In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large and Cartoonist Marshall Ramsey continues his series of author interviews leading up to the Mississippi Book Festival on August 19, 2023 at the State Capitol.
Vincent J. Venturini was baptized in St. Mary’s Catholic Church when South Jackson was still in that parish. His classmates and schoolmates at St. Joseph High School in the late 1960s included many of the Lebanese and Italian residents of West Jackson. He acquired an appreciation of West Jackson and its residents in those high school years. Venturini is the co-author with Doug Shanks of “One Direction Home: A History of South Jackson”. Venturini’s latest book, “Once We Crowned Royalty” tells the story of West Jackson’s history and touches on downtown Jackson’s retail past.
Current presidential candidate and former Vice President Mike Pence will come to Jackson on Aug. 19 to speak at the Mississippi Book Festival, according to the festival’s website.
The event’s website notes that Pence will speak with former U.S. Rep. Gregg Harper at 2:45 p.m. in Room 216 at the Capitol to discuss his recently published autobiography “So Help Me God.”
“We’re thrilled that he’ll come to visit us in Mississippi at this year’s Mississippi Book Festival,” Harper, who served with Pence in Congress, told Mississippi Today.
Harper said he intends to discuss the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol with Pence, who faced pressure from his ex-boss, former President Donald Trump, to abuse the vice president’s ceremonial role in certifying the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“Vice President Pence and his families’ lives were in danger,” Harper said. “And I bring maybe a little interesting perspective in that when that happened, I was actually in the House chamber.”
The announcement of Pence’s Magnolia State visit comes at a time when Trump, his current opponent, is facing federal charges in connection to his role in the insurrection.
The annual festival is nonpartisan, and Harper, who represented central Mississippi in Congress for 10 years, said the former vice president is not planning to conduct any presidential campaign events during his visit.
“He is coming in special just for the book festival, and he’ll fly in and immediately fly out,” Harper said.
Pence has visited Mississippi before. He campaigned for Republican Gov. Tate Reeves in Biloxi during the 2019 statewide election cycle, and he visited the Magnolia State with former President Donald Trump to support U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith’s 2018 campaign during a special election.
The Mississippi Book Festival is an annual event that takes place each summer in and around the state Capitol in downtown Jackson. The event’s leaders call it a “literary lawn party” that features panel discussions about literature, food, art and politics.
After months of inaction on claims of widespread campaign finance violations this election cycle, Attorney General Lynn Fitch says she’s investigating a PAC run by lieutenant governor candidate Chris McDaniel’s campaign treasurer.
The Invest in Mississippi PAC has been running hundreds of thousand of dollars in ads attacking incumbent Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann. It has been fueled by $885,000 in donations from out-of-state super PACs.
The Invest in Mississippi political action committee was created in July by Wisconsin political operative Thomas Datwyler. McDaniel lists Datwyler as treasurer for his campaign proper, which has also faced claims of flagrant campaign finance law violations from Hosemann. Datwyler has a history of running afoul of Federal Election Commission campaign finance rules with several congressional campaigns.
In a press release Friday afternoon, Fitch said her office has alerted the Invest PAC of “an investigation into potential criminal violations under the Mississippi Election Code, as well as other statutes.” Fitch said Mississippi’s campaign finance law “generously” protects free speech, “But that does not mean there is no line protecting the people from illegitimate influence of our democratic system.”
“The people of Mississippi should be able to expect that those who participate in our electoral process will not seek to exploit this careful balance and step over that line,” Fitch wrote, “and in this instance, there is evidence to suggest that has occurred here.”
A spokesperson for Fitch on Friday said the office was also investigating another election complaint filed by Hosemann, and that it had looked into another he filed but has closed that investigation.
Neither McDaniel nor Datwyler has responded to requests for comment this week on campaign finance issues and allegations.
Fitch’s office said the two new investigations were prompted by complaints Hosemann’s campaign filed this week with her office.
Hosemann’s campaign filed such a complaint on Aug. 3, one of several he has made since March about McDaniel’s campaign or affiliated PACs.
The latest complaint filed by Hosemann campaign attorney Spencer Ritchie opens with, “Once again, appallingly, I write to request that you investigate further violations of Mississippi law relating to state Sen. Chris McDaniel’s campaign for lieutenant governor.”
The complaint claims that the super PAC to state PAC donations are an attempt to bypass Mississippi’s $1,000 a year limit on corporate donations to a Mississippi candidate or PAC. It says that even federal law allowing unlimited corporate donations for independent expenditures in a race would not cover Invest PAC’s actions because its expenditures “cannot be classified as independent.” The complaint notes that “the contact person for the PAC is Thomas Datwyler (and) Mr. Datwyler is simultaneously the contact person for Mr. McDaniel’s candidate committee.” It also noted that the PAC does not appear to be claiming its spending is separate from a campaign because it did not file an independent expenditure report with the state as required.
“The dark money PAC and Chris McDaniel are synonymous,” Hosemann said in a statement Friday. “They have dumped almost $1 million in this campaign in the last week to steal the Mississippi lieutenant governor’s race and your vote. Do we really think a Washington dark money PAC cares about Mississippi citizens? Vote on Aug. 8 to send them the answer.”
Fitch as AG is the only statewide official with clear authority to enforce the state’s weak campaign finance laws. She has faced criticism this election cycle over lack of action on allegations of campaign finance violations, particularly in the lieutenant governor’s race. At the recent Neshoba County fair, other officials or candidates called for reform.
Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson said he would likely ask lawmakers to give him enforcement authority. He said he isn’t seeking more power, “But when people do not do their jobs, I will stand in the gap for Mississippians” – a dig at Fitch.
A state PAC McDaniel created received $475,000 from a secretive Virginia dark-money nonprofit corporation. His PAC then funneled $465,000 of it to his campaign.
State law limits such corporate donations to $1,000 a year to a candidate or PAC. So the donation was $474,000 over the legal limit.
McDaniel’s PAC initially hid some of these transactions with incomplete, inaccurate reporting to the secretary of state’s office. But eventually, after questions from Mississippi Today, he first chalked it up to “clerical errors.”
Then, McDaniel said Mississippi’s campaign finance laws are improper, but he doesn’t have time to mount a legal challenge, so his campaign returned the money to his PAC. McDaniel said his PAC then returned the money to the dark money group, and he shut down the PAC.
UPDATE: A spokesperson for AG Lynn Fitch’s office has provided updated information on investigations of incumbent Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann’s election complaints filed with the attorney general’s office. This story has been updated to include that information.
A three-judge panel of the United States 5th Circuit Court of Appeals has struck down Mississippi’s lifetime ban on voting for people convicted of certain felonies, saying it is unconstitutional because it inflicts cruel and unusual punishment.
In a 2-1 ruling released Friday, the panel sent the case back to U.S. District Judge Daniel Jordan III in the Southern District of Mississippi with instructions to find the state’s lifetime ban on voting to be unconstitutional.
The majority said, “By severing former offenders from the body politic forever, Section 241 (the lifetime ban provision of the state Constitution) ensures that they will never be fully rehabilitated, continues to punish them beyond the terms their culpability requires and serves no protective function to society. It is thus a cruel and unusual punishment.”
The Court of Appeals decision comes on the heels of the United States Supreme Court refusing in June to hear another case seeking to find Mississippi’s lifetime felony voting ban unconstitutional. That case sought to have the felony voting ban declared unconstitutional because it was originally adopted as part of the 1890 Constitution in an attempt to prevent Black Mississippians from voting.
The lawsuit that was addressed by the three-judge panel was filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, the Mississippi Center for Justice and others on behalf of Mississippians who have lost their voting rights. The office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch opposed the lawsuit on behalf of the state.
It is possible the state may appeal the decision of the three-judge panel to the entire 5th Circuit.
“We are overjoyed with the ruling obviously and with the prospects of tens of thousand Mississippians regaining the right to vote,’ said Brad Heard, head of voting rights with the Southern Poverty Law Center. “We absolutely agree with the court that permanent disenfranchisement is cruel and unusual punishment under the 8th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution.”
The opinion overturning the lifetime voting ban was written by Circuit Judge James Dennis and joined by Carolyn Dineen King, both of whom have senior status on the 5th Circuit. Judge Edith Jones dissented.
She argued that the U.S. Supreme Court in a 1974 decision already had ruled that such lifetime bans were allowed. The 1974 ruling said a lifetime ban did not violate equal protection clauses of the United States Constitution or in other words was not unconstitutional because it allowed a certain group of people to be treated differently.
But the Supreme Court did not rule on whether it was cruel and unusual punishment.
“The consequences of committing a felony rarely ends at the prison walls…,” Jones wrote. “Completing a prison sentence does not entitle felons to all the rights they previously possessed.”
The two judges pointed out that when the Supreme Court made its 1974 ruling that many more states imposed lifetime bans on voting. But now Mississippi is among a small minority of states to do so.
The 5th Circuit majority wrote, “In so excluding former offenders from a basic aspect of democratic life, often long after their sentences have been served, Mississippi inflicts a disproportionate punishment that has been rejected by a majority of the states and, in the independent judgment of this court informed by our precedents, is at odds with society’s evolving standards of decency.”
The framers at the time admitted they placed the lifetime ban in the Mississippi Constitution as a tool to keep African Americans from voting. Those crimes placed in the constitution where conviction costs a person the right to vote are bribery, theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, forgery, embezzlement, bigamy and burglary.
Under the original language of the constitution, a person could be convicted of cattle rustling and lose the right to vote, but those convicted of murder or rape would still be able to vote — even while incarcerated. Murder and rape now also are exclusionary.
In the 5th Circuit ruling, the majority pointed out that the Constitution granted the Legislature the authority to restore voting rights, presumably, to ensure that white Mississippians were not permanently banned from voting. In modern times, the Legislature usually restores voting rights to a handful (usually no more than five people) each session.
GREENWOOD — U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, who entered the national spotlight by leading the select committee scrutinizing the Jan. 6 insurrection, had specific instructions for Leflore County voters on Wednesday night.
“I want you to get your popcorn, I want you to get your Coke out, and I want you to watch TV tomorrow,” Thompson said. “Tomorrow will be historic. It proves that in America, no one is above the law.”
Around 50 attendees of the Greenwood Voters League applauded the congressman’s comments which were a clear reference to former President Donald Trump, who was arraigned Thursday in Washington on four federal charges relating to the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Trump, who is seeking the Republican Party’s nomination for a second term as president, pleaded not guilty to the federal government’s charges against him. Still, Thompson took pride in the historic role he played on the committee.
“As you know, I chaired the Jan. 6 committee,” Thompson told the attendees. “We spent a lot of time and a lot of energy and a lot of taxpayer’s money getting it right. But it took us almost two years to convince the Department of Justice they needed to get involved.”
But while Thompson recounted his efforts on the committee that eventually issued criminal referrals to the Justice Department about the former president, Brandon Presley, the Democratic candidate for governor, looked on and listened to the congressman’s speech with a somewhat muted expression.
The gubernatorial candidate followed Thompson’s remarks with a nearly 20-minute stump speech that included his usual round of policy proposals on Medicaid expansion, grocery tax cuts and his pro-life beliefs.
But it contained no mention of Trump, the indictment or Washington politics.
When asked by reporters about Thompson’s comments on the indictment and the select committee, Presley largely dodged the question and pivoted to Mississippi’s sprawling welfare scandal, a common theme of his campaign.
“The indictments we’re watching are the indictments that have come down and will continue probably to come down in this welfare scandal where tens of millions of dollars have been stolen from Mississippians,” Presley said. “Those are the indictments I’m spending a lot of time watching.”
North Mississippi’s current utility regulator, Presley has intentionally cultivated a relationship with Thompson, Mississippi’s current longest-serving congressional representative and only the second Black official to represent Mississippi in Washington since Reconstruction.
Thompson, Mississippi’s lone Democratic official in Washington, endorsed Presley on the same day Presley announced his candidacy for governor, something the congressman did not do for former Attorney General Jim Hood’s 2019 bid for the Governor’s Mansion.
Presley’s likely Republican opponent in November, incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves, took to Twitter to highlight Trump’s charges and point out Presley’s relationship with Thompson.
“The Biden Administration’s attempts to interfere in the election by weaponizing law enforcement are corrupt and wrong,” Reeves said. “They have proven they will do anything to ‘get’ Donald Trump, and trample ethics, the rule of law, and our national unity to do it. And it all started with Brandon Presley’s top backer, Bennie Thompson.”
The incumbent governor has also attempted to use national issues to tie Presley, a moderate Democrat, to other liberals across the country, such as California Gov. Gavin Newsom. Reeves even challenged Newsom to a debate over gun rights.
“He and the governor of California deserve each other,” Presley said of Reeves on Wednesday. “They both belong to a jacuzzi-soaking, penny-loafer-wearing bunch of elitists. They don’t know anything about where we are.”
The Wednesday night scenario likely serves as a case study for how Presley plans to manage his partisan label in a conservative state throughout the duration of his campaign while maintaining his relationship with more traditional Democratic officials and navigating controversial national issues.
While speaking to groups like the influential Greenwood Voters League, the Democratic candidate has consistently focused on issues that he believes would directly impact the state and has largely avoided speaking on national politics.
Reeves is expected to capture the GOP’s nomination on Tuesday’s primary election, then would compete against Presley during the Nov. 7 general election.
Lexington’s former police chief, the department’s members and the city are facing a second lawsuit, this time for the alleged unlawful arrest and jailing of a Jackson Public Schools officer in 2021.
Javarius Russell, who was attending a New Year’s Eve celebration, accuses former chief Sam Dobbins and other defendants of arresting him for crashing a four-wheeler all-terrain vehicle into a police vehicle, which he said didn’t happen and in his complaint filed Monday called a “pure fabrication.” As he was in Dobbins’ police car, another officer told the chief that Russell didn’t cause damage to the car, but he was still arrested, according to the lawsuit.
Russell was jailed over the long weekend, and during that period Dobbins allegedly told Russell and another man who attended the gathering that in exchange for $2,700 in cash, Dobbins would drop their charges and let them go, according to the lawsuit. Dobbins also allegedly spoke with Russell’s family and told members about the deal.
“Mr. Russell did nothing wrong; he is just one victim of the blatant misconduct and brutality perpetrated by the Lexington Police Department,” Joshua Tom, legal director of the ACLU of Mississippi, said in a statement. “The actions of these officers represent a clear danger to the Lexington community, and they, along with the City of Lexington, must be held accountable.”
City officials will have 21 days to respond to the lawsuit, which is one side of a legal argument.
Lexington is 86% Black and attorneys say they have long suffered under the department’s racially motivated and discriminatory policing practices, according to the ACLU.
Dobbins was fired last year after an audio recording surfaced of him using racial slurs, bragging about killing 13 people during his law enforcement career and shooting a man over 100 times.
Civil rights organization JULIAN filed the first lawsuit last summer on behalf of five Black residents who accused Dobbins and officers of retaliation, unlawful arrest and other mistreatment. Attorney Jill Collen Jefferson asked for a restraining order against the police department to prevent it from mistreating Black residents, but that order was denied in September.
Attorney Malik Shabazz of Washington D.C.-based Black Lawyers for Justice came to Lexington last summer to meet with residents and call for charges for Dobbins and a review of the police department and its operation under him.
As a result of his unlawful detention, Russell suffered mental and emotional distress, including “severe anxiety connected to those in law enforcement positions, even though he himself is a law enforcement officer,” the lawsuit states.
Lexington police did not return his employer-issued firearm until his release, and Russell has been blocked from using his firearm for his job, according to the complaint. He also suffered financial harm from loss of wages when he had to take time off work to recover.
The ACLU of Missisisppi is asking for a judge to award damages and declare that the defendants violated Russell’s constitutional and civil rights.
Attorneys request that the police department and city be enjoined from interfering with the rights of anyone in their custody, soliciting cash payments from jail detainees and telling people in custody that they can have charges dropped for doing something for the police.
They also want the federal court to oversee implementation of police and city policies and training to prevent unlawful acts from happening again and for an independent special monitor to be appointed to oversee progress, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit is part of a new ACLU of Mississippi initiative to work with law firms, private attorneys and community organizations to file lawsuits to address unconstitutional police misconduct and violence.
“The more individual civil actions we bring, the more we hold police accountable,” Executive Director Jarvis Dortch said in a statement. “Unfortunately, there are far too many Javarius Russell’s, and it often feels like the issue of police violence is overwhelming.”
The new president of Delta State University, Daniel Ennis, wrote in a campus-wide email Thursday that Steven Hugley, the recently hired interim band director who mocked women and trans people on his now-deleted podcast, will remain in his position.
Ennis wrote in the 6:11 p.m. email that the U.S. Constitution protects free speech and, in a separate email to marching band students, that the university’s “guiding principles” did not allow him to discipline an employee for private comments he had made before he was hired.
“I acknowledge that this response, which does not include an announcement of a personnel action, will be viewed as insufficient by some and appropriate by others,” he wrote to the campus. “I would not be worthy of my office if I didn’t accept that free expression at Delta State University means I am subject to your assessment and criticism.”
Ennis, who took his post earlier this summer, had faced calls from students, faculty and alumni to rescind Hugley’s hiring following an article in Mississippi Today that detailed some of the comments Hugley had made as the co-host of the podcast, “Always Right.”
Those included gagging at a photo of a trans woman, repeatedly misgendering notable trans people and calling for transitioning — the process of changing one’s physical appearance to align with their gender identity — to be made illegal for trans adults. In Mississippi, lawmakers earlier this year banned gender-affirming care that results in trans minors medically transitioning.
“If you do, not only are we gonna lock you up, we’re also gonna lock up the doctor,” Hugley said in reference to parents who seek gender-affirming care for trans kids, “and then we take it the next step.”
Though Hugley will keep his position, Ennis’s campus-wide email also contained an elaborate reminder that employees who “choose” to work at Delta State had agreed to participate in an inclusive environment that was free from discrimination or harassment and committed to nurturing students. The word “choose,” repeated four times, hyperlinked to the university’s webpages for diversity, equity and inclusion, and Title IX.
“Even the most diehard defenders of free speech concede that organizations and institutions can set professional standards,” he wrote.
To that end, Ennis added that Delta State “is no place for contempt.”
“I value behaviors, activities and ideas that support the recruitment, retention and graduation of students,” he wrote. “Conversely, I take a dim view of that which drives students away from this wonderful place.”
In the separate email to marching band students, Ennis wrote that his decision was based on “the range of viewpoints expressed” at his meeting with them last week, though most students who spoke were opposed to Hugley’s hiring.
He also wrote that while he knew his decision not to remove Hugley “might cause some discomfort for certain students,” he promised to “be diligent in working to create a climate where all DSU students, employees, and constituents are valued and nurtured.”
If at any time a student felt singled out due to their identity, he wrote that they should notify the music department chair, Julia Thorn, the dean of the college of arts and sciences, or the vice president for student affairs.
“They stand ready to listen and to provide guidance,” he wrote.
Louis Armstrong by Harry Warnecke and Gus Shoenbaechler 1947. Credit: Wikipedia
Louis Armstrong, trumpeter known around the globe as “Satchmo,” was born in an impoverished area of New Orleans known as “the Battlefield.”
“As a boy, he released his energy in a variety of ways — not always socially acceptable,” singer Mahalia Jackson wrote. “One of Louis’ last transgressions as a youth, at the age of 12, was to fire a gun into the air during a New Year’ Eve celebration. He was arrested and sent to reform school.”
The two-year stay had an unexpected effect on the lad — he learned to play the cornet. After his release, he gravitated to where he could listen to music, surviving by selling newspapers and whatever work he could find. He eventually befriended one of the great band leaders of the day, Joe “King” Oliver, who gave him his first cornet.
Armstrong’s inventive playing and gravelly voice reached far beyond jazz, prompting singer Bing Crosby to declare, “He is the beginning and end of music in America.”
He broke down barriers, becoming the first Black American to host a nationally broadcast radio show and made countless appearances on radio, television and film. Often silent on politics, Armstrong made his own stand for civil rights in 1957 when he balked at participating in a U.S. government-sponsored tour of the Soviet Union after nine Black students were blocked from entering a Little Rock school. Complaining about President Eisenhower’s handling of the problem and the way “they are treating my people in the South,” he turned down the government’s request. “It’s getting almost so bad a colored man hasn’t got any country.”
In response to his comments, the FBI opened an investigation of him. He performed to the end, dying in 1971, a month before he would have celebrated his 70th birthday.
Six law enforcement officers who called themselves the “Goon Squad” pleaded guilty Thursday to federal charges they tortured two Black men, hurled racial slurs and used a sex toy on them before shooting one of them in the mouth.
The charges against five Rankin County Sheriff’s Department deputies and a Richland police officer followed a months-long Justice Department investigation, which found credible evidence of the attack on Michael Jenkins, 32, and Eddie Terrell Parker, 35.
On Jan. 24, during an early-morning raid, the officers broke down the door of Parker’s home in Braxton, Mississippi, without a warrant. They restrained the two men before beating, tasing and threatening them with rape. The officers shot multiple rounds into the air, threatening to kill the men, before a deputy placed his gun in Jenkins’ mouth and fired. The bullet lacerated Jenkins’ tongue, shattered his jaw and shredded his neck, nearly killing him and causing permanent injuries, according to Jenkins’ lawyers.
“To them, he wasn’t even human,” said Jenkins’ mother, Mary.
The men’s attorney, Trent Walker, said his clients “feel they’re getting justice. They feel vindicated.” At the time the allegations emerged, “there were a lot of naysayers,” he said. “This proves there is justice in Mississippi, even in Rankin County with its long history of police violence.”
At Thursday’s hearing, handcuffed officers stood with their lawyers in a semicircle before U.S. District Judge Tom S. Lee, who read from a 13-count criminal information. Five deputies pleaded guilty to federal charges: Brett Morris McAlpin, 52, who served as chief investigator; Jeffrey Arwood Middleton, 45, who worked as a lieutenant; Christian Lee Dedmon, 28, who worked as a narcotics investigator; and Hunter Thomas Elward, 31, and Daniel Ready Opdyke, 27, who worked as patrol deputies. Joshua Allen Hartfield, 31, who worked as a narcotics investigator with the Richland Police Department, also pleaded guilty.
According to the criminal information filed Thursday, the white deputies handcuffed Jenkins and Parker before beating them and calling them “n—–,” “monkey” and “boy,” telling them to stay out of Rankin County and “go back to Jackson or to ‘their side’ of the Pearl River.” While deputies taunted the two men, Dedmon “repeatedly drive-stunned Jenkins with his taser,” according to the information.
When deputies discovered a dildo in the home, Opdyke forced it into the mouth of Parker and attempted to force it into the mouth of Jenkins, according to the information. Dedmon then threatened to anally rape the two men, but when he moved toward Jenkins’ backside, the deputy stopped when he noticed that Jenkins had defecated on himself, according to the information.
While Elward held the two men down, Dedmon poured milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup on their faces and into their mouths, and Dedmon poured cooking grease on Parker’s head, according to the information. Elward threw eggs at the men.
Officers then ordered the two men “to strip naked and shower off to wash away evidence of abuse,” according to the information. Hartfield guarded the door to make sure they didn’t escape.
Opdyke struck Parker with a wooden kitchen implement, Middleton assaulted Parker with a metal sword, and Dedmon and McAlpin smacked Parker with pieces of wood, according to the criminal information. Dedmon, Middleton, Hartfield and Elward all tased Jenkins and Parker repeatedly.
McAlpin and Middleton stole rubber bar mats, and McAlpin was “about to steal a Class A military uniform” when he heard two gunshots, according to the document.
The first gunshot was discharged by Dedmon, who fired into the yard. After removing a bullet from the chamber of his gun, Elward stuck a gun into Jenkins’ mouth and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked. Then he racked the slide, only this time, the gun fired a bullet, which lacerated his tongue, broke his jaw and exited through his neck.
The officers pleaded guilty to depriving the two men of their rights by neglecting Jenkins’ need for medical care, according to the information. “[They] attempted to cover up their misconduct rather than provide [Jenkins] with medical care.”
The officers also pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice. They attempted to cover up the shooting by planting a gun in the home and accused Jenkins of attempting to shoot at officer Elward, according to court records. They also planted methamphetamine on Jenkins and charged him with drug possession, disorderly conduct and assaulting an officer. Parker was falsely charged with possession of drug paraphernalia and disorderly conduct. The charges against the two have been dismissed. The officers then stole the hard drive from a surveillance camera system in Parker’s home and threw it in a river.
Dedmon and Elward pleaded guilty to discharging a gun in the commission of a violent crime. That carries a 10-year minimum and up to a life sentence, consecutive to any other prison time.
The other charges against the officers range between 10 and 20 years for each count.
“Based on the facts in their guilty pleas, all former deputies lied to me the night of the incident,” Sheriff Brian Bailey said in a statement. “This incident and the crimes of these individuals has been devastating not only to the victims but also to the sheriff’s office and the hundreds of men and women that work here.”
U.S. Attorney Darren J. LaMarca, right, stands with Deputy Attorney General Mary Helen Wall during a press conference Thursday, Aug. 3, 2023, at the Thad Cochran U.S. District Courthouse in Jackson, Miss., after six law enforcement officers pleaded guilty to brutalizing and assaulting two Black men during a home raid that ended with an officer shooting one of the victims in the mouth. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
“They became the criminals they swore to protect us from,” said U.S. Attorney Darren LaMarca at a news conference Thursday afternoon.
“The defendants in this case wanted to send a message to their victims that they didn’t belong,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke. “They sought to dehumanize these victims.”
Deputy Attorney General Mary Helen Wall of the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office said these brutal attacks “caused more than harm to the victims — it severed the trust of the people.”
Six months after the raid, the Rankin County Sheriff’s department fired five deputies they said were involved.
Jenkins and Parker alleged in their lawsuit that their torture was racially motivated because, throughout the incident, the deputies used racial slurs and accused the men of sleeping with White women.
Jenkins has moved out of the state, fearing he may face retaliation, according to his lawyers.
“The code in Rankin County is that you do not speak up,” said Jenkins’ attorney, Malik Zulu Shabazz. “We believe that there are credible threats or risks to their safety.”
The Rankin County Sheriff’s Department has faced previous lawsuits related to police misconduct, some involving the officers named in today’s indictment.
In 2021, Damien Cameron, a 29-year-old Black man, died after a confrontation with Rankin County deputies Elward and Luke Stickman. Cameron’s mother, who filed a civil lawsuit against the department, said she witnessed the officers kneel on Cameron’s neck and back, while Cameron told them he could not breathe for over 10 minutes.
A grand jury chose not to indict the officers for Cameron’s death a year before Elward shot Jenkins. “If they would have did something then, this wouldn’t have happened,” said his father, Mel Jenkins.
That same year, a man named Cory Jackson died while incarcerated at the Rankin County Jail. Jackson’s family was driving him to a hospital because he was suffering from a psychotic episode, when Jackson fled from their car. He was arrested by a Rankin County deputy and suffered injuries while in custody. He was never hospitalized and died in jail that same night.
Also Thursday, Dedmon pleaded guilty to assaulting a man identified as “A.S.” by “punching, kicking and tasing him.” Elward and Opdyke also pleaded guilty to failing to intervene.
After the guilty pleas Thursday, Walker said he had spoken “with Mr. Parker and Mr. Jenkins, and they are very grateful and appreciative of the work of the Justice Department and the U.S. attorney’s office.”
Update: This story has been updated to include comments from the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Rankin County Sheriff Brian Bailey.
