex was empty and residents were split among Matt’s House, a shelter for women and children, and temporary hotel housing. Stewpot Community Services is working alongside Matt’s House to shelter those affected. The nonprofit also donated 25 cots to the city’s cooling center and is helping provide meals.

“These hot days are dangerous for all of us, but especially for those who have no reprieve from the high temperatures,” the Rev. Jill Buckley, executive director of Stewpot, said in a statement from the city. “We are glad to work with the city to provide relief for our neighbors.” 

In a statement, Entergy said the power was disconnected after alleged signs of meter tampering were discovered. Power will remain disconnected until the property owner completes the necessary repairs. It remains uncertain when power will be restored.

The utility added that the complex still had two active accounts at the time of disconnection. 

Grand Chateau property owner Ramesh Ramchandran said eviction notices were handed out in May 2025, and units at the property were supposed to be unoccupied. 

Ramchandran told Mississippi Today that various efforts were made to renovate the property after residents were evicted. He said security issues caused delays. 

According to Ramchandran, the building was supposed to be boarded up and utilities cut off. He said squatters have been a longtime problem and added to the renovation delays.

On Monday, wooden boards covered most of the complex’s windows. The city posted notices on shuttered windows ordering the premises be vacated within 30 days of July 24. 

Ramchandran said he has previously called on the city to help in the renovation process.

Ward 5 City Council Member Vernon Hartley disputed Ramchandran’s claims. He said the city had tried to contact Ramchandran as late as September regarding code violations. Hartley added that the city can only do so much when it comes to matters regarding private property. 

“The City of Jackson cannot be just caretakers for everybody’s circumstances. We want to help in time of need, but that help has to be balanced,” Hartley said. “We’re limited by funding, and we’re also limited by law.”

Hartley added that city officials are trying to identify similar situations across Jackson.

The Medgar Evers Library reopened Tuesday during a day packed with activities for Jackson children.

Mississippi Today previously reported that multiple branches in the Jackson/Hinds Library System had maintenance issues, including the Evers branch in northwest Jackson.

The library closed for two months for air conditioning repairs. David Burks Jr., vice-chairman of the Jackson/Hinds Library System’s board of trustees, confirmed that the building has a new HVAC system.

“People come here for everything, so we wanted to make sure we got it up and running,” he said during a back-to-school event at the library.

The library will be open from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Monday to Thursday, and from  9 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Friday and Saturday.

On their first day back, the library held a Back-to-School Bash. Branch manager Anne Sanders said at least 400 children from the area attended for a day of music, food and fun.

Music blasted in the library and the parking lot as children enjoyed a variety of activities: face painting; making arts and crafts; a bouncy castle; a dance party; interactive storytime and more. They also enjoyed popcorn, hot dogs and hamburgers. Donations made it possible for the library to give away hundreds of bags full of school supplies.

Sanders said the staff is overjoyed to get back to regular programming. 

“It’s just an explosion of excitement,” she said. “We’re all just so glad to be back.”

She said when the library was closed, people called every day asking when it would reopen. Seeing the children happy and the community coming together was her favorite part of the day.

Sanders had help from over a dozen volunteers, one of whom was retired nurse Idessa Chiplin. 

“We couldn’t wait until it opened back up again, because the people are like family,” Chiplin said.

Timothy White brought five children from The Youth Outreach Company to the event. His nonprofit organization provides enrichment and activities for at-risk Jackson youth. 

Now that the library is open, he plans to bring a group of over 40 to 50 kids when the afterschool program begins in September.

“We got a room right here that we can do 20 to 30 kids at a time that we can tutor, mentor, help with homework. If they need help with reading, math, science or anything like that, we have a bigger area … at this library right here,” he said.

“I bring them here, pack it up, because they don’t have nothing to do at these apartment complexes,” he added.

Shaw native Johnny Parker, the soon-to-be Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer, rates as quite likely the most influential strength and conditioning coach in American sports history. That is no exaggeration.

Parker, 79, remembers the Christmas gift from 65 years ago that started him on a career path that led to four Super Bowls and three Super Bowl championship rings.

“My momma and daddy got me a set of weights and changed my life,” Parker recalled. “Part of the instruction book told me to measure and weigh myself before I got started, and so I did. I was 5 feet, 11 and a half inches tall. I weighed a robust 105 pounds. My arms were 10 inches around.”

Older folks will understand this: Parker was skinnier than the poor guy always getting sand kicked in his face in the “before” part of the before-and-after Charles Atlas magazine ads. When Parker first got started with his new set of weights, he could only lift the bar. The weights were too much for him to handle.

“I was so skinny you could almost see through me,” Parker has said. “I had no self-esteem, no confidence in myself. My dream, like a lot of Mississippi boys, was to play high school football. I never became a great player, but I played. And however good I became, it was because of those weights.”

Parker, a Methodist preacher’s son, added 75 pounds of muscle. He became a starting lineman in football and threw the discus in track and field. His self-esteem soared. He still wasn’t college football material, so he attended Ole Miss and eventually got his degree in history. His plan was to teach, but the opportunity to also coach football presented itself, and that meant a few more bucks a month.

So he became a history teaching assistant football coach at Indianola Academy, a few miles from his hometown. And there, he set out to change lives just as that Christmas present from his parents had changed his.

One life he changed was that of Steve Yarbrough, the acclaimed Mississippi novelist from Indianola who has won far more literary awards than Parker won Super Bowl rings. Yarbrough stumbled into Parker’s Indianola Academy weight room as a ninth grader in 1971. He now says that day changed his life.

“I didn’t necessarily need to succeed at football, but I longed to succeed at something,” Yarbrough has written. “I am convinced that if I had not met Johnny Parker when I did, the rest of my life would have taken a very different course.”

Long story made short: In Parker’s weight room and on the football field, Yarbrough gained the self-confidence he had lacked. He became a star high school lineman, good enough to earn a college scholarship to Delta State. Football wasn’t his future, but now he had one. He found a reason to believe in himself.

The same lessons he learned in Parker’s weight room – lessons about hard work, dedication, persistence – would serve him in writing literature.  “Johnny Parker changed my life,” Yarbrough says. “I am by no means the only one who feels that way.”

Another is longtime high school football coach Joey Hawkins, who won four state championships at Jackson Academy and is now the head coach at Columbia Academy. Hawkins played for Parker at Indianola.

“The main thing that Coach Parker taught us was how to have a commitment to excellence on a daily basis,” Hawkins said. “He showed us how much hard work would pay off. He was a disciplinarian that showed tough love. He touched all of our lives. I love the man.”

So, you might ask, how does an assistant coach/history teacher at tiny Indianola Academy go on to helping NFL teams reach four Super Bowls and win three? Turns out, Parker practiced what he preached in terms of dedication, persistence and hard work. To all that add this: an insatiable thirst for knowledge. The more Parker learned about the science of strength and conditioning, the more he wanted to learn, which took him to Russia, where he studied under Russian Olympic coaches.

Understand, strength coach is a relatively new term in sports. As recently as 50 years ago, there weren’t many at all. Parker was South Carolina’s first in 1976, hired by Paul Dietzel. Indiana hired him in 1977, where he worked with Lee Corso in football and Bobby Knight in basketball. Then it was on to LSU. Then Ole Miss under Steve Sloan.

When it comes to career advancement, connections help, too. In 1984, with his injury-prone New York Giants struggling to win football games, Bill Parcells knew he needed to try something different. The Giants had never had a strength and conditioning coach, but Parcells decided they needed one and launched a nationwide search. Parcells was good friends with Knight, the Indiana basketball legend. Knight told Parcells about Parker. Halfway through a subsequent job interview, Knight knew he had his man.

The rest is NFL history. From 3-12-1 in 1983, the Giants advanced to 8-7, then 10-6 and then, in 1986, 14-2 and Super Bowl champions. I covered that 1987 Super Bowl, when Parcells credited Parker’s strength and conditioning program as the most crucial element in the Giants turnaround. Parcells said Parker’s program made his team bigger, stronger and more durable. But it was more than that, Parcells said. “The weight program has unified our team,” he said.

The Giants won another Super Bowl in 1990. And when Parcells moved from New York to the New England Patriots, Parker went with him and coached in another Super Bowl. Later in his career, Parker earned another Super Bowl ring with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and John Gruden.

Since his 2008 retirement, and especially in recent years, Parker has struggled mightily with his health, battling cancer among other serious health issues. Friends had been hoping against hope Parker could make the trip from Cleveland, Ohio, where he now lives, for Saturday night’s induction. A private plane had been secured for the trip. On Monday, Parker’s doctors made the final decision that Parker is just too sick to make the journey.

Nevertheless, his former Indianola Academy Colonels from more than half a century ago will fill several tables at Saturday night’s ceremonies at the Clyde Muse Center in Pearl. They will hear his taped remarks where he is asked about his career accomplishments. 

“I don’t know that I did much of anything,” Parker will say. “You know, good coaches coach football. Great coaches coach people. … If I have anything to be proud of it would be that I did fairly well at coaching people, not football.”

•••

More to read:

• Steve Yarbrough on Johnny Parker.

• The MSHOF Class of 2026.

• Hall of Fame Induction weekend activities.

 This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

Gov. Tate Reeves is a big proponent of understanding and celebrating Mississippi’s history, sentiments that I heartily agree with. Take for example his recent Confederate Heritage Month proclamation, which mentions the importance of coming “to a full understanding that the lessons learned yesterday and today will carry us through tomorrow if we carefully and earnestly strive to understand and appreciate our heritage and our opportunities which lie before us.” 

Although Gov. Reeves’ ambiguous language cleverly manages to say everything while simultaneously saying nothing, we still should ask what he means by urging Mississippians to “earnestly strive to understand and appreciate our heritage.”

After all, he is governor of a state that celebrates Robert E. Lee’s Birthday on the same day as Martin Luther King’s Birthday, Confederate Memorial Day and Jefferson Davis’ Birthday.

These state holidays are part of Mississippi’s heritage, along with its 1861 justification for secession from the Union, which includes the statement that “our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery.” A keen social analyst and purveyor of unintended irony, Reeves has proclaimed April as Confederate Heritage Month while also insisting that there is “not systemic racism in America”. 

But now to my modest proposal. Given Gov. Reeves’ appreciation for Mississippi’s history, I urge him to proclaim an annual “Jim Crow Heritage Month” as a companion to Confederate Heritage Month.

Identifying the most appropriate month for this recognition might require waiting until the GOP-dominated Mississippi Legislature redraws legislative districts to diminish Black voter power. Symbolically, though, November would be an excellent choice for Jim Crow Heritage Month, because in November of 1890 Mississippi adopted its post-Reconstruction constitution, which used a poll tax and literacy tests to disenfranchise Black voters. As the president of the convention, S. S. Calhoon said, “We came here to exclude the Negro. Nothing short of this will answer.” Consequently, the percentage of registered eligible Black voters in Mississippi decreased from 67% in 1867 to less than 6% in 1892. 

Now, that’s heritage.

Given the Supreme Court’s April 2026 Louisiana vs. Callais decision, one of the “opportunities that lie before us” – in terms of  Mississippi’s racial history – is the chance to suppress Black voting power throughout the South. According to the Supreme Court’s majority opinion in Callais, which was written by Justice Samuel Alito, “Because the Voting Rights Act of 1965 did not require Louisiana to create an additional majority-minority district, no compelling interest justified the state’s use of race … and that map is an unconstitutional racial gerrymander.”

Curiously, the Supreme Court’s Callais decision functionally implies that majority-white gerrymandered districts are constitutional, a form of fantastical legal logic that could lead to the end of multiracial democracy in the South.

This predication has been verified in Tennessee, where the state Legislature and governor quickly acted to gerrymander Memphis and eliminate the state’s only Black-majority congressional district – supposedly in the name of partisan politics, although the means and ends appear undeniably related to race in a state that celebrates Nathan Bedford Forrest Day, which honors the founder of the Ku Klux Klan.  Louisiana recently followed suit by eliminating one of two Black-majority congressional districts, while Alabama also is preparing to eradicate one of its two majority-Black congressional districts – a move that GOP governor Kay Ivey praised by observing that “For years, we have fought for this outcome, and I am proud to celebrate this win for Alabamians.” 

Well, some Alabamians. 

One small step for Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama, one giant step for the GOP in its quest to consolidate power in the South, with each state doing its best to channel Nina Simone’s lyrics to “Mississippi Goddam.”  

Alabama and Tennessee (and Louisiana) have gotten me so upset, and Mississippi will likely follow.

Given Gov. Reeves’ politics and selective view of his state’s heritage, as illustrated by his 2013 speech to the Sons of Confederate Veterans, which he gave in front of an immense Confederate battle flag; the Republican-dominated state Legislature; and a pile on by GOP candidates for state offices, including Shad White (state auditor) and Michael Watson (secretary of state), it is likely that Mississippi will follow the lead of Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama, with Congressman Bennie Thompson’s district being an obvious target.

Poll taxes and literacy tests are out for the time being (bad optics, I suppose), but the effects of white-biased gerrymandering on Black voting power could be similar. 

Heritage, y’all. History and opportunity, right? So, how about November as Jim Crow Heritage Month in Mississippi? 

Of course, there is a different way forward for Mississippi, a possible future that pushes back against the state’s legacy of chattel slavery and Jim Crow laws, and its host of racist governors, from James K. Vardaman to Theodore Bilbo and Ross Barnett. Mississippi could refuse to follow the lead of Tennessee, Louisiana and Alabama.

Instead, “A full (and truthful) understanding (of) the lessons learned yesterday and today” could invoke the heritage of Hiram Rhodes Revels (the first African American from Mississippi to serve in the U. S. Congress), Medgar Evers, James Meredith, the Freedom Riders, Robert Moses, Fannie Lou Hamer, William Winter and the Legislature’s 2020 decision to remove the Confederate battle flag from the state flag.

This noble and courageous heritage could propel Mississippi toward a more equable distribution of political, economic and social power. But that’s wishful thinking and appears unrelated to how Tate Reeves and the GOP leaders in Mississippi imagine the “heritage and … opportunities which lie before us.” 

So, cue Nina Simone. 

Bio: Christopher Norment holds a PhD in Systematics and Ecology from the University of Kansas and is an emeritus professor of environmental science and ecology at the State University of New York–Brockport. During his career he published over 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers and three science-related books of creative nonfiction, and received awards from the State University of New York for teaching and scholarship. He now lives in Jackson. 

Senate Judiciary A Chairman Brice Wiggins has worked for years to reform Mississippi’s notoriously opaque youth courts. He sat down with Mississippi Today to discuss why the courts are now somewhat open to the public, what happened during the the recent special legislative session and why having a uniform youth court system is crucial to to the state.

In December of 2025 Kristen Windham, director of policy for Gov. Tate Reeves, emailed a state lawmaker with a “report” on the status of a long-awaited review of Mississippi’s prison health care system. 

The document that Windham called a report was a letter that barely stretched beyond a page. And her update was that the monitoring report lawmakers were expecting still did not exist.

That came as a surprise to lawmakers who passed a law that said they are due a review of the medical services contract from the corrections department on Dec. 15 of each fiscal year. The state recently approved paying the law firm Butler Snow $700,000 for monitoring prison health care, despite no report being delivered yet.

The urgent interest in the review stems from the alleged denial of health care in state prisons. 

Mississippi Today has documented potentially thousands of people living with hepatitis C going without treatment, amputations following delayed care and trouble getting cancer screenings. Such findings, as well as handwritten letters sent to lawmakers by prisoners seeking care and panicked messages from their family members, drew bipartisan condemnation in the state House and numerous hearings at the Capitol.  

“They have decided to treat 50 inmates a year with Hepatitis C when there are thousands,” House Corrections Chairwoman Becky Currie, a Republican from Brookhaven, said in a recent interview with Mississippi Today. “They provide care when the Hepatitis C patients are so far gone that they need a liver transplant or die.” 

In her email to Currie, Windham cited a lengthy process, one that involved developing a “monitoring program” and “auditing tools” – neither of which had been put in place five years after VitalCore Health Strategies became the medical contractor for Mississippi’s prisons. The Kansas-based company was initially awarded four no-bid emergency contracts, raking in hundreds of millions of dollars in the process, before securing a three-year contract. 

“As you are no doubt aware, developing a medical monitoring program and audit tools tailored to ensure both contract compliance and to evaluate the quality of healthcare takes months to develop,” Windham wrote in the December email. “When development of the audit tools and the initial site visits are completed, MDOC will be able to estimate when the first monitoring report will be completed.”

Seven months later, the Mississippi State Personnel Board on July 16 approved paying the law firm to monitor Mississippi’s prison healthcare system. But several lawmakers granted access to the report under state law told Mississippi Today they still have not seen it, and it’s unclear what progress has been made toward its production. 

“I have not received anything,” Currie said. “If we had used the money that we are paying Butler Snow to tell us what we already know, we could have cured so many people suffering in prison.”

The state law that said lawmakers are due a report from MDOC on Dec. 15 of each fiscal year passed in May of 2025. But Dec. 15 came and went later that year without lawmakers receiving a monitoring report. Windham’s email, obtained by Mississippi Today, shows what the governor’s administration has been telling lawmakers about the process for monitoring Mississippi’s troubled prison healthcare system, a process that has largely unfolded out of public view.

House Public Health Chairman Sam Creekmore, a Republican, and Senate Public Health Chairman Hob Bryan, a Democrat, also told Mississippi Today they had not yet seen any report. Under state law, both of the chairman are owed a copy of the report. They said the last formal update they received was in a December 2025 letter – previously obtained and reported on by Mississippi Today – from Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain, who said a private attorney will manage a team “experienced in correctional healthcare management” to conduct contract oversight. 

That attorney, Bill Lunsford of Butler Snow, the politically connected law firm contracted to monitor Mississippi’s prison health care contract, did not respond to a list of questions. Spokespeople for the Mississippi Department of Corrections also did not respond to messages with similar questions.  

Mississippi Today filed a public request asking for all monitoring reports submitted by Butler Snow on health care available to the state’s incarcerated population. In May, MDOC said the agency does not possess any such documents. 

The genesis of the still-awaited prison health care audit dates back to May of 2025, when the Legislature passed a bill instructing the corrections department to deliver a report on the contractor’s performance. The department hired Butler Snow, a Mississippi-based law firm that has defended prison systems and private prison health contractors in civil rights lawsuits alleging health care failures in several states. 

The 2025 legislation mandating the report on prison health care said MDOC shall provide a report of the monitoring and review of the medical services contract to the chairmen of Senate and House Appropriations, Corrections, and Public Health committees and to the Legislative Budget Office.

Currie had tried to give the Mississippi State Department of Health the authority to monitor prison health care. But her push was defeated, in part due to opposition from Gov. Reeves, who wanted to award monitoring authority to a private firm, according to Currie. 

In MDOC’s search for a medical contractor in 2023, it wrote that the agency “does not employ any licensed personnel responsible with oversight of its contracted healthcare provider,” but said it planned to reestablish a medical compliance office within three to six months of executing the contract. 

At that time, VitalCore had served as the agency’s medical contractor since 2020 after being awarded four no-bid emergency contracts worth $324 million for the services. Combined with its current role, VitalCore has been awarded over $600 million in state contracts.

In the months leading up to the 2026 legislative session, Currie developed a sweeping legislative package of reforms aimed at improving the quality of care in Mississippi prisons and introducing more oversight of the prison medical contract.

Currie wanted to use the report lawmakers had been promised to fine-tune the legislation and build consensus in the Senate, where all her reforms had failed the prior year. So in December of 2025, weeks before lawmakers were set to return to Jackson, Currie began asking for updates.

“I am asking for the audit that the Governor insisted on doing by hiring a firm for over $700,000 dollars to audit Vitalcore,” Currie wrote. “I would like to get it tomorrow before the Christmas Holiday and give me time to study it before the session.”

Windham replied that the contract “provided a six-month implementation period before monitoring activities would commence.”

“Over the next several months, the auditing/monitoring tools will be developed, and the monitoring team of experts will conduct initial site visits of MDOC facilities and begin utilizing the tools,” Windham added. 

Windham did not respond to a list of questions about the site visits, the monitoring tools and the status of the report. 

Without the report in hand, Currie still proceeded with advancing her reforms through the House. But the legislation was ultimately doomed again in the state Senate. 

Corrections Committee Vice Chairwoman Lydia Chassaniol, a Republican from Winona, refused to advance the bills out of committee. Chassaniol had been running the committee while Corrections Chairman Juan Barnett, a Democrat from Heidelberg, was out with an illness. Chassaniol claimed she was honoring Barnett’s wishes. 

“The Health Department was going to do it for free,” Currie said of the long-awaited report. “Now we are charging the taxpayers all this money for a report that supports the inadequate care.”

Mississippi Today reporter Gwen Dilworth contributed to this report

If you are arrested and charged with a felony crime in Mississippi and cannot afford a lawyer, you will be appointed one. But how soon you receive your criminal defense lawyer depends on where in Mississippi you are arrested and charged.

In some Mississippi counties, like Pearl River and Hinds, you could expect to be assigned a full-time public defender whose sole job is to represent criminal defendants. Ideally, they’d stand by your side during your first appearance before a judge, or if not, you’d hear from them within 72 hours after assignment. In other counties, your assigned public defender might be a lawyer in private practice whose criminal defense work is secondary to their main legal practice. They wouldn’t be assigned to you until after your initial appearance before a judge and, in the case of several counties, it could be weeks, rather than hours, before your first meeting with them.

The differing outcomes across Mississippi’s 82 counties are a result of the state’s fragmented, decentralized approach to public defense. It is up to county governments, rather than the state government in Jackson, to not only fund public defense at their discretion but also structure the system, such as determining whether a county will utilize full-time public defenders.

“Justice by geography” is what Aditi Goel, executive director of the Sixth Amendment Center, calls this system, and it has led to an uneven and unequal distribution of criminal defense for defendants throughout the state.

Now, for the very first time, a centralized account of the state’s geographic variations in public defense is available. A collection of reports outlining each circuit court district’s administration of the right to counsel for indigent defendants in felony criminal cases is on file with the Mississippi Supreme Court, after a request made by Chief Justice Michael Randolph in April 2025.

Taken collectively, the plans expose wide gaps in how Mississippi’s 23 judicial circuits document — and potentially deliver — the constitutional right to counsel for poor defendants, an analysis by The Greenwood Commonwealth reveals.

The Commonwealth reviewed all 23 plans, as did Mississippi’s Office of State Public Defender and the Mississippi chapter of the MacArthur Justice Center, a nonprofit law firm focused on criminal defense. Those reviews found that only about a third of court districts have clear plans that specifically state when and how a public defender is appointed to represent a criminal defendant following arrest.

Acquiring legal counsel as soon as possible after arrest is one core tenant of criminal justice, yet most plans are not clear on that point.

Criminal defense advocates have lauded the publication of those plans as one important step in addressing the shortcomings of public defense, because most were not available for public review before.

“We now have written plans for each district. That’s more than we had before,” said André de Gruy, who leads Mississippi’s Office of State Public Defender. “I would say we’re better off.”

Still, given the lack of clarity in many of the plans, accountability can be difficult, especially since there is no oversight of the patchwork public defender system. De Gruy’s office only handles death row and indigent appeals cases and there is no statewide authority for indigent defense in other criminal matters.

The Constitution’s Sixth Amendment guarantees criminal defendants a right to an attorney. In a state like Mississippi, which has high rates of poverty and demand for public defenders, defendants can sit in jail for months or even years awaiting indictment.

A 2018 report from the Sixth Amendment Center, a national nonprofit organization focused on indigent defense, found that the average delay between arrest and indictment in 10 Mississippi counties ranged from two months to over a year.

While Mississippi may have delegated the funding and administration of public defense to counties, Goel said the state still has a responsibility to ensure defendants receive appropriate representation.

“If the state doesn’t know whether everybody is in fact going to get an effective attorney in a timely manner, once they’re charged and accused of a crime, how is the state aware as to whether they are in fact meeting their obligation under the Constitution?” Goel asked.

Early representation considered key

In Mississippi, a defendant jailed and charged with a felony typically has an initial appearance and other pre-indictment hearings in a misdemeanor court, which can be a justice, county or municipal court.

Goel said it’s a concern if plans don’t offer clarity on legal representation for defendants while their case is still in the misdemeanor courts.

“What is being done to make sure that there’s actual representation provided to somebody who is charged with a felony from the municipal court to the next one? That kind of oversight is still missing,” Goel said. “…You want representation actually happening and visitations to the client happening, you want an attorney to provide legal representation. And that’s just not in court appearances. A lot of that takes place outside of court.”

Criminal defense advocates and legal experts say defendants should be appointed a lawyer immediately after arrest to ensure day-one representation. This allows an attorney to try and get bond lowered for their client and possibly get a case resolved before it is bound over to the grand jury — potentially preventing a defendant from languishing in jail and saving the county money.

Mississippi’s own Rules of Criminal Procedure — rules that the courts must follow when handling the criminal justice process — are very clear that indigent defendants be appointed an attorney no later than at their first, or initial, appearance before a judge. At these hearings, held within 48 hours of arrest if a defendant is still in jail, the judge will determine if there was probable cause for arrest and appoint legal counsel.

These initial appearances – and the preliminary hearings that may follow – are usually held in Mississippi’s misdemeanor courts, before a grand jury may indict a defendant on a felony charge. Following an indictment, the case is transferred to circuit court, where the felony is tried.

The Commonwealth found that only eight of the 23 court districts had plans that specifically state how counsel is appointed for indigent defendants after arrest while seven court districts had plans that said lawyers are appointed for defendants by their initial appearance, if not earlier.

For example, the plans of the 3rd District (Benton, Calhoun, Chickasaw, Lafayette, Marshall, Tippah and Union counties), 7th District (Hinds County), and 15th District (Marion, Jefferson Davis, Lamar, Lawrence and Pearl River counties), all identical in language, state clearly when and how a defendant receives a lawyer. The arresting authority will determine if a defendant already has counsel.

If not, the arresting authorities provide the defendant an affidavit to sign to request free counsel and counsel is then appointed. If a defendant, while still jailed, appears at an initial appearance and does not have counsel, the court then appoints that person a lawyer.

The three districts’ plans also state that appointed attorneys should meet with their clients within 24 to 72 hours after being appointed, preferably as soon as possible to attend their client’s initial appearance.

The above-mentioned plans are the exception, however, rather than the norm. In other judicial districts, the plans imply early representation in the misdemeanor courts but do not specifically explain the procedure for appointment of counsel.

The plan of the 12th District (Forrest and Perry counties) does not mention legal representation in the misdemeanor courts at all and only talks about appointment of counsel once a defendant has been indicted.

In the 4th District (Leflore, Sunflower and Washington counties) the plan states lawyers are appointed “as soon as practicable after arrest” although no timeline is set when that must occur.

“They’re not clear on when counsel is appointed, or is assigned, or is notified that they have a client. That’s a problem with these plans, is that they’re not clear,” said de Gruy.

That doesn’t necessarily mean defendants in districts with vague and unclear plans lack appropriate appointed representation. But because the plans are all self-reported, it’s unconfirmed whether what is stated on paper — even in the best of the plans — reflects what’s actually happening in and outside of the courtrooms.

Solutions neither obvious nor easy

It’s also unclear what, if anything, can be done to make improvements without reforming the state’s public defense system.

Associate Mississippi Supreme Court Justice David P. Sullivan, a former public defender who chairs the court’s criminal rules committee, says the high court’s authority is limited to ensuring plans exist, not to critique them and specify what should be in the plans. State Supreme Court justices are not in a position for assessment, given “we’re not out there in the field with the practitioners utilizing that system on a daily basis,” the judge said.

“We have made certain that every district in the state has a plan in place to comply with the rules for indigent defense. And that, until a controversy is brought to the court by litigants or attorneys for us to rule upon, we wouldn’t really have any way to police that,” Sullivan said. “Is it perfect? No, but that’s up to the Legislature to create a statewide system that would, in theory, be more beneficial.”

Past legislative efforts to reform Mississippi’s public defense system, including a modest bill that would set statewide standards, have failed to launch, even as a chorus of stakeholders, from former state Supreme Court justices, circuit court judges and more, have called for public defense to be state-funded, as are prosecutors.

“The reality is there is no governing standard when it comes to public defense,” said Republican state Sen. Brice Wiggins of Pascagoula, the author of the proposed standards bill and who chairs one of the Senate’s two judiciary committees.

“The realization is setting in amongst people and legislators that counties just can’t afford it, won’t afford it, won’t do it. And we’ve got to look at some way to do that” in terms of bolstering public defense, the senator said.

Wiggins said coming up with state funding is a challenge that stalls reform efforts, but it is not the only one, considering there are some public defenders who prefer the status quo.

“The people that benefit from the current system don’t want to have standards placed upon them,” the senator said.

Wiggins said some may believe public defense is only coddling criminals, but reforms would move both guilty and innocent defendants more quickly through the courts and save counties money.

“When money talks about being doled out, legislators tend to clam up. … (the) reality is that courts and the criminal justice system are a core function of government. And people over time have chosen not to put resources in that.”

TIPS WELCOME

Reach out to Greenwood Commonwealth staff writer Gerard Edic at 662-581-7237 or gedic@gwcommonwealth.com if you have tips or experiences to share regarding Mississippi’s public defense and criminal justice system. This article was produced with the support of Report for America and the Investigative Editing Corps and is a follow-up to an article on public defense Edic wrote last September, which can be found at www.gwcommonwealth.com/deadline-indigent-defense-plans-near.

– Gerard Edic is a corps member at the Greenwood Commonwealth with Report for America, a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms. You can support his work with a tax-deductible donation at bit.ly/4wM0wV6.