Rusty Hampton was the sports editor at the Clarion Ledger for 11 years and worked there for 25 years in two different stints. He talks about some of the highlights, including Mississippi State’s amazing run to the 1996 Final Four.
Also discussed: a salute to Ryne Sandberg, the SEC preseason football poll, and Konnor Griffin, the newly elevated top prospect in professional baseball.
Stream all episodes here.
Third-party water and sewer utility JXN Water clarified on Wednesday that its manager Ted Henifin isn’t considering a resignation following a dispute with the federal judge who appointed him to the role in 2022.
During a status conference Tuesday, Henifin told U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate he would weigh whether to step down after the judge pushed back on the manager over two issues, including a rate increase JXN Water first proposed five months ago to keep its daily operations funded.
“I think it has been a difficult week for JXN Water, specifically the leadership,” Aisha Carson, the utility’s communications officer, told Mississippi Today. “But I think (Henifin) is very much committed to the work we’re doing in Jackson. I just think he’s also very protective and can sometimes get frustrated by the process that decisions have to go through.”
Carson said Henifin cleared up any confusion to JXN Water staff after the status conference, adding it’s “safe to say” the manager isn’t considering resigning at this time.
“We know (the rate decision) will continue to move through the legal process, and there’s really nothing we can do about it per se,” she said. “We trust the legal process no matter how frustrating it can be. We don’t want to regress on progress. (Henifin) is still acting as the interim third-party manager, and will be for the foreseeable future unless he states otherwise.”
Wingate said at another hearing earlier this month, and reiterated Tuesday, that he wouldn’t consider the rate hike before locating every dollar from a $90 million settlement the city of Jackson executed with Siemens in 2020. The judge argued it’s unfair to ask for more from Jacksonians when there may be more money that could help JXN Water.
“Constantly I ask the question: Where is that money? Where has it been deposited?” Wingate said. “I’ve been disturbed about this matter, highly disturbed.”
Henifin, though, has repeatedly pointed out to Wingate that even if he had every cent from the settlement – which was $60 million after the city paid its lawyer fees – the utility would still need to raise rates. Jackson City Attorney Drew Martin also suggested at the last hearing that the city has already spent almost all of the remaining settlement money.
The third-party manager is proposing a 12% rate increase, or about $9 per month on average, it says, in addition to 4% increases from 2027 to 2029 to cover costs of inflation. It would be the second time in as many years JXN Water has raised its rates.
The utility says it needs $148 million a year in revenue, which includes $115 million for operating expenses, about $24 million for debt payments, and $9 million to build reserves. Henifin has said the utility initially underestimated how much revenue it needed due to the poor accounting it received from Jackson officials when it took over after the 2022 water crisis.
Henifin and Wingate also butted heads after the manager sent the judge a list of names for a potential voluntary board that would be needed if JXN Water were to borrow money through bonds. While Carson, JXN Water’s spokesperson, said Henifin did so merely to show the judge what the governance structure would look like, Wingate told the manager the board selection process should be independent of Henifin. JXN Water declined to share the list of names Henifin submitted.
It’s unclear still when Wingate will rule on Henifin’s proposal for a rate increase. During Tuesday’s status conference, Jackson’s Deputy City Attorney Terry Williamson said he’s still reviewing documents from the Siemens settlement. Wingate issued subpoenas to several parties to track the funds down, most recently on July 22. Several of those subpoenas have yet to be returned, court filings show.
Jackson’s City Council voted in April against the water rake hike, saying the utility first needs to improve its bill collection rate of 71%. Henifin, though, maintains that even with 100% collections JXN Water would be short of its revenue needs by at least $33 million this year. He said Tuesday that it would take three years to bring it up to 95%.
Henifin also said Tuesday that the city itself owes about $4.6 million in water bills, and Wingate said the Jackson Zoo owes $2 million.
Reporter Maya Miller contributed to this story.
NESHOBA COUNTY — Two contenders for Mississippi governor in 2027 unveiled a raft of proposals at the Neshoba County Fair on Wednesday, vowing to spend significant amounts of money on new initiatives while keeping taxes low and government lean.
The lofty proposals are a preview of issues that could shape what could be a crowded Republican primary with Gov. Tate Reeves being term limited.
Under the tin-roofed pavilion at Founder’s Square, Mississippi Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson literally threw his cowboy hat from the stage into the ring for the governor’s race, after having made a previous announcement via social media that he would seek the office.
The second-term commissioner declared that, if elected governor, he would be an ally to Republican President Donald Trump.
“America is back on track,” Gipson said. “America is first again, for a change. Conservative policies are on the agenda again.”
As a response to ongoing challenges in the agriculture industry, Gipson announced a new strategic plan that he called “probably the most significant announcement that I’ve ever made since I became commissioner.”
The plan will involve Gipson partnering with industry leaders to look at issues such as crop diversification and international trade, drafting a long-term state agriculture plan. He also called for a major investment in transportation and an overhaul of the state’s road infrastructure.
“What we have to do is make our transportation infrastructure the priority,” Gipson said. “The money is up there, available to use, we just have to redirect those funds to make sure that they’re being spent consistently on projects that are actually getting done to benefit our transportation and commerce across the state.”
Asked by reporters about the potential legalization of mobile sports betting, one of the hotly contested issues under the Capitol dome over the past few sessions, Gipson said he opposes the policy: “I think we’ve got a lot of betting that’s already happening right now across the state, so I don’t know that it’s necessary.”
Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann told reporters he’s considering running for governor in 2027, but stopped short of declaring his candidacy on Wednesday. For now, the two-term lieutenant governor remains committed to advancing his priorities through the state Senate, he said.
And he wants to send taxpayers a rebate check next year.
“Absolutely, we’re considering a run for governor. But I think the most important thing is to do your job, and I’ve got a pretty aggressive agenda that I’m working on,” Hosemann said. “After that, when things settle down a year out or whatever, that’s the time to be doing this. I’m not quitting the thing that people hired me to do.”
Among the policies Hosemann hopes to marshal through the Legislature next session is a $316 million tax rebate program. Mississippi has surplus funds that should be returned to taxpayers, Hosemann said.
“We will issue a $316 million tax rebate. That is 15% of every dollar that everybody paid last April. It will be across the board, so if you paid $1,000 in state taxes, we’ll send you back a $150 check, and that will go all the way through,” Hosemann said. “That will help our economy, and it shows Mississippians that we’re running the government well. We’re running a state government just like we should be – we’re shrinking the size of government and we’re returning taxpayer funds.”
Hosemann said the proposal would not impact the tax overhaul law passed by the Legislature last session and that it may not be a recurring rebate since the income tax is being phased out. He also advocated a “significant restructuring of government to cut fat and red tape, and said he wants to raise K-12 teacher salaries and ban cellphone use in classrooms.
Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney continued to advocate for the Legislature to change his office from an elected position to an appointed one, an effort that failed to gain any major traction at the Capitol during the 2025 session earlier this year.
Chaney, who has been the commissioner since 2007, believes it’s not sound policy for a candidate running for the office to accept money from insurance companies because the commissioner is responsible for regulating those same businesses once elected.
“You would take politics out of the elected position, and you don’t have companies contributing to you trying to run the office,” Chaney told reporters.
U.S. Rep. Michael Guest, a Republican who represents the state’s 3rd Congressional District, presented a message from President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump that called the attendees of the fair “the heart and soul of America.”
Guest also said the Department of Justice should release all of the files with information on disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein, who was charged with federal sex trafficking trafficking crimes before dying in prison. Many of the Republican president’s supporters want the government to release the Epstein files, but to their chagrin, administration officials insist there’s nothing more to disclose.
“I think it would be best to go ahead and release the files as much as possible in its entirety,” Guest said. “I know there will probably need to be a redaction of certain things, the names of potential victims and things of that nature, but I think the quicker that we can get that information to the general public and not (allow) a distraction that we’ve seen in Washington, D.C., will allow us to get back to doing the business of people.”
Gov. Tate Reeves, House Speaker Jason White, Secretary of State Michael Watson, Attorney General Lynn Fitch, State Treasurer David McRae, Transportation Commissioner Willie Simmons, Public Service Commissioner DeKeither Stamps and Supreme Court Chief Justice Mike Randolph will speak at the fair on Thursday.
Mississippi Today, in partnership with Rethink Mississippi (an initiative sponsored by the nonprofit Working Together Mississippi) and the University of Mississippi Center for Population Studies, launched the state’s first-ever scientific study dedicated to understanding Mississippi’s brain drain crisis — and what ideas could help reverse it.
Our survey, which we debuted on July 15, has been taken by more than 4,700 people so far. This far exceeds our expectations in such a short period, but the response is proving incredibly helpful to our journalists and research partners as we work to find solutions to the state’s brain drain problem.
Whether you’ve stayed in Mississippi, you’ve left, or you’ve considered leaving the state, we want to hear from you. If you’ve moved to Mississippi from elsewhere, or even if you’ve never lived here at all, your input is valuable. Brain drain in Mississippi affects all of us, and we believe hearing from people of any and all backgrounds and perspectives can only help us better grapple with the problems and develop some solutions.
The short survey asks everyone about the factors that influenced their decision of where to live, whether that’s in Mississippi or not. It follows with tailored discussion questions based on where you’re from and where you live now. We ask you to reflect on what has pulled you away or what has kept you rooted here, as well as the potential changes that could improve the chances that you live in the state in the future. We purposefully left plenty of room for you to share your own thoughts with us.
So how can you help? First, take the survey! If you’ve already done it, you can help even more by sharing it with as many people as you can. As laid out above, we need responses from anyone and everyone.
Over the next few weeks and months, we’ll spend dedicated time and energy with the results of the survey. We’ll dispatch journalists at Mississippi Today to dive deeply into issues that matter most to you, and we’ll work closely with our expert partners to dissect and share findings — all with potential solutions to the crisis at top of mind.
All of the stories, analyses and essays related to this work will be published on our new page at Mississippi Today called Brain Drain. Click here to access and bookmark the page.
We’ve also published a comprehensive list of answers to frequently asked questions about the problem, the data and potential solutions.
READ MORE: FAQ: The ‘Brain Drain’ crisis in Mississippi
Don’t hesitate to reach out if you have any questions. I can be reached at adam@mississippitoday.org.
Despite twists and turns, Mississippi took a step forward this week in expanding broadband access in the state.
There have been concerns that the Trump administration would make cuts to the Biden era program.
While there have not been cuts to the bulk of the money, the changes to the federal program have caused concern for advocates about the program’s affordability, technology/stability and community engagement.
Internet service providers submitted over 300 applications for grant funding to provide internet to underserved areas according to Sally Doty, the director of the Office of Broadband Expansion and Accessibility of Mississippi. BEAM is responsible for managing the $1.2 billion the state plans to receive from the federal Broadband Equity Access and Deployment program.
BEAD is a $42-billion program passed by Congress in 2021 as part of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act. But on June 6, the Department of Commerce’s National Telecommunications and Information Administration altered the criteria to select providers. The notice eliminated the preference for fiber broadband and requirements for labor, community engagement, climate resilience and low cost/affordable plans. It did not change the amount earmarked for each state.
“Shelving the previous Administration’s unnecessary burdens, and opening access to all technology types, connects more Americans to broadband more quickly, and at a lower cost to the American taxpayer,” Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick said in the June notice about the changes.
Areas in need of coverage were identified by asking providers to report what areas and technical capabilities they provided. Mississippi received $1.2 billion to map underserved and unserved areas and to provide grants for providers to extend coverage to these areas. At the time of the June announcement, BEAM had not awarded any contracts.
In 2022, 80% of Mississippians had broadband service. At the time it was the lowest percentage in the nation. Broadband can open up business opportunities, provide access to telehealth care and more jobs, especially in rural areas that often have the lowest rates of high speed internet availability.
“The most marginalized, rural communities would benefit from this large infrastructure investment in the state,” said Harya Tarekegn, director of advocacy and policy at Mississippi Center for Justice.
Grants will be given out based on who can build the infrastructure the cheapest, how fast they can set it up and if they’re able to meet the technical requirements, such as upload and download speeds. The new technology neutral plan may mean that more satellite contracts will be awarded to satellite companies, such as SpaceX and Amazon’s Kuiper.
Advocates are concerned that the elimination of the preference for fiber and the ability for states to consider affordability will result in worse technology at a higher price for individuals.
“We feel strongly that fiber is the best way to build out connectivity, especially in rural communities,” said Kyra Roby, a consultant with Children’s Defense Fund.
To install fiber broadband, cables are run along utility poles or underground up to or close to a house. The upfront cost of fiber is higher and more time consuming than other technologies, such as satellite and fixed wireless. However, fiber is generally considered the fastest and most reliable broadband technology with lower long term costs for maintenance and to consumers.
Under the previous policy, states could use the end cost to consumers and providers’ low-cost programs as part of their decision making process. Now they cannot.
“The affordability issue is a major issue. Internet service costs are ridiculous and a lot of people are not going to be able to afford market rates,” said Oleta Fitzgerald, Southern Regional Office director of Children’s Defense Fund.
There are no cuts to BEAD, but in May of this year, the federal government ended the Digital Equity Program. This included $10 million for Mississippi’s Digital Skills & Accessibility Capacity Grant Program to provide digital skills training and education. However, there is more concern about the future of the BEAD program and its ability to reshape internet access.
Over the next few weeks, BEAM will review applications and make the final proposal available for public comment before submitting it to the Commerce Department.
“Communities still have a vital role to play in ensuring reliable, affordable access. There has already been significant community engagement around these issues to help get us to where we are now, and we expect even more in the months ahead,” Roby said.
A third-party investigation released Tuesday recommends the state remove control of the Holly Springs Utility Department from the city following years of constant power issues for its 12,000 customers.
Silverpoint Consulting, which the state’s Public Service Commission contracted to study the depth of Holly Springs’ problems, wrote that the city appears “incapable” of implementing any recommended solutions.
“Allowing them any more time would be fruitless as well as disrespectful to the utility’s long-suffering customers,” the investigation says.
The city of Holly Springs recently elected a new mayor, Charles Terry, but his office did not response to a request for comment on Tuesday.
The PSC enlisted Silverpoint last year after state legislation gave the regulator authority to intervene in Holly Springs, which since 1935 has provided power through the federally controlled Tennessee Valley Authority. That bill came after years of complaints from Holly Springs customers about constant power outages. Those issues peaked during an ice storm in 2023, when some lost electricity for about two weeks.
The legislation also allows the PSC, if it finds the utility can’t provide “reasonably adequate electric service,” to request a court-ordered receivership for the utility. While Silverpoint found that Holly Springs falls below that standard, it said it may be challenging to find a receiver willing to take on the struggling provider. The consultant instead recommends exploring one of the following options: selling the utility to another city or cooperative utility; converting it to a cooperative to open up access to low-interest loans; or eminent domain or condemnation.
While Holly Springs’ mayor and board of aldermen are in charge of the power department, about two-thirds of the utility’s customers live outside the city limits, meaning most ratepayers can’t vote for officials with local control.
Silverpoint said after beginning its investigation last August, it was unable to obtain much information from the city for roughly six months. Most information the city did provide, which it didn’t send until this spring, was “non-responsive or irrelevant” to the investigation, the report says.
Silverpoint found an array of issues, some of which had been noted in previous reports Mississippi Today covered earlier this year: remote metering that has been out of service for three months, requiring utility workers to read all meters manually and delaying when bills are issued; a “rudimentary” work order system with a backlog of nearly 2,000 items; having a 16-year-old system map, pushing back restoration times; and having no emergency response or vegetation management plan.
The report also noted several personnel issues. The utility’s superintendent is “well into his 80s,” it said, which is “well beyond the maximum retirement age allowable at most any other utility.” After not having a full-time general manager for years, the city also hired a former bridge inspector, Wayne Jones, with no utility or electric engineering experience, Silverpoint wrote.
“We believe our report makes clear that the City and (utility department) lack sufficient technical, operational, and management expertise to effectively reverse the downward trajectory this electric system has been on for some time,” the report says.
Silverpoint also echoed a point brought up in TVA’s recent lawsuit against the city: “For decades, City leadership systematically drained utility resources through excessive PILOT payments, continuing to milk a starving cash cow to fund its other municipal expenses.”
Holly Springs’ contract with TVA allows it to take payments in lieu of taxes, or PILOT funds, but only after it addresses all of its utility costs.
“The Silverpoint report lays bare just how dire the situation is at Holly Springs Utility District,” Northern District Public Service Commissioner Chris Brown said in a statement. “This crisis didn’t happen overnight — it’s the result of decades of neglect and mismanagement.
The PSC attempted to schedule a hearing over the matter in January, but agreed to postpone the matter until after the last legislative session. Richard Stone, a spokesperson for Brown, said while the PSC hasn’t yet scheduled the hearing it will address the issue during its next docket meeting on Aug. 5.
A cybersecurity attack displaying explicit, racist and antisemitic images derailed Mississippi’s second meeting to begin the process of allocating the state’s opioid settlement dollars, further delaying the process of using the money to address addiction.
Mississippi’s Opioid Settlement Fund Advisory Council was scheduled to meet Tuesday at 1 p.m. to further develop how the Legislature will allocate up to $73.3 million from companies that catalyzed the country’s overdose crisis. Unlike the council’s first meeting three weeks earlier, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office hosted the second exclusively over a Zoom video call. Public participants were not required to sign in to the meeting before joining.
About 10 minutes into the meeting, as meeting host and Fitch special assistant Caleb Pracht asked for approval of the last gathering’s minutes, a Zoom participant noticed that Pracht’s screen was partially blacked out. As Pracht tried to fix the screen, an unidentified voice interrupted the meeting and said, “Yep, that is really good to hear because…”
At that point, distorted music started playing, and an unidentified guest took control of the host screen. The screen featured a man in a sexually explicit pose, a swastika, a symbol for the Ku Klux Klan, a Confederate flag background, and a banner over the screen said “HACKED BY NUENZE.” Three other guest participants who signed in as “Robert Cage,” “Chelsea M Adams” and “Vince Garcia” had similar images as their icons.
The chaos lasted about 20 seconds until the Attorney General’s office ended the meeting. Pracht tried to move the meeting over to a conference call a few minutes later, but Fitch’s Chief of Staff Michelle Williams said that meeting was also hacked. Pracht sent out an email at 1:25 p.m. that the meeting would be rescheduled as soon as possible.
“We truly apologize, and our IT folks are looking into it immediately to address the issue and ensure it can never happen again,” Pracht wrote in an email to meeting attendees.
In a call with Mississippi Today, Williams confirmed someone had hacked the Zoom meeting, an incident she said was unlike anything the Attorney General’s Office had ever experienced before. She said she hadn’t examined the details of the graphic images enough to comment on them, but Fitch’s Cyber Crime Division would be investigating the incident.
“Somebody who clearly doesn’t care what happens to people who have been afflicted by the opioid epidemic just completely kept the committee from doing its work,” she said.
The Mississippi Legislature has tasked the council with creating a process for groups interested in addressing Mississippi’s overdose crisis to apply for some of the state’s opioid settlement dollars.
The council was set to review materials for this application process, including a newly drafted scoring rubric for applications and proposed committee assignments for reviewing grants, according to the Tuesday meeting’s agenda. Multiple committee members expressed concern that there was no grading rubric or definition of a qualified applicant in the material proposed at the last meeting.
The council is following a tight schedule to finish reviewing opioid settlement applications by Dec. 1, a deadline prescribed by the Legislature. Meeting that deadline already seemed in jeopardy at the early July meeting, when Pracht suggested delaying the launch of the application by a few weeks.
Williams said Fitch’s office continues to be focused on meeting the Legislature’s deadline. But Tuesday’s cyberattack will make it more difficult to adhere to a tight timeline.
“Whoever just did this today just shortened it.”
This story will be updated as more information becomes available.
Clarification 7/29/2025 — This story has been updated to reflect that Pracht suggested delaying the grant application launch.
JPMorganChase Chairman and CEO Jamie Dimon, Mississippi businessman Tommy Duff and award-winning journalists joined local civic changemakers and hundreds of attendees Monday for an impactful half-day summit on what it takes to build, stay and thrive in Mississippi.
The “All in on Mississippi” forum, hosted by Mississippi Today and Deep South Today at the Mississippi Museum of Art in downtown Jackson, featured four programs:
Mississippi Today and Deep South Today thanks JPMorgan Chase for sponsoring the event. We also thank our supporting sponsors: Butler Snow, University of Mississippi School of Journalism and New Media, Delta Health Center, Randall Commercial, United Way of the Capital Area, Singleton Schreiber, and the Nathan Cummings Foundation.
The Mississippi Highway Patrol suspended the state trooper who failed to obey a subpoena to testify in a DUI case involving the current son-in-law of Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, Mississippi Today has learned.
That son-in-law, Steven Frederick Jr., and another law enforcement officer are now charged with manslaughter in an unrelated case in 2022 while both were Capitol Police officers.
On March 12, 2023, Frederick totaled his Capitol Police Ford F-150 on U.S. 49 South in Covington County, just past the Simpson County line.
When a trooper arrived, he told Frederick in a dashcam video obtained by Mississippi Today that he wanted to give the Capitol Police officer a handheld breathalyzer test “to see how high you are.”
Frederick flunked the test with a .15 score, nearly twice the legal limit of .08. He was handcuffed and arrested for DUI.
Frederick can be seen on camera asking troopers to remove his handcuffs. They refused.
On the video, Frederick is quoted as saying he had only two beers but later can be heard telling a trooper that he had been drinking whiskey. Then he adds, “I just lost my f—ing career.”
Fellow troopers say Clay Loftin told them that Bailey appeared on the scene and asked if he could take Frederick with him. They said Loftin told them he replied to the sheriff, “No, he’s coming with me.”
Bailey told WLBT in 2023 that he spoke to Loftin a “handful” of times and that he told the trooper to “do his job.”
If Bailey had taken Frederick with him, prosecution would have proved difficult, because results from handheld breathalyzers aren’t admissible in court. This is why DUI suspects are tested on machine breathalyzers.
At the Covington County Jail, Loftin put Frederick on the machine breathalyzer, which tested him at .127, according to the arrest report.
After Frederick was jailed, Covington County Sheriff Darrell M. Perkins released him without bond into Bailey’s custody. He said Bailey told him he was taking Frederick to a hospital.
State authorities have learned that a prosecutor, who wasn’t from Covington County, said Bailey called him and asked him what would happen if a trooper didn’t show up for a DUI hearing and the prosecutor replied that the case would be dismissed.
Bailey has denied these allegations. “Whoever said that I talked to a prosecutor is a liar,” he told WLBT. “That is a completely false lie.”
Authorities have also learned that after the wreck, Bailey reportedly telephoned Frederick’s supervisor at Capitol Police, Porfirio Grimaldo, telling the supervisor that he should keep Frederick on the force because “the DUI has been taken care of.”
Contacted for comment, Grimaldo referred all questions to the department’s lawyers. “Our MDPS legal team is unable to comment on a conversation they were not a party to,” said spokesperson Bailey Martin.
Neither Bailey’s lawyer, Jason Dare, nor Bailey responded to questions about this.
Five months after the accident, Loftin failed to show up as required to testify in the DUI case against Frederick. A Covington County judge dismissed the case.
Loftin was one of four troopers scheduled to testify that day in justice court. He was the only one who didn’t appear.
Afterward, fellow troopers said Loftin told them he had never received a notice of the hearing and if he had, he would have been there. Electronic records, however, show he received the email and opened it.
When troopers start their jobs, they agree in advance to take a polygraph test, commonly known as a lie detector test. If they refuse to take the test, they can be fired.
After Loftin took his polygraph test, the examiner concluded the trooper showed deception when he denied that anyone pressured him to ignore the subpoena to testify in court.
The trooper received a five-day suspension with no pay, and he did not appeal, according to records obtained by Mississippi Today. He declined to respond to requests for comment.
As for Frederick, he resigned three days after the wreck “to prevent termination,” according to his certification records. He had worked for Capitol Police less than eight months and paid nothing toward the Ford F-150 he totaled.
Bailey has said he never tried to influence justice.
“I can swear on a stack of Bibles, I did not ask anyone for any help on that just because I knew the finger would be pointed at me because of that, and you know, let things take their course naturally,” the sheriff said in the 2023 WLBT interview. “I hate that it happened to him (Frederick) because he is a good guy.”
A year and a half after Frederick demolished his Capitol Police truck, he wrecked another patrol vehicle, this time as a deputy for Scott County.
Tina Hutchinson said Frederick was driving north on Highway 13 in Smith County when he hit her son’s truck so hard it turned his truck completely around. Frederick’s car careened up the driveway.
Both her son’s truck and Frederick’s patrol car were totaled, she said.
The speed limit along that stretch in Polkville is 35 mph. Frederick admitted he was doing 55 mph, Hutchinson said, and she believes it was even faster because of the damage done, the place the patrol car stopped and the lack of skid marks.
Certification records show Frederick had three previous speeding tickets, one of them resulting in a suspended driver’s license, which he attributed to a “misunderstanding” with the court.
After this accident, Frederick was sitting on the ground, saying he was hurt, Hutchinson said. “If your leg is hurting so bad, wouldn’t you wait for the ambulance?”
Instead, Sheriff Bailey again appeared on the scene and took Frederick to the hospital before troopers ever arrived, she said. “His daddy-in-law comes and picks him up.”
Neither Bailey’s lawyer nor Bailey responded to questions about this.
Frederick wasn’t charged with speeding or anything else, Hutchinson said. “Why leave the scene of an accident and not wait for the Highway Patrol?”
Officers, however, told her son that he couldn’t leave until after he spoke with troopers who had yet to arrive, she said.
Her son suffered no injuries from the wreck, she said. “I don’t know how it didn’t hurt him worse.”
Children sometimes play not far from the road where Frederick totaled his patrol car, she said. “What if he had slid and hit a kid?”
Earlier this year, Frederick and Michael Lamar Rhinewalt pleaded not guilty to manslaughter in the Sept. 25, 2022, death of 25-year-old Jaylen Lewis in Jackson. Both officers were working for Capitol Police at the time.
An investigation by Mississippi Today has uncovered that Col. Steven Maxwell, then-director of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, rejected hiring both officers, but Capitol Police, also part of the Department of Public Safety, hired them.
The officers reportedly told investigators that Rhinewalt shot Lewis in self-defense after Lewis drove his car toward them. A witness statement appears to back up their version of events.
According to the indictment, Frederick and Rhinewalt said this killing “was necessary to protect himself from great bodily harm or death at the hands of Lewis,” but the indictment concluded that was “not a reasonable belief under the circumstances.”
Lewis’ mother, Arkela, questioned why the officers, instead of being indicted for murder, were charged with manslaughter, defined under Mississippi law as killing a person without malice. “That’s crazy,” she said.
Frederick was released on a $10,000 cash bond on April 28, two weeks before he married Bailey’s daughter, Alexis. Frederick is set for trial Sept. 15, and Rhinewalt’s trial is set for Dec. 8.
After his indictment, the Scott County Sheriff’s Department put Frederick on administrative leave without pay. In an April 21 letter, Scott County Sheriff Mike Lee wrote that he didn’t know if Frederick would be retained.
That same month, the Department of Public Safety released Rhinewalt. He has also been indicted along with former Capitol Police officer Jeffery Alan Walker Jr. in the Aug. 14, 2022, shootings of Sinatra Rakim Jordan and Sherita Lynn Harris — six weeks before Lewis’ killing. The indictment accuses the officers of “manifesting extreme indifference to the value of human life” in the shootings. Both officers have pleaded not guilty to the aggravated assault charges.
In the wake of these shootings, the department requested funding to purchase body cameras and now requires all Capitol Police officers on patrol to wear them. In addition, the department created an Internal Affairs Division that covers the entire agency and reports to the commissioner, who worked with lawmakers to give the Board of Law Enforcement Officers Standards and Training the power to investigate complaints against law enforcement officers.
Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said Internal Affairs now conducts uniformed background checks for all of the agency’s new law enforcement hires. In addition, he said the department will hold its first agency-wide cadet class in February to help ensure that all its officers are receiving the same training and understand the agency’s policies before beginning their career with the department.
In the past, the department and the divisions it oversees have operated out of multiple headquarters. In 2026, the department plans to move into a new, 146,000-square-foot headquarters in Rankin County, where all divisions will be under one roof.
Tindell said that consolidating all personnel into a single place will not only improve day-to-day communication and collaboration across divisions but will also enhance critical communication during emergencies and improve overall safety for all of Mississippi.
The state attorney general has asked a federal judge in Mississippi to explain errors in a recent ruling, which some lawyers speculated were made by artificial intelligence.
U.S. District Judge Henry T. Wingate issued a temporary restraining order on July 20 that paused the enforcement of a state law that prohibits diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools. But the order was riddled with mistakes — naming plaintiffs who weren’t parties to the suit, quoting state law incorrectly and referring to cases that don’t appear to exist.
After lawyers with Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office asked him to correct the order last week, Wingate replaced the error-laden ruling with a corrected version. He removed the original order from the public docket entirely and backdated the new one.
Now, the AG lawyers are calling for that order to be restored to the public docket and asking for an explanation for how the errors were written into the order in the first place.
The state argues in court documents that the pending litigation will likely be appealed to the conservative U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, so maintaining a clear record of all of the documents filed on the court docket is crucial.
“All parties are entitled to a complete and accurate record of all papers filed and orders entered in this action, for the benefit of the Fifth Circuit’s appellate review,” the court filing states.
READ MORE: AI ruling? Attorneys baffled by federal judge’s order that lists incorrect parties, wrong quotes
Wingate has not responded to previous requests for comment about the factual errors, and it’s unclear when he would rule on the state’s motion.
Ben Cooper is a professor at the University of Mississippi School of Law who studies AI and is a member of the Mississippi Bar’s Ethics Committee. He told Mississippi Today it may be virtually impossible to know if someone on the judge’s staff used AI to craft the order.
“The fact that it had things in it that sounded real but weren’t actually real — that’s the hallmark of somebody in the judge’s chambers using AI,” Cooper said. “But I can’t prove it and I don’t know that anyone can.”
When attorneys are caught using artificial intelligence, judges typically apply sanctions and ask for an explanation. A federal judge in Alabama last week disqualified three lawyers from the law firm Butler Snow from a case after they inadvertently included made-up citations generated by artificial intelligence in court filings.
But the power imbalance makes it more difficult to demand an explanation from a judge when the roles are reversed — especially a federal judge who has a lifetime appointment to the bench.
“I can’t say for sure that Judge Wingate has done anything wrong, so I don’t want to suggest he should be disciplined, but the system is completely different,” Cooper said. “There often is not the same kind of accountability, and it’s not as fast as with lawyers.”
The parties are scheduled to appear in front of Wingate for a hearing on Aug. 5 to argue about a preliminary injunction in the case.