Wilson Furr, shown her during the 2022 Sanderson Farms Championship in Jackson. Credit: Vickie D. King/Mississippi Today
Twenty-four-year-old professional golfer Wilson Furr, from Jackson, made national news two times recently for all together different reasons.
Stay with me here. As so often happens in the perplexing sport of golf, this gets complicated.
Rick Cleveland
Furr plays on the Korn Ferry Tour, the PGA’s Class AAA, which means he plays golf better than 99.99% of people who ever take up the sport. But it also means he is trying to perfect his game to an elite level where he can join that .01 percent that play for millions upon millions on the PGA Tour.
On April 21, Furr was playing and playing well in the second round of the Lecom Suncoast Classic at Lakewood Ranch, Fla. It was an ultra-important round for Furr who needed to make the cut and make some money in order to retain his exempt status on the Korn Ferry Tour.
Furr and his two playing partners played the back nine first that day. They finished the 18th hole and began a long walk to the first tee.
“There was a shuttle waiting just behind the bleachers and skyboxes on the 18th green, the same exact kind of shuttle that took us from the driving range to the 10th tee,” Furr said.
One of Furr’s partners asked if the driver if he was going to the first tee, and he said, “Sure, jump in.”
They did. Furr was playing well, in good shape to make the cut. After 12 holes, he was four under par. The trio hit their drives on the fourth hole when a rules official showed up and asked if they had taken a ride from the 18th green to the first tee. Yes, they said, they had.
“That’s a two-shot penalty,” they were told.
Making a cruel and long story short, the two-shot penalty turned a 67 into a second straight 69 for Furr. He missed the cut.
He was hurt. He was angry. He felt almost as if he (and five other golfers) had been set up or almost framed. The penalized golfers pleaded their case to rules officials but to no avail. Instead of being exempt for all Korn Ferry events, Furr thought missing the cut meant that he would have to Monday qualify to get into tournaments for the rest of the year. That’s next to impossible. For example, for the next week’s Home Town Lenders Championship at Huntsville, Ala., 150 golfers teed up on Monday, playing for only four spots.
Surprisingly, Furr wasn’t in that number. Several exempt players, for whatever reason, decided not to play in Huntsville. Furr got in. He shot even-par 70 amid difficult conditions in the first round. Rain shortened the tournament to 54 holes. Furr found himself in the same position as the week before. He needed a really good second round to make the cut. And, frankly, his job was on the line.
Anyone who plays golf knows that pressure mounts as the stakes go up. Just imagine playing for your livelihood. That’s essentially what Furr was doing.
Because of all the bad weather, Furr didn’t tee off for the second round until mid-afternoon on Saturday. He badly needed to make some birdies. Boy, did he.
Furr was six under par through 10 holes when it became too dark to continue. On Sunday morning, he took up where he left off and eventually shot a nine-under-par 61, a course record, to make the cut. Later Sunday, he shot a solid, even par 70 to finish in a tie for seventh and secure his playing privileges for the remainder of the year.
Yes, he still needs to play extremely well to graduate from the Korn Ferry to the PGA Tour. At least now, he has a fighting chance.
The Korn Ferry’s next tournament will be this weekend at Kansas City. Furr will tee off almost as if he has a new lease on life. While he plays the Korn Ferry Tour, he keeps up with his Mississippi buddies on the PGA Tour. Davis Riley, his former Alabama teammate from Hattiesburg, recently got his first win. Hayden Buckley of Belden has won more than $2.6 million this year. Chad Ramey of Tupelo has won more than $780,000.
“They’re doing great, and I’m pulling for them,” Furr said. At the same time, he wants to join them and seeing what they’re doing gives him confidence – and motivation.
“I’ve played a lot of golf with them,” Furr said. “I know their games and I know mine. It lets me know where I stand, makes it seem all the more possible that I can play out there and be successful.”
Yes, but he’s got to get there first. Shooting 61, essentially with his career on the line, was a start. Given all the circumstances, it shows he has the right stuff.
First NFL game with an all-Black officiating crew on Nov. 23, 2020. Burl Toler, pictured far right, was remembered. Credit: NBC Sports
Burl Toler was born in Memphis. The first Black official in any major sport in the U.S., he defeated prejudice at each turn.
In 1951, Toler starred for the legendary undefeated University of San Francisco Dons. Prejudice kept the integrated team from playing in the Gator Bowl, but the team found success anyway. Nine players went to the NFL, three of them later inducted into the Professional Football Hall of Fame. Their best player may have been Toler, who was drafted by Cleveland but suffered a severe knee injury in a college all-star game that ended his playing days.
Toler decided to make his way into professional football through officiating. The NFL hired him in 1965 — a year before Emmett Ashford became the first Black umpire in Major League Baseball and three years before Jackie White broke the color barrier in the NBA.
He rose above the racism he encountered, working as a head linesman and field judge for a quarter-century. He officiated Super Bowl XIV, where the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Los Angeles Rams in 1980. Two years later, he officiated the “Freezer Bowl,” where the Cincinnati Bengals defeated the San Diego Chargers in the AFC Championship Game. The game marked the coldest temperatures of any game in NFL history — minus 59 degrees wind chill — and Toler suffered frostbite.
In addition to his NFL work, he worked as an educator, becoming the first Black secondary school principal in the San Francisco district. He died in 2009. Two area schools and a hall on the University of San Francisco campus have been renamed in his honor. On Nov. 23, 2020, Toler was remembered again when the NFL had its first all-Black officiating crew.
Mississippi Today reporter Anna Wolfe won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for her remarkable investigation “The Backchannel,” which uncovered the depth of the sprawling $77 million welfare scandal, the largest embezzlement of federal funds in the state’s history.
The investigation, published in a multi-part series in 2022, revealed for the first time how former Gov. Phil Bryant used his office to steer the spending of millions of federal welfare dollars — money intended to help the state’s poorest residents — to benefit his family and friends, including NFL Hall of Fame quarterback Brett Favre.
Mississippi Today’s entire staff and several supporters gathered at Hal & Mal’s in downtown Jackson for the announcement on Monday afternoon and erupted in celebration when the news was announced.
“Anna Wolfe deserves this for so many reasons,” said Adam Ganucheau, editor-in-chief at Mississippi Today. “The late nights she spent poring through spreadsheets, the sheer number of roadblocks she faced from state officials, the thoughtfulness and care she put into her writing, the passion she always has for helping Mississippians — it’s been the absolute honor of my life to get an up-close look at how hard she works and how much she cares about our state.”
Wolfe, a 28-year-old Washington state native who has worked her entire professional journalism career in Mississippi, reported for more than five years on what would become “The Backchannel,” logging thousands of hours of source work and interviewing for the project. When she heard that she’d won the Pulitzer — broadly considered the nation’s top journalistic achievement — she focused her thoughts on the Mississippians she’s covered.
“This award not only recognizes underdog reporting in an under-resourced part of the country,” Wolfe said. “It says to Mississippians who have long been subjected to systemic government corruption that their experiences are valid and they deserve better.”
Before national news covered the welfare scandal, Mississippi Today exposed it first.
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Mississippi Today joins a growing number of nonprofit, online newsrooms to win the award over the past decade. Notably, Mississippi Today’s Pulitzer Prize this year is just one of a handful of Pulitzers awarded to a nonprofit newsroom focused on local news as compared to outlets focused on single-topic or national issues.
“Today’s win belongs to everyone who has supported our nonprofit newsroom since our 2016 launch,” said Mary Margaret White, CEO at Mississippi Today. “We would not be celebrating a Pulitzer Prize without the support of thousands of Mississippians who share our belief that an informed Mississippi is a stronger Mississippi. My sincere gratitude and respect goes to Anna Wolfe and the team at Mississippi Today for their dedication to truth and accountability, and to all of the grant makers and donors who steadfastly champion the impact of local journalism.”
The 2023 Pulitzer for Mississippi Today is the seventh awarded to a Mississippi news outlet in the history of the prizes. It is the first awarded to an online-only newsroom in the state’s history.
The Sun Herald won a Pulitzer in 2006 for its coverage of the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina; the Clarion Ledger won in 1983 for its successful campaign supporting Gov. William Winter in his legislative battle for public education reform; Hazel Brannon Smith of the Lexington Advertiser won in 1964 for a series of powerful local editorials; Ira B. Harkey of the Pascagoula Chronicle won in 1963 for a series of editorials about the state’s school integration crisis; the Vicksburg Sunday Post-Herald won in 1954 for its coverage of a devastating tornado; and Hodding Carter II, esteemed editor of The Delta Democrat-Times, won in 1946 for a group of editorials published on the subject of racial, religious and economic intolerance.
“I hope this Pulitzer Prize recognition serves as a reminder that we at Mississippi Today are here to serve this state for years and years to come,” Ganucheau said. “We are Mississippians who love this beautiful, complicated state and care deeply about its future. We’re proud to champion all the good of our state, and we’re emboldened to provide the accountability journalism that our state needs and deserves. We take seriously our responsibility to be the eyes and ears of taxpayers who may not have the ability or access to ask big, critical questions. We will always press our elected officials to ensure they’re living up to their responsibilities and using their platforms for good and not for corruption. We’re fearless, we’re resilient, and we’re here for the long, long haul.”
The Pulitzer Prize is the most prominent award earned by Mississippi Today, the state’s flagship nonprofit newsroom that was founded in 2016. The newsroom and its journalists have won several national awards in recent years, including: two Goldsmith Prizes for Investigative Reporting; a 2022 Sidney Award for its thorough coverage of the Jackson water crisis; a Collier Prize for State Government Accountability; and the John Jay/Harry Frank Guggenheim Excellence in Criminal Justice Reporting Award.
Mississippi Today and its staff have also won dozens of regional and statewide prizes, including dozens of Society of Professional Journalists Green Eyeshade Awards; several Mississippi Press Association awards for excellence, including a Bill Minor Prizes for Investigative Reporting; and the 2023 Silver Em Award at University of Mississippi.
Mississippi Today reporter Anna Wolfe won the 2023 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for her remarkable investigation “The Backchannel,” which exposed former Gov. Phil Bryant’s role in the state’s welfare scandal.
Wolfe’s investigation was the culmination of more than five years of reporting on the Mississippi welfare agency, which is tasked with helping the poorest residents of America’s poorest state. When she found in 2017 that only a fraction of Mississippians who applied for direct cash assistance were receiving it, she wondered how, instead, the state was spending hundreds of millions in federal grants designed to help those people.
Through dozens of records requests and hundreds of interviews over the past several years, Wolfe uncovered misspending of those federal funds. And, after a tipster leaked thousands of private, never-before-seen text messages between Bryant and key players in the scandal, Wolfe was able to piece together the former governor’s role.
Among the findings of “The Backchannel” investigation:
Bryant was set, just days after leaving office, to receive stock in a Favre-affiliated drug company that had received state welfare dollars.
Favre pressed Mississippi welfare officials to steer taxpayer funds to his pet projects — one of which he planned to profit from.
Bryant wielded great control over how his appointed welfare director distributed federal funds, even turning to that welfare director to seek help for his troubled nephew.
Click the links below to read the entire “The Backchannel” investigation.
Eleven Mississippi hospitals have received an “A” safety score from nonprofit The Leapfrog Group, while the state’s largest hospital received a “C” for the fifth year in a row.
The group hands out the biannual grades to about 3,000 general acute-care hospitals nationwide based on how they protect patients from errors, injuries, accidents and infections. Hospitals’ performances on more than 30 national metrics from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the Leapfrog Hospital Survey and other data determine each health care organization’s score.
No Mississippi Hospitals scored an “F,” but Merit Health Biloxi scored a “D,” the same it received in December. The grade is dictated by a hospital’s performance in infections, problems with surgery, safety problems, practices to prevent errors, and doctors, nurses and hospital staff.
Merit Health Biloxi, for example, scored worse than average compared to other hospitals in the rate of infections developed among patients, such as sepsis after surgeries.
The University of Mississippi Medical Center, the state’s only academic medical center, scored a “C.” The report highlights that UMMC has worse than average performance compared to other hospitals in deaths from surgical complications, split-open surgical wounds, blood infections, and patient falls. The report also noted the hospital did not have enough qualified nurses on staff.
Neither UMMC or Merit Health Biloxi officials responded to a request for comment for the story.
Leapfrog reported that nationwide, 29% of hospitals received an “A,” 26% a “B,” and 39% a “C.”
Less than 1% got an “F” and 6% received a “D.”
The risk of three infections commonly associated with hospital stays – including MRSA, central-line blood infections, and catheter-related urinary tract infections – spiked to a 5-year high during the COVID-19 pandemic and remains high in its latest report, according to Leapfrog.
“Infections like these can be life or death for some patients,” Leah Binder, president and CEO of The Leapfrog Group, said in a statement. “We recognize the tremendous strain the pandemic put on hospitals and their workforce, but alarming findings like these indicate hospitals must recommit to patient safety and build more resilience.”
Here is the breakdown of grades for Mississippi hospitals:
Members of the Black Psychiatrists of America interrupted the breakfast of the trustees of the American Psychiatric Association. The Black psychiatrists shared a list of demands that included a rise in Black leadership, a call to desegregate mental health facilities and a rule to bar psychiatrists guilty of racial discrimination.
Their founding president, Charles Pierce, was especially concerned about television: “American homes have more television sets than bathtubs, refrigerators or telephones; 95 percent of American homes have television sets.”
Convinced that the way to change young hearts would be through television, he became a senior adviser for a new educational show for preschoolers known as “Sesame Street,” which featured a racially diverse cast. “Sesame Street” would go on to become one of the most successful shows of all time, creating iconic characters that resonate to this day.
In this episode of Mississippi Stories, Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey sits down with Dorlisa Hutton, Chief Operations Officer for SR1. SR1 is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization whose missions to provide education, health and technology to all through science and partnership.
SR1 provides college access and success services by using their evidence based education model. Students are provided academic skills, social skills, family and relationship skills, recreation, civic literacy. Founded in 2005 by CEO Tamu Green, SR1 has served hundreds of children across Mississippi. Soon, SR1 CPSA will be opening in Canton, Mississippi the first STEM Charter School in Mississippi.
Alvin Sykes convinced federal prosecutors to prosecute Richard Bledsoe for a hate crime. Credit: Kansas City Public Library
A federal judge sentenced Raymond Bledsoe to life for beating Black jazz saxophonist Steven Harvey to death in a Kansas City park because of his race.
A Missouri jury had acquitted Bledsoe of murder, and afterward, he reportedly bragged to his girlfriend about killing a “n—–” and getting away with it.
Family members, Alvin Sykes and the Steve Harvey Justice Campaign convinced federal authorities to pursue the case. At the time, the conviction was reportedly the fourth under the Civil Rights Act of 1968.
In 2013, federal corrections authorities denied parole to Bledsoe. To date, he remains the longest serving inmate convicted under that Civil Rights Act. Sykes later helped bring both the Justice Department’s reopening of the Emmett Till case and the passage of the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act.
Sykes died in 2021, and his New York Times obituary read, “Though he never took a bar exam, Mr. Sykes was a brilliant legal and legislative operator whose admirers included City Council members, politicians and U.S. attorneys general from both parties. … He led a monk’s life in the name of social justice. He rarely held a job, wore second hand clothing and lacked a permanent address for long stretches of time, staying with friends instead and living off donations and, later, speaker fees. He never learned to drive and so walked everywhere, most often to the reference section of the library in Kansas City, Mo, where he did his research, or to a booth at a restaurant that he used as an informal office, his papers surrounded by cups of coffee and stubbed-out cigarettes.”
Former Gov. Phil Bryant opted Thursday to release hundreds of pages of text messages with figures in the Mississippi welfare scandal after initially fighting a subpoena against him.
But several key messages between the state’s chief executive and his appointed welfare director are missing from the batch, according to a separate trove of leaked text messages obtained and possessed by Mississippi Today.
In a video statement he published prior to releasing the texts and emails Thursday, Bryant said he has been “as open and honest as I can be” about the massive fraud scheme that took place under his watch, resulting in the loss of $77 million in federal welfare funds from 2016 to 2019.
While thousands of text messages have come out in the course of Mississippi Department of Human Services’ civil litigation, the public has yet to see any messages sent during the pertinent months of the scandal between Bryant and his subordinate who ran the agency John Davis.
Bryant said on Thursday he does not possess any text messages with Davis between 2016, when Davis became director, and June of 2019, when Bryant forced Davis to retire — including the early 2019 messages Mississippi Today already retrieved and published last year in its investigative series “The Backchannel.”
Texts that Mississippi Today possesses that Bryant didn’t produce on Thursday include:
An exchange in which Bryant asked Davis to fund a specific vendor, to which Davis responded, “Yes sir we can definitely help. You can go ahead and tell them I will be reaching out to fund them. I will do today.”
A text Davis sent Bryant explaining that he had “FOUND A WAY TO FUND” a vendor Bryant supported after initially learning it would violate federal welfare grant regulations. Bryant responded: “Your (sic) the best..”
A text in which Bryant asked Davis about a Mississippi Today report on federal welfare expenditures. Davis responds that the state is spending money in “areas that encourage getting a keeping a job.” Bryant responded: “Keep up the good work.”
In response to Mississippi Today questions, a spokesperson for Bryant said on Thursday the former governor did not delete any messages from his phone.
Bryant, who faces no criminal or civil charges, has been at the center of public scrutiny for his alleged role in diverting tens of millions of federal funds intended to help the state’s poorest residents away from the needy. Following “The Backchannel” reporting in 2022, several Mississippians who have pleaded guilty to criminal or civil charges have alleged in court that Bryant directed or influenced their misspending or fraud.
Davis, who has remained the most silent in the case, has since pleaded guilty to 20 charges — two federal and 18 state — of conspiracy, theft or fraud and is aiding federal prosecutors in an ongoing investigation while awaiting sentencing.
After an agency employee brought forward a small tip of fraud against Davis in June 2019, Bryant turned over the information to State Auditor Shad White, whom Bryant initially appointed to his position, and forced Davis to retire. At this time, investigators from the auditor’s office retrieved Davis’ phone, which held messages with Bryant dating back only to March of 2019.
“John has dedicated his life to serving others,” Bryant wrote in a glowing statement about Davis’ retirement, which did not address the fraud investigation.
Mississippi Today exclusively obtained 14 pages of text messages between Bryant and Davis sent in the four months leading up to Davis’ ousting. In the texts, Bryant asked Davis to fund specific subgrantees and praised him for his efforts to reduce the number of poor families receiving aid under under the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families program, or TANF.
But when Bryant gathered the communication in response to a subpoena, he found that he did not have any of these messages in his possession, his spokesperson said, therefore he did not produce them Thursday.
“Everybody in modern America knows you can delete a text,” said Jim Waide, the attorney for Davis’ nephew Austin Smith, a defendant in the civil suit.
Waide is one of the attorneys who filed a subpoena on Bryant. One of the items he requested was any communication in which Bryant sought help from Davis for his nephew, which Mississippi Today first uncovered in “The Backchannel.”
These texts, in which Bryant thanked Davis “for all your (sic) have done,” do not appear in the documents Bryant produced Thursday.
“And we know they exist because (Mississippi Today) published them, several of them, between him and John Davis. So we know they exist, or somewhere at one time they existed,” Waide said.
Bryant’s public relations representative Denton Gibbes addressed the missing texts in a statement released to the news media Thursday.
“To the extent any additional messages exist, Gov. Bryant does not have them,” Gibbes said. “Gov. Bryant is aware of a message between he and John Davis relating to his nephew, Noah McRae, that he does not currently possess. Gov. Bryant did not delete this or any other messages. He is unclear why this message is not on his mobile phone. Gov. Bryant has searched older devices in an effort to recover this and any other additional messages. Gov. Bryant even requested Apple’s assistance in recovering additional messages. These efforts were unsuccessful.”
The statement said Bryant chose to produce all the text messages with Davis in his possession, even though they were not responsive to the narrow subpoenas, “in the spirt (sic) of transparency.”
The newly released texts, which cover the time period July to September of 2019, show that Bryant and Davis communicated after the welfare director left office. “We are still here if you need us,” Bryant texted the embattled former director, accompanied by a prayer hands emoji, in mid-July of 2019 as the investigation into Davis’ conduct got underway.
After this, Bryant continued to contact Davis about where to find a vendor’s TANF funding. “Do you know where the $250k funding for JMG maybe at? Think this was some TANF dollars,” he wrote in August of 2019.
“Yes sir it was ready to be approved. It falls within the guidelines of TANF funding. It should not be a problem,” Davis responded.
Davis also expressed concern to the governor about being able to secure a new job, considering the ongoing auditor’s investigation. Bryant told Davis, “I have told the Auditor I would stay out of this and trust him to do his best.”
Within the welfare scandal, much of the focus has been on three projects that received more than $8 million in federal funding because of the alleged involvement of both Bryant and former NFL legend Brett Favre. These include a volleyball stadium at University of Southern Mississippi, a pharmaceutical startup company called Prevacus and a $1.1 million promotional contract with Favre himself.
Mississippi Today published its 2022 investigation about Bryant’s role in the scandal after receiving and reviewing hundreds of pages of text messages obtained by investigators in the case, including those between Bryant, Favre, and Prevacus founder Jake Vanlandingham.
The texts showed that after Bryant met with former NFL legend Brett Favre about supporting his startup pharmaceutical venture in late 2018, the then-governor promised to “open a hole” for Favre and less than a week later, welfare officials including Davis struck a deal at the athlete’s home to funnel $1.7 million of federal grant funds into the project.
When the public funds started flowing to the drug company, Favre texted Bryant, “We couldn’t be more happy about the funding from the State of MS,” though Bryant denies knowing that the company received any public funds. Two days after leaving office, Bryant then agreed by text to accept “a company package for all your help,” Vanlandingham wrote, but arrests occurred before they were able to meet.
“The fact is I did nothing wrong,” Bryant said in his statement Thursday morning. “I wasn’t aware of the wrongdoings of others. When I received evidence that suggested people appeared to be misappropriating funds, I immediately reported that to the agency whose job it is to investigate these matters. It’s been a long and difficult year watching as decades of my public service is dragged through the mud and hoping it doesn’t affect those closest to me.”
Waide and Gerry Bufkin, the attorney for nonprofit founder Nancy New, initially filed subpoenas against Bryant last year in the massive civil case that Mississippi Department of Human Services is bringing against 47 individuals or companies in an attempt to claw back the misspent funds.
Bryant has been fighting the subpoenas, arguing that his text messages are protected under executive privilege. Mississippi Today, the Daily Journal and Mississippi Free Press filed a motion in early April opposing Bryant’s attempts to block public access to the documents. Bryant chose to release the messages before the court had a chance to rule on the matter.
“After much thought and discussion with counsel, I’ve made the decision to forgo any arguments about executive privilege of my text messages in this matter and simply release them all,” Bryant said in the video statement on Thursday. “Frankly, I’m tired of paying legal fees to respond to lawsuits that I’m not a party to in order to protect my privacy and an executive privilege that should exist for future governors.”
The judge in the civil suit, Hinds County Circuit Court Judge Faye Peterson, would have had the final say on whether the texts were released. She recently filed her first major order in the civil suit, which has been in progress for the last year, in which she denied Favre’s motion to dismiss charges against him.
In response to Bryant’s decision to release the texts, current Mississippi Department of Human Services Director Bob Anderson told Mississippi Today in a statement that “the agency has not been provided any of these text messages since we are involved in pending litigation.”
“MDHS will be very interested to review and have counsel review these messages,” he added. “MDHS is interested in reviewing communications relating to all parties, especially those currently named in the civil complaint.
Waide said he didn’t buy Bryant’s argument that he was releasing the texts to avoid more legal fees.
“The attorneys’ fees have already been incurred when they wrote the brief,” Waide said. “He wouldn’t be incurring any additional attorneys’ fees now. And second, I believe it’s inevitable the judge was going to order him to release them, and that he did it as a smart public relations move.”
Bryant released the texts publicly on a new website called bryanttexts.com. Some of the photocopies are so faded, the dates of the messages are barely legible.
“We all know what’s going to happen next,” Bryant said in the video also uploaded to the website. “My text messages will be manipulated through a coordinated effort from a billionaire-driven media outlet and Democratic political consultants. These messages will be again mischaracterized into endless fodder for those who want to try to denigrate the success of my terms as governor and castigate Republican candidates in an election year.”
HATTIESBURG – Nearly a year after a Forrest County sheriff’s deputy fatally shot a mentally ill man, the man’s family has filed a federal wrongful death lawsuit against the county for using fatal force rather than helping.
Corey Maurice McCarty Hughes, 45, died July 14, 2022 outside of his sister’s house in the Palmers Crossing neighborhood. As his family had done over a dozen times before, they went through the civil commitment process to get Hughes treatment and called sheriff’s deputies to pick him up and take him to the South Mississippi State Hospital in Purvis.
Investigators said a deputy shot Hughes in the neck and torso after the man struck him with a hammer. Months later, the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office determined the shooting was justified.
“This has left a hole in our hearts,” said Cassandra Teal, one of Hughes’ sisters who witnessed his death. “It wasn’t right what they (have) done.”
The lawsuit will be heard in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi. The plaintiff is Hughes’ father, James, on behalf of Corey’s daughter, Chloe, and the defendants are Forrest County and 10 unnamed sheriff’s deputies.
Chloe Hughes, daughter of Corey Maurice Hughes, expresses emotion as she raises her fist during a press conference announcing the Hughes family lawsuit against Forrest County and law enforcement in the Forrest County Sheriff’s Department, at the Forrest County Circuit Courthouse in Hattiesburg, Miss. Thursday, May 4, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
It alleges “collective assault, negligence, gross negligence, and reckless disregard for the safety of others” and violation of Hughes’ federal, civil, Constitutional and human rights, according to the lawsuit.
The sheriff’s deputies inflicted “unnecessary bodily harm” through “excessive, unreasonable, and unjustifiable force,” the suit alleges.
In its response to the lawsuit complaint, the defendants denied the allegations and invoked qualified immunity, which protects a governmental entity and government officials including law enforcement from being sued for wrongdoing while doing their jobs, according to the lawsuit.
Trial is scheduled for April 1, 2024, in Hattiesburg before U.S. District Judge Halil Ozerden.
Hughes was diagnosed with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder in the late 1990s and took medication, his family said. But when he stopped taking it, a family member would go through the civil commitment process to get him treatment.
Verna Tameka McCarty, one of Corey’s sisters, said in 20 years, her brother had been civilly committed over a dozen times and the sheriff’s office was familiar with him. She asked why they acted differently the night he was killed.
“We have been going through this for years and have been trying to do the right thing in a situation when we needed further assistance,” she said.
McCarty said the deputies wronged her brother because they were not prepared to work with someone with mental illness.
Verna “Temeka” McCarty, sister of Corey Maurice Hughes, speaks during a press conference announcing the Hughes family lawsuit against Forrest County and law enforcement in the Forrest County Sheriff’s Department after her brother’s death, at the Forrest County Circuit Courthouse in Hattiesburg, Miss. Thursday, May 4, 2023. Credit: Eric Shelton/Mississippi Today
Under state law, sheriff’s deputies are required to pick up civil commitment patients and take them to the state hospital or to a holding location such as a jail until there is an available bed.
Attorney Dennis C. Sweet IV, who is representing James Hughes in the civil lawsuit, said there are policies and procedures for law enforcement to follow when encountering people like Corey Hughes who have been diagnosed with mental illness. He said the deputies did not follow those rules.
The Forrest County NAACP and Community Action Team of Palmers Crossing joined the Hughes family to show support and call for justice and accountability.
“We will not go away,” said Nathan Jordan of the Community Action Team. “We will be here until justice is done.”
