President Joe Biden and First Lady Jill Biden will visit Rolling Fork on Friday following last week’s devastating tornado, according to a White House statement.
Tornadoes ripped through Mississippi on March 24, leaving at least 21 dead, dozens injured and a trail of destruction throughout the Delta and into the state’s northern region.
Rolling Fork, the lower Delta town where the Bidens will visit, took a direct hit from an EF-4 tornado. The president had declared a major federal disaster for the Mississippi counties affected by the storms.
“The President and the First Lady will visit with first responders, state and local officials, and communities impacted by the devastation from recent storms, survey recovery efforts, and reaffirm their commitment to supporting the people of Mississippi as long as it takes,” the White House statement said.
This will be Biden’s first trip to Mississippi since he was elected in 2020. During the 2020 campaign, he stumped in Jackson. Jill Biden visited a pop up COVID-19 vaccination site at Jackson State University in June 2021.
The Republican leadership of the Mississippi Legislature has for years attempted to make it easier to remove voters from the election rolls.
They finally succeeded with legislation that passed both chambers on Tuesday and now needs the signature of Gov. Tate Reeves to become law. The governor is expected to sign the bill, which authorizes Secretary of State Michael Watson to perform election audits throughout the state.
The bill, opposed by all Black members of the House and Senate and by most Democrats, does not make the process to remove voters from the rolls as easy as Republican leaders first proposed this session and have attempted to do in past sessions.
Under the proposal, people who do not vote in one of two presidential elections in a four-year period or in any other election between those national elections would be mailed a card asking them to confirm they still live at the same address. If they do not respond to that card, they would be required to vote affidavit in the next election.
People who vote by affidavit — with their vote accepted as still residing in the voting district — would be considered a voter in good standing. But if they do not return the card or take no voter-related action over a period of two federal elections they would be removed from the registered voter list.
Republicans said the legislation is needed to ensure accurate voter registration lists.
“What we want to do is clean up the voter rolls,” said Senate Election Chair Jeff Tate, R-Meridian, of the proposal. “When we have people on the rolls by name only and they are not actually living there, that is a vessel for fraud. And yes, there is voter fraud. What this does is give our local election officials another tool to clean up their rolls.”
Democrats said people have a right to decide not to vote and should not face the possibility of being removed from the rolls by making that choice.
“The only thing this person has done is not vote. We’re saying you can’t be left alone to mind your own business,” said Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez.
During debate in the House, Rep. Brent Powell, R-Brandon, told members that the confirmation card sent to people would be by certified mail, which would ensure that the intended recipient of the confirmation card received it.
Rep. Ed Blackmon, D-Canton, said, “You can become intoxicated at the podium because you are handling a bill and want to see it pass and you can offer and see things not in the bill. There are no requirements that certified mail be sent out … Voting is not a privilege in this country. It is a right. It is a right that brought death and pain and suffering to those who did not have this right.”
There is no reference in the legislation saying the confirmation cards should be sent via certified mail.
At any rate, Democrats say the legislation is part of a package of efforts to make it more difficult to vote. Earlier this session the Legislature passed and the governor signed into law a bill that would prohibit the so-called “harvesting” of ballots.
The Republican leadership said the bill prohibits people from obtaining and submitting multiple absentee ballots for the elderly and for others who are allowed a mail-in ballot in Mississippi. They said there are people who gather multiple ballots for people who are eligible to vote by mail and that can be a vehicle for voter fraud.
Democrats said the new law makes it more difficult for people to help the elderly and disabled vote by mail.
While bills are being passed that some say make it more difficult to vote, Mississippi is one of only four states not having some version of no excuse early voting.
“I appreciate the institution of voting on Election Day,” Tate said.
Rolling Fork residents devastated by last week’s fatal tornadoes that destroyed the town’s main health care centers and damaged other parts of the state will soon have better access to doctors at a new field hospital.
Sharkey Issaquena Community Hospital lost power and had its emergency room “blown off” among other severe damages, said Charles Weissinger, a Rolling Fork resident and attorney for the Issaquena County Board of Supervisors.
Meanwhile the Delta Health Center based in Rolling Fork was “split in half,” according to the clinic’s Facebook page.
As a result, residents have been accessing a patchwork of medical care from vans to parking lots. By Friday, patients should be able to receive care at the field hospital set up at the Rolling Fork National Guard Armory.
“So many people were hurt,” said Weissinger, who was at his home with his 5-year-old grandson when the tornado struck.
The rural community hospital has been struggling to stay afloat and was, as of September, seeking a buyer. It has continued to lose money over the years, even after pooling its resources with other small hospitals to buy supplies at a discounted rate.
Now, it’s missing part of its roof and its patients have been spread across the state in other hospitals or nursing homes. Mississippi Today has reached out to U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson’s office seeking comment on whether federal money may be allocated to rebuild the decimated hospital. Thompson’s district includes the areas ravaged worst by last week’s tornadoes.
Dr. Dominick Trinca, a family medicine doctor in the Delta, posted a photo to his Facebook page standing in front of the mangled Rolling Fork Delta Health Center. On Tuesday, the clinic said it was seeing patients in a tent in the parking lot.
The University of Mississippi Medical Center and local partners were setting up tents at the Armory site, 19719 U.S. 61 in Rolling Fork, Wednesday with the plan to be open Friday.
UMMC is coordinating with the state’s health department and emergency management agency. The field hospital will be the temporary home for the hospital and medical clinics for Sharkey and Issaquena counties.
The Mississippi Center for Emergency Services housed at UMMC dispatched first-responder support and triage teams to areas impacted by the storm since the tornadoes struck. On Monday, UMMC’s school of nursing started a mobile clinic in Rolling Fork to provide routine health care and give out prescription medications.
Patients have been able to visit with nurses in a van equipped with an exam room. The van will stay in Rolling Fork until the field hospital is fully operational.
Delta Health Center staff will operate the field hospital.
“There is a lot of work ahead, but we’re here every step of the way,” the health center wrote on its Facebook page.
On an otherwise pleasant Mississippi Monday, Rick visited Amory and Tyler headed to Rolling Fork. Those two tornado ravaged towns, 159 miles apart, face a long recovery and rebuilding will include new baseball fields. In Amory, Rick visited Joe Burrow’s grandparents, who rode out the EF4 tornado in the storm cellar they built beneath their home of 60 years.
A Lafayette County grand jury indicted Sheldon Timothy Herrington, Jr., the Ole Miss graduate from a connected North Mississippi family, for the murder of Black, queer student Jimmie “Jay” Lee.
A filing from the Lafayette County Circuit Court states that jurors on Tuesday indicted Herrington on charges of capital murder because he killed Lee while kidnapping him. Capital murder is punishable by the death penalty or life in prison in Mississippi.
The decision, which means the case could go to trial, comes as Lee’s body has been missing for more than 260 days. Herrington was arrested for Lee’s murder on July 22 last year. The theory of the case that the prosecution presented at the preliminary hearing last fall is that Herrington killed Lee to keep their casual sexual relationship a secret — somethingHerrington’s defense attorney deemed “sensational.”
Jimmie “Jay” Lee, a 20-year-old University of Mississippi student, has been missing since Friday, July 8, 2022. Credit: Courtesy Oxford Police Department
Lee’s disappearance caught national attention last year in part because of the fear it sparked in Oxford’s tight-knit LGBTQ+ community. Some students, feeling unsafe, vowed not to return to the University of Mississippi for the fall semester. Many others have started a local movement called “Justice for Jay Lee” that wants to see Herrington convicted.
News of the indictment spread yesterday afternoon before the “true bill,” the document showing a grand jury finding, was uploaded into the court system.
“Victory!” members of Justice for Jay Lee said after they heard about the decision while waiting in front of the courthouse.
On Wednesday morning, Steven Jubera, the assistant district attorney working on the case, said the indictment is “the beginning of a long process.”
“Oxford Police Department spent thousands of hours doing everything possible to get us to the point where we have an indictment, and now we’re working towards getting a trial setting date for Mr. Herrington to bring peace to the Lee family,” Jubera said.
The Oxford Police Department released a statement thanking law enforcement and the district attorney’s office for their “hard work during this investigation.” OPD said that it has not stopped looking for Lee’s body.
In a text message to Mississippi Today, Herrington’s defense attorney Kevin Horan said “the return of a much publicized indictment by the grand jury is simply the next step in the process.”
Herrington’s family has maintained his innocence in interviews with news outlets.
“We’re all in shock, we’re all devastated, and we are all looking forward to proving his innocence,” Herrington’s half-brother, Tevin Coleman, told Mississippi Today last year.
His family, which runs a large Apostolic Christian church in Grenada, is well-connected in north Mississippi. Last fall, dozens of people, including powerful local officials in Grenada like the superintendent, wrote letters to the court on Herrington’s behalf.
“I have also known Sheldon Timothy Herrington, Jr. since he was a small child, never had any problems with him,” Grenada County Sheriff Roland Fair wrote to the court.
It has not been clear to what extent OPD is working with law enforcement in Grenada, where Lee’s body might be located. Fair told Mississippi Today in September last year that no one from Oxford has reached out to him personally even though officers executed a search warrant on Herrington’s parent’s house in late July.
OPD has defended its work on the case as well as its choice to share little information with the community about the investigation.
It’s unknown what evidence was presented by the prosecution to the grand jury on Monday, which was specially convened for a day-and-a-half to hear Herrington’s case due to the “amount of evidence.” The true bill lists the witnesses as OPD detective Ryan Baker, Lee’s mother, Herrington’s parents and uncle,and Angela Fletcher, a DeSoto County sheriff’s officer.
At Herrington’s preliminary hearing last fall, an OPD detective laid out some of the evidence that led to his arrest. Video surveillance footage and Snapchat data and messages show Lee going over to Herrington’s apartment early in the morning of July 8after the two had a fight.
Snapchat location data put Lee in the vicinity of Herrington’s apartment for the last time early in the morning on July 8. Soon after, video footage from Walmart showed Herrington viewing garbage cans and purchasing duct tape. Later that day, more footage shows Herrington retrieving a long-handled shovel and wheelbarrow from his parent’s house and putting it into the back of a moving truck.
Next, Herrington will appear in court for arraignment so he can be formally notified of the charge.
Tom Bradley became mayor of Los Angeles — the first Black mayor of a predominantly white major city in the U.S.
Bradley was born into poverty in Texas, the son of sharecroppers and the grandson of slaves. Seven years after his birth, his family moved to Los Angeles. He attended UCLA on a track scholarship and left there to join the Los Angeles Police Department. After his 21 years at the department, he became a lieutenant — the highest rank achieved by a black officer at the time.
In 1963, he became the first Black member elected to the Los Angeles City Council. After losing his first race for mayor in 1969, he returned to defeat incumbent Sam Yorty, building a coalition with White voters. His 20 years in office marked the longest tenure of any mayor in the city’s history.
During his time, he oversaw great expansion of the city and the 1984 Summer Olympics. During his tenure, he also appointed Myrlie Evers to the Public Works Commission.
“His mayoralty was a time in which Los Angeles reconfigured itself, redefined itself,” historian Kevin Starr told the Los Angeles Times.
But the humble politician saw his share of disappointment, falling thousands of votes short of becoming California’s first Black governor in 1982. He also endured his share of criticism for his “nearly expressionless demeanor,” receiving the nickname “The Sphinx of City Hall.” Criticism also came in 1991 after four white police officers beat Rodney King — an assault captured on videotape. He died in the hospital in 1998 after suffering an unexpected heart attack — his second.
Raphael J. Sonenshein, the author of Politics in Black and White: Race and Power in Los Angeles, called Bradley “the most important political figure in Los Angeles in the last three decades.” The Los Angeles International Airport now features a bust of Bradley, and the international terminal bears his name.
The Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees has selected a new president of Delta State University following a nationwide search.
Daniel J. Ennis will be the ninth president of Delta State University, beginning June 1. Credit: Institutions for Higher Learning
Daniel J. Ennis will be the ninth president of the regional college in Cleveland, a small town in the Mississippi Delta. He is currently serving as the provost and executive vice president of Coastal Carolina University in northeastern South Carolina, a position he worked up to after starting there as an assistant professor of English in 1999.
In recent years, the board has made it a priority to hire alumni to lead Mississippi’s universities. Ennis, who has degrees from colleges in the Carolinas and Alabama, is the first non-alumnus to be selected to lead a state university since 2017.At listening sessions last year, the Delta State community was split on if its next president should be an outsider or an alumnus.
“As I have learned more about the university, the Delta region, and the state of Mississippi, I have been inspired by the history, culture, and resilience of the people with whom I will soon work and live,” Ennis said in a press release. “I am committed to helping Delta State University continue to thrive, and my wife and I look forward to becoming members of the community.”
His tenure will begin June 1. It was not immediately clear how much Ennis will be paid, but Delta State’s interim president, E.E. Butch Caston, is making$300,000.
The search for a new president at Delta State began after the board suddenly let go William LaForge, the university’s eighth president, due to declining enrollment and financial metrics.
LaForge’s tenure saw repeated budget cuts. In the last eight years, enrollment has plummeted at Delta State faster than at any other public university in Mississippi. Headcount has dropped 29% percent since 2014, with just 2,556 students enrolled this year
In a press release, IHL touted Ennis’s success in boosting first-year retention and enrollment at CCU and his ability to bring in financial resources.
“Dr. Ennis is also experienced and accomplished in friend- and fund-raising,” the press release reads. “He connects donors, faculty, and the community and helps them to see the potential in the institution by articulating how their resources can transform lives.”
Ennis had served as the president of CCU’s chapter of the American Association of University Professors, a membership-based organization that advocates for faculty. This goes to show that Ennis “understands how shared governance strengthens the university and helps a wide variety of campus community voices to be heard,” the press release notes.
Ennis is also involved in a restructuring of CCU that led to the creation of the Conway Medical Center College of Health and Human Performance in 2021.
“His long tenure there demonstrates how beloved he is by the campus community,” Teresa Hubbard, an IHL trustee and Delta State alumnus who chaired the board’s presidential search community, said in a press release. “His academic credentials, administrative skills, student-centered focus, and ability to connect students, faculty, alumni and the community make him a great fit for the university.”
It was not clear how many applicants the board received or the number of finalists interviewed by trustees. Many aspects of IHL’s presidential searches are confidential.
Mississippi hospital leaders have been begging for help for months, and the Legislature has answered the call — though some advocates and lawmakers say it’s not nearly enough.
Both chambers on Tuesday approved a $103.7 million grant program that will be split by Mississippi’s struggling hospitals.
The pandemic weakened the state’s already-stressed health care infrastructure — costs for supplies and workers went up, and reimbursements from insurance providers did not. Many of the state’s hospitals have been bleeding out for the past few years, shutting floors and service lines one by one.
Now, a third of Mississippi’s rural hospitals are at risk of closure, and half of those within a couple of years. It’s a situation poised to worsen health outcomes in a state with already some of the worst in the country.
Both legislative chambers this week passed Senate Bill 2372, which establishes a grant program for hospitals, and House Bill 271, which funds it.
Previously, the Senate’s version of the bill aimed to give $80 million to hospitals, focusing its efforts on rural health care providers. Instead, the House wanted to give the funds to larger hospitals.
After closed-door deliberations among six legislative Republicans, the two sides reached a compromise on Tuesday: They’re distributing $103 million to hospitals through a hybrid funding model, using funds from the American Rescue Plan Act, according to the bill. The Mississippi Department of Health is receiving $700,000 to administer the program, according to Senate Medicaid Chairman Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven.
The compromise falls short of what hospital leaders and some rank-and-file lawmakers said was needed. The Mississippi Hospital Association projected early this year that hospitals would need $230 million in extra funds to stay afloat. Despite the increase in grants, they’re still about $40 million short.
Negotiations of the grant program came as the state sits on a record revenue surplus of nearly $4 billion. And Republican lawmakers continue to leave more than $1 billion per year on the table by rejecting Medicaid expansion.
Tim Moore, president of the MHA, said on behalf of state hospitals that health care leaders are very appreciative of the actions taken by the Legislature to pass the measure, especially the creation of an allocation model that supports all hospitals, no matter the location or size.
But he added the lower-than-needed total will not solve the ongoing hospital crisis — that new, recurring revenue will along with a remodeling of Mississippi’s health care and payment infrastructure.
“The solution has not changed,” Moore said. “Payer issues and the burden of uncompensated care must be addressed. The Mississippi hospital system that provides care to all Mississippians costs $23 million dollars a day to operate. Any sustainable business model must generate adequate revenues to cover expenses. Hospitals are no exception.
“If a long term solution is not developed, access to care will decline and fewer services will be offered at local community hospitals,” Moore said.
Legislative Democrats in January proposed a grant program that would appropriate $200 million to the struggling hospitals and used the opportunity to blast Republicans’ inaction on the issue. This week, most House and Senate Democrats voted to approve the Republicans’ $104 million grant program but used floor debate to argue that the state should be doing more.
"It is particularly galling that in the same weekend when we saw Mississippians struggle to find emergency health care after a natural disaster, Republican leaders still felt it appropriate to allocate less than half of what hospitals have been begging for just to keep their doors open,” Rep. Robert Johnson, the House Democratic leader from Natchez, said on Tuesday. “They stood up and told all of us how awful the devastation of the tornado was, then they immediately turned around and refused to do the bare minimum.
“In one breath Republicans are telling us that we'll rebuild from the storm, that they are pro-life, that they want a better future for the state,” Johnson continued. “And in the next breath they're saying, 'Take this and shut up.' All while they're telling us we're in the best financial shape we've ever been in. It would be shocking if it weren’t so completely expected."
Ahead of the final vote in the House and Senate on Tuesday, Republican lawmakers laid out the basic formula for the grant program. If a hospital has more than 100 beds, it will receive a base amount of $1 million. Hospitals with an emergency room and fewer than 100 beds will receive $625,000.
Specialty hospitals, such as Brentwood Behavioral Healthcare in Flowood which is an inpatient psychiatric treatment center, and critical access hospitals will get a base of $500,000. Critical access hospitals have very few inpatient beds but get more money for services they provide. Critical access hospitals, such as Sharkey Issaquena Community Hospital in Rolling Fork, are a designation a step below acute hospitals and are typically reimbursed by Medicare at a rate of 101%, theoretically allowing a 1% profit. Acute hospitals with no emergency rooms get $300,000 as a base amount.
Then, hospitals get an extra $250,000 if they operate small rural emergency rooms and a little less than $2,000 for each bed they have.
The most any one hospital is receiving is $2.3 million, which is going to University Hospitals & Health System. Some providers, such as Diamond Grove mental health clinic in Louisville, are receiving nothing. Others, like Jasper General Hospital, are receiving as little as $331,502.
Major hospital systems including Merit Health, North Mississippi Medical Center and Baptist Memorial are getting millions.
“In the original Senate bill, some hospitals received nothing,” Rep. Sam Mims, a Republican from Natchez and chair of the House Public Health and Human Services committee, said on the floor Tuesday. “This makes sure they all receive something.”
Mims, who was one of the three House negotiators of the grant program, works for Merit Health.
Neshoba County General Hospital in Philadelphia, the county’s only hospital, is getting just under $1 million in grant money. In recent months, the hospital has closed one of its acute floor wings and nurse stations — in the past decade, admissions have gone down by half.
Neshoba General CEO Lee McCall said that the hospital’s loss in the past five months is relatively equal to the extra grant money, and it’s about $200,000 more than what he expected to receive from the state. The hospital projects a $2.5 million loss this year.
“This amount and the Medicaid enhanced amounts will help significantly by cutting that deficit by more than half,” he said, referring to the extra money hospitals are receiving in supplemental MHAP payments, or payments hospitals receive to offset unequal reimbursement rates. “We are also implementing other cost cutting measures and initiatives to shrink the loss gap. It is much appreciated.”
He stressed that the grant money will get the hospital to temporarily break even, but there are still seven months to go in the year — and the years beyond that.
“The one time grant funding is much appreciated, but doesn’t fix the ongoing problems we’re dealing with in hospitals,” McCall said.
The Delta’s Greenwood Leflore Hospital is arguably in one of the most dire financial situations of all hospitals in the state. The hospital is also getting a little less than $1 million under the new program.
The hospital has already shuttered their neurology, urology and labor and delivery units, among others, in an effort to cut costs. They’re months away from closing, according to their interim CEO Gary Marchand.
“We appreciate the grant funds, and it will help in our efforts to continue operations in the short term,” Marchand said when reached by text Tuesday. “It will replace a portion of the cash reserves used during the pandemic.”
The legislation now goes to Gov. Tate Reeves for final approval.
It’s not clear when funds will be distributed. According to Jim Craig, senior deputy at the Mississippi Department of Health, the division does not yet have a timeline for the grant program's implementation.
At the beginning of the 2023 legislative session, Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann announced a plan to save Mississippi’s failing rural hospitals.
The first-term Senate leader proposed a hodgepodge of grants and programs including four bills costing upwards of $100 million that would grant extra money to hospitals, remove legal barriers to consolidating small hospitals and incentivize the retention of nurses and doctors.
Months later, all four of those bills have passed. Three are waiting on Gov. Reeves’ final approval.
The state of Mississippi’s rural health care infrastructure is tenuous. A third of the state’s rural hospitals are at risk of closure, and half of those in a few years, according to a report by the Center for Healthcare Quality and Payment Reform. Their closures could spell devastation for the communities they serve, in a state with some of the worst health outcomes in the country.
Hosemann said he spoke with statewide hospital and health care leaders in developing the plan. Notably, he steered away from floating Medicaid expansion, which would draw down more than a billion dollars from the federal government.
But he did voice support for extending postpartum Medicaid coverage and wanted to work with the state Division of Medicaid and Gov. Tate Reeves to increase reimbursements to hospitals. Both those goals were accomplished, with the Legislature extending postpartum coverage to 12 months in February, and reimbursements to hospitals have increased, though only by about $40 million, a far cry from the $230 million health care experts say they need. Much of the difference will be made up by grants from the Legislature, but they’re short in total about $40 million.
On Tuesday, both chambers passed Senate Bill 2372, which establishes the hospital grant program, and House Bill 271, the appropriations bill that funds it. Senate Medicaid Chairman Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven, told lawmakers that $700,000 would go to the Department of Health to administer the program, and the rest, $103 million, would go to hospitals.
On the Senate floor on Monday, debate about the hospital grants turned into a debate about broader Medicaid expansion and how the proposed grant program doesn’t do enough to help hospitals. Several Democratic senators pointed out the $103 million could be just as easily spent as the state’s match for federal Medicaid dollars under expansion.
“Less than 30 minutes ago, the governor of red North Carolina signed a bill to expand Medicaid,” Sen. David Blount, D-Jackson, said on Monday. “You can put $100 million in this fund for hospitals and have $100 million, or you can put $100 million over here, and have $1 billion for hospitals.”
As lawmakers enter the final few days of the 2023 legislative session, here’s where Hosemann’s legislation stands. Because the state budget hasn’t been finalized as of Tuesday, details about exact amounts are still subject to some change.
Senate Bill 2371: Provide between $16 million and $25 million to help with hospital residency and fellowship programs, as well as a nursing/allied health community college grant program. The bill aims to help retain doctors — the majority of doctors remain in the places they do their residencies — and increase Mississippi’s nursing workforce. The bill passed in the Senate on Monday and the House on Tuesday.
Senate Bill 2372: Establish the Mississippi Hospital Sustainability Grant Program, which would provide extra money to aid the state’s struggling hospitals. The Senate’s bill establishes rules and regulations for the grant program, while House Bill 271 will fund the program. Lawmakers decided Monday that they’d send $104 million to hospitals, up from $80 million the Senate approved earlier in the session. The details of the grant program laid out in the Senate bill were released and passed on Tuesday.
Senate Bill 2373: Provide $6 million for a nurse loan repayment program, to aid the state’s substantial shortage. Mississippi’s nurse turnover and vacancy rates are at their highest in at least a decade. The bill was passed and signed into law by Gov. Tate Reeves in early March.
Senate Bill 2323: Amend current laws to allow the consolidation of hospitals. Hosemann previously said the state’s health care system needs to be revamped to be more financially viable. The bill has passed and awaits Reeves’ signature or veto by March 30.
Mississippi Today’s Geoff Pender contributed to this report.
The murder of Billy Dover spread quickly through Quitman County, a rural stretch situated in the northwest Mississippi Delta, where most of the residents are Black and earning below the poverty line.
As the afternoon of July 3, 1998, wore on, the news of what happened at the Western Auto Store traveled four miles up Highway 3 from Lambert, where it was located, to Marks, where William Davis, then 17, was waiting in line to buy a drink at Fred’s Dollar Store. William and his best friend, 19-year-old Andre Smith, had stopped on their way to Batesville to get a Band-Aid for Andre’s bleeding hand.
“Have you heard? Someone went and killed Billy Dover,” the woman behind the cash register said as she rang up their items.
Bells went off in William’s head. Andre turned to look at William, but no one said anything. Killed him? William had not heard that. This is crazy, he thought to himself. I didn’t expect for none of this to happen.
At age 13, William had moved from the farmland of Vance, Mississippi, to the small town of Lambert, after his dad, a tractor driver, had died suddenly of cardiac arrest. The highway sign welcoming people into Lambert boasts the slogan: “A City of Hope.”
William’s mom worked night shifts at a nursing home to support her six children, andWilliam, the youngest, was often left home alone. His first year living in Lambert, William watched the streets from his porch: Kids were smoking and selling weed up the block; older men were smoking crack behind his house. After school, he would sit from 3-10 p.m. on the porch of his yellow and green craftsman-style house at the corner of Darby Avenue — Lambert’s main road — and the highway, and watch the streets. At 14 years old, he joined them. An older neighborhood kid handed William an ounce of weed and demanded he return with money. William started selling weed, then crack, which provided easier and faster cash.
Andre, a neighbor from Vance, moved up to Lambert, too. He was two years older, part of a gang, and known for getting into fights. William’s mom asked him to stop hanging out with Andre. Instead, in ninth grade, William stopped going to school. Every day, he would meet up with Andre to smoke weed, sell crack, and gamble. Often, they would gather outside the Western Auto Store, which was at the center of town.
When William had met up with Andre outside the Western Auto Store on July 3, 1998, he was mad. They wanted to go shopping for the Fourth of July in Batesville, but last night, Andre lost the moneyWilliam had lent him in a game of dice.
The Western Auto Store was a neighborhood institution, as was Billy Dover, the white 65-year-old man who owned and ran it. Customers would come into the store to buy materials for their bike or car or household appliances, to sit in recliners and watch TV with Dover or even to borrow some money, which he was generous about lending. William and his family, like most people in the area, knew Dover well. Dover had a large family of 11 sons and daughters, including stepchildren, and acted like a father figure to the town. The Davis family would go to Dover’s store even when they lived in Vance. Dover put the training wheels on William’s first bike.
Standing outside the store on July 3, 1998, arguing with William about money, Andre came up with a plan.
“He told me he had an idea of how to get him some money. I’m like, ‘Go ahead. I’m going to go along with it,’’’ William said.
Andre had a plan to steal from Dover. Andre ended up killing him.
Eight years after the murder of Billy Dover, and eight years after being picked up by the police, William Davis sat in his Unit 32 cell of the Mississippi State Penitentiary and began to write down the details of his case. It was 2006; he was now 25 years old, but he still didn’t understand how he had ended up here.
Unit 32 was a notorious lockdown facility in the state — inmates let out of their cells for only one hour per day — and had made state headlines for its inhumane conditions, outbreaks of violence, and reports of inmate deaths. William had witnessed a friend get stabbed. Two men attacked William with a weapon, and he received a disciplinary charge, later expunged from his record, for fighting back in self-defense. A lawsuit put forth by the American Civil Liberties Union shut down the unit in 2010, but in 2020 reports surfaced of inmates being housed there again.
A ward in Unit 32, Timothy Morris watched as William’s mom cried to him during a visit. Timothy approached William after and asked him: “What are you going to do to make your mom proud? She’s cried enough with you being in this place.”
William went back to his cell and started to write, thinking that maybe if he understood why he was in here, he could find his way out of here. He had 21 bullet points detailing what he remembered happened between the morning of the crime and the day of his arrest. Titling the section, “Specific Facts Not Within Petitioner’s Personal Knowledge,” William wrote down what he didn’t understand. How was he convicted of capital murder if he never killed anyone?
In the unit, away from the violence, there was a group of guys “practicing litigation,” as William puts it. They were ordering books from the law library, comparing their cases, and filing post-conviction appeals. Many of the guys in the legal circle at the prison were also fighting murder cases, so they poured over legal scholarship together, trying to break down their cases and to help each other write their own motions. William started sitting with them and learning about the law. At night, he would leave order slips under his cell for new books and cases from the law library. The next day, copies would show up at his door, and he would consult his legal dictionary to understand the terminology.
“I didn’t understand until I started doing research on cases, filing paperwork, and studying law,” he said. That’s when William learned about the felony murder rule, and how it was operating in Mississippi. “That’s when I started to understand.”
Under the felony murder rule, if someone is killed during the commission of a felony, those who participated, even tangentially, are able to be charged with murder, without planning, intending, or committing it.
Signs welcome people to Lambert, Miss., in Quitman County. Credit: Elena DeBre/MCIR at Mississippi Today
Standing outside the Western Auto Store on the morning of July 3, 1998, Andre gave William instructions: Enter the store and purchase a hose for a washing machine. Once inside, William watched as Dover cut the hose for him and confirmed it was the right one. William brought the hose back out to Andre.
Later, District Attorney Laurence Mellen would say that this was how “the defendants made preparation for the crime,” a document from the Quitman County Circuit Court reads, “by having entered the store, making themselves aware of whether the victim Mr. Dover was alone.”
Andre went inside the store under the pretense of returning the hose. Dover said that once it was cut, the hose couldn’t be exchanged. Andre argued. “It escalated from there,” William said. “I don’t know if that was the actual reason for what transpired. But I do know that when that happened, I left.”
In court, Mellen detailed what he asserts happened inside: “Davis went to the cash register, tried to get in, while Lushun, Andre Lushun Smith, had taken Mr. Dover to the back of the building on the pretense of buying something back there, assaulted him there in the back, and beat him the back of the store. The State would prove that Davis left a fingerprint on the cash register in the front while the assault was being made in the back. Smith assaulted Mr. Dover with a bicycle pump and repeatedly beat on him,” Mellen said. “They did take the wallet from Mr. Dover, Mr. Billy Dover, which had money in it.”
Dover survived for a few minutes after Andre’s beating, court documents report, but was discovered dead by Dover’s son on the floor of his store.
Davis said that when he heard Andre and Billy Dover fighting, he left. The next time William saw Andre, he had blood on his shirt. He thought to himself: “Ah, man, let me get away from this. Let me get away from this.”
Andre handed him cash. He asked Andre to change his clothes, but he didn’t ask Andre what happened. Hours later, when the woman behind the cash register at Fred’s Dollar Store confirmed to William that Dover had indeed been murdered, he was just as shocked as her. “I didn’t think he would go that far. I never thought it would get to that point,” he said.
After Andre was picked up by the police and taken into questioning, the Smith family came to William’s house and demanded to know what they did. William replied with the line he would later start using on everyone: “I can’t speak on what he did or didn’t do. If I leave a place, if I remove myself from a situation, how can I know what’s going on there?”
When the police came and took William into questioning, he tried to get them to understand that he wasn’t present during the murder. If he never even saw the murder, how could he have done it? “I hadn’t done anything. I didn’t do this. I didn’t murder anyone. That was my whole thing, I was trying to convey to them that I murdered no one,” he said.
But what William himself didn’t understand at the time was that, under the felony murder rule, it didn’t matter if he had killed anyone or not.
“To be honest, the trouble with felony murder is because there is such a wide range of culpability, that allows you to go to jail forever,” said Walter Boone, a Clarksdale lawyer who later worked with William on his case. “Were you just the pick-up driver, or did you go in? Did you participate in the robbery? Did you know about the murder in advance and plan it and participate in it? The felony murder does not distinguish between the levels of culpability on that.”
The felony murder rule is enacted in 44 states across the country, with charges and sentences at varying levels of severity. Recent legal reform in California has limited felony murder to the death of an on-duty police officer, the direct killing of someone, or intentional aiding and abetting of a murder. In some states, like Colorado, felony murder is considered second-degree murder, reducing the penalty and sentencing time. But in Mississippi, felony murder falls under the capital murder statute. Those convicted of capital murder are either sentenced to death, life without parole, or life with parole—but only if the crime was committed before July 1, 1994.
In Mississippi, “Capital murders are disproportionately felony murders,” State Public Defender André de Gruy explains. A review of available data, provided by the internal system in the Mississippi Administrative Office of Courts, reveals there have been 301 capital murder sentences given across the state between Jan. 1, 1994, and Sept. 23, 2022. Of those capital murder sentences, 226 were for felony murder cases.
For the state to convict someone of capital murder, de Gruy said, “they don’t have to prove the murder, they only have to prove the underlying felony, or the intent to do the underlying felony. They don’t have to prove an intent to kill.”
“The felony murder rule in Mississippi is very broad. They still allow a non-triggerman to get the death sentence,” de Gruy said.
As a result, individuals at the very periphery of a killing are being trapped with the same charges, and potential sentences, as the murderers themselves.
De Gruy pointed to a 1989 case as an example. A 15-year-old, Vincent Harris, sat on the handlebars of his co-defendant’s bike as they rode to a convenience store. Before they arrived, Harris jumped off the bike and waited by the side of the road, as his co-defendant, Ron Foster, continued to the market. Foster attempted to take money from the cash register and ended up shooting the clerk, but Harris, who was miles away at the time, was still charged initially with capital murder.
Champions of the felony murder rule often refer to the deterrence theory as support, legal scholar Kat Albrecht stated in her paper “Data Transparency, Compounding Bias, and the Felony Murder Rule.” When examining a case in Illinois, she wrote that the state’s attorney argued that the “felony murder rule deters felony commission because offenders know that if something goes wrong, and someone dies, they will be charged with murder regardless of their intent or who actually pulled the proverbial trigger.” This, in theory, should lead to less crime, but in practice falls apart as offenders, especially juveniles, often aren’t aware of the technicalities of the law — or thinking in such terms when committing crimes that they do not believe will involve a death.
“Well-established brain development science shows that children and teenagers are less able to perceive risk or anticipate consequences than adults,” said Jody Kent Levy of the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth, according to a report by the Restore Justice advocacy group.
In his work, de Gruy said he has seen some patterns connecting felony murder cases and juvenile cases anecdotally.
“Among the juvenile cases, you’re more likely to see a multiple defendant case,” de Gruy said. “Let’s say you see an argument at a gas station that escalates to a shooting. If there’s one person involved, it’s usually someone a bit older. If there’s a car full of people, it’s probably younger people,” he said.
In cases with multiple defendants, which are more likely to involve juveniles, there is also a higher likelihood that some of those people will have only tangential relationships to the crime at hand. If someone is shot during a crime, and the getaway car is full of young people, they could all be charged with capital murder in Mississippi under the felony murder rule.
When William heard he wasbeing charged with capital murder, he said, “I hit the floor.” At the time, in July 1998, the Supreme Court had not yet ruled on Roper v. Simmons, which outlawed the death penalty for juveniles. William’s youth — his developing brain, his potential for rehabilitation, his susceptibility to peer pressure — would not even be a consideration in his sentencing. If he went to trial, the state was going to pursue the death penalty.
Charles E. Webster, now the judge in the 11th Circuit Court District, was William’s court-appointed lawyer. He encouraged William to plead guilty — his life was on the line. But William didn’t want to give up his dignity. “I can’t say I’m guilty of killing this man when I know I didn’t,” he said.
Webster went to William’s mom and explained what was at stake: If they committed to a plea deal, it would save his life. W“My heart fell in my stomach. It was devastating for me. I couldn’t believe it,” Ernestine Davis said.
She went to William crying, “My baby. I don’t want to see that happen.” For his mom, William said, he agreed to enter a guilty plea. He would be sentenced to life in prison, without parole.
The details of William’s case have become blurry in Webster’s memory over the past two decades, but, like the other felony murder cases he dealt with in his career, Webster said, “most of the time, these are tough calls.”
After reviewing William’s court documents, he remembered what guided his thinking on the case: “The evidence seemed pretty strong,” he wrote — meaning that documents show William had entered the store prior to the robbery and his fingerprint was found on the cash register.
“Guilt or innocence may not have been much of an issue. As such, the best outcome may have been simply guaranteeing the death penalty was off the table. It may be that looking at it 23 years later avoiding a chance of the death penalty doesn’t seem that significant; I assure you that when it’s you that the state is trying to put you to death — it’s a big deal,” Webster wrote.
Looking back on his guilty plea 23 years later, William feels it was a big deal that he didn’t get to have a voice in court: “I didn’t even have an opportunity to fight for my freedom,” he said. “I’m looked upon now as a murderer.”
On May 12, 2000, William appeared in Quitman County Circuit Court for his sentencing.
“You’ve heard the prosecutor tell the Court what his office recommends as to your sentence: life without parole. Do you understand that?” Circuit Judge Elzy Smith asked him.
William nodded his head up and down.
“Answer up, please,” Julia Phillips, the court reporter said.
“Yes, I do,” he responded.
William Davis sits Nov. 21, 2022, on the front stoop of his family’s former house in Lambert, Miss, Credit: Elena DeBre/MCIR at Mississippi Today
For weeks, William spent his nights awake writing in his cell. He moved from writing down the details of his case — those which he understood, and those which he didn’t — to formulate an appeal for his case. Working with Frank and Charlie, friends who also had murder cases, William learned the law.
“I put my idle time into legal work, reading the Georgetown Law Journal, ordering cases every week,” he said.
William began penning a new section, titled: “Legal Argument.” On June 12, 2006, he submitted his motion to vacate his sentence. Two years later, he received a note back from the court: His appeal was rejected.
“That could have been a demoralizing point,” William reflected. But, around the same time, he had received another letter in the mail. Someone was interested in his case.
Marie Satterwhite wasn’t a lawyer, but she had personal experience with trouble coming from “being with the wrong person at the wrong time,” as she puts it. Her son had hung out with teenagers in the street gangs of Quitman County. He passed a bag of drugs from the seller to an officer disguised as a buyer — and was sent to prison. Satterwhite shared her son’s story when giving a talk at First United Pentecostal Church in Marks.
“I was telling the church that no matter how you raise your children, if they get in with the wrong crowd, you never know what the other person is going to do,” she said. Or how that will impact your kid.
After her talk, William’s mother, Ernestine, approached her and shared William’s story. “I didn’t know that other mothers were going through the same thing that I was going through,” Satterwhite said.
Satterwhite wanted to hear from William himself and, in 2008, wrote him a letter asking about his case. He sent her the write up he had spent the weeks of 2006 forming — the facts, the questions, the legal argument and appeal. When she read his pages, she felt filled with a responsibility — she had to try to get him out of prison. Satterwhite went to every lawyer she knew in the Quitman County area and asked them if they could take on William’s case.
“I left the papers there and I gave them my number to get back in touch,” she said. Each one read the papers and called her. “They all said, ‘He’s got a case, but we’re booked,’” she recalled.
Satterwhite didn’t lose faith. She decided to turn to her church for help. She brought William’s papers to her church pastor, and together they anointed his papers with oil and prayed over his papers. “The whole church stood up, and we all agreed he was going to get out,” she said.
Satterwhite led talks at a youth group every month at the Blue Mountain Church. With no more lawyers to share William’s story with, she started to share it with the 16-year-old boys in the group. She would write William with questions about how he got into his situation, how he survived it, how he stayed strong. And William would respond with notes she could weave into her talks at the church.
“I wanted to write home the fact that your environment doesn’t have to define you. Anyone that wants to be something, you have to learn your behavior. If you have time, effort, and the opportunity, you can be anything you choose to be,” he said.
William admitted: “You make mistakes in life.” He didn’t want them to do the same. Still, now, mothers come up to Satterwhite and thank her for sharing William’s story with the group and for getting their sons on the right track.
While William was initially disappointed that no lawyers or court had interest in his case, he was resolved to continue doing the legal work himself. “People came into my life and blessed me with the energy to move forward, the energy to persevere,” he said, referring to Satterwhite. “I then, in turn, tried to elevate myself. I used books, papers, the law. That gave me a focus to try and get freedom.” He continued to study cases, to read the Annual Review of Criminal Procedure to see what new laws had passed, to exchange ideas in his legal circle.
In the spring of 2013, Timmie Hubert, who was in his group, heard some news. A lawyer had contacted him about trying to vacate his juvenile life without parole sentence based on a 2012 Supreme Court decision, Miller v. Alabama, that sentencing a juvenile to life without parole violated the Eighth Amendment.
“I thought man that should be me. I went and looked it up and studied it,” William said. He found out juveniles previously sentenced to life without parole could have their case considered for resentencing to life with parole. First, defendants had to petition to have their case heard. Then, a judge would review the case and decide if the defendant would be resentenced to life with parole or not.
A statewide effort, composed of nonprofits, the Office of the State Public Defender and private law firms, formed and worked to locate incarcerated people who would be eligible to have their cases reviewed under Miller. Eighty-five people were identified, data from the Mississippi State Public Defender’s office reveals. “They are almost all felony murder cases,” André de Gruy said.
Before William was even notified of his eligibility — he filed his own Miller petition pro se to the Quitman County Circuit Court on June 21, 2013, using a model pleading Jake Howard from the MacArthur Center for Justice had published. The state effort took notice, and Walter Boone was assigned to his case pro-bono. “And that’s when everything started picking up,” Boone said. He began to prepare William’s case for a judge.
William awaited his hearing with other Miller candidates in Unit 30 of the Mississippi State Penitentiary. As those around him started seeing results, William grew hopeful. His friend Ricky Bell got resentenced to life with parole eligibility. He helped others in the unit file their pro se motions to get their cases heard. But, as four years passed, and he still hadn’t been seen in front of a judge, William started to worry.
The process of resentencing under Miller is difficult. Around a quarter of their cases were denied parole.
Boone encountered these difficulties when working on his cases. Overburdened judges are reluctant to vacate a criminal conviction that has already been sentenced by the court. Even if the crime was committed by a child, that doesn’t necessarily garner sympathy. Boone said that when judges get Miller cases in their hands, he speculates that many think: “Why are we spending time on this?” Of the 63 cases that have been heard since the passing of Miller, as many as 17 defendants have been refused parole eligibility.
Judges have a lot of discretion in Miller cases – and just have to note that Miller factors were considered in order to make a resentencing decision. Some judges view Miller cases as they would a parole decision – instead of an eligibility one, those working on the state effort noticed – making a life with parole sentence harder to obtain. Yet, even if a Miller case is decided favorably, the defendant still has to apply to be granted parole.
On Feb. 14, 2017, Judge Albert B. Smith released his decision on the Miller case for William Davis: He would be resentenced to life in prison, with the eligibility for parole.
“There is no evidence before the Court that Mr. Davis killed or intended to kill the victim in this case,” the order and judgment states. “Mr. Davis argues that he is not one of the ’uncommon’ and ‘rare’ juvenile homicide offenders who may be sentenced to life without eligibility for parole.” The Court agreed.
“Felony murder law has been the law for a long time. I think everybody who looks at it would say that it produces unjust results,” Boone said. “But the idea behind Miller is that, even if they made an evil choice at age 16, even if it was intentionally evil, that’s a kid and that kid is going to change and grow.”
William said the decision “made a world of difference” in his outlook. The possibility of freedom was, for the first time, within reach. “Things were finally happening,” he said.
William still had to address the Parole Board. He would have to present a case to the board that shows he had a support network and future plans after prison.
The Davis family wrote letters. “William was not a problem child,” Cedric Williams, his older brother, wrote. “We really hate this happened to Mr. Billy Dover. He really was a good man. I believe that William has paid his time.”William’s cousin, Lasandra Booker wrote about William: “One thing I know of this young man (is) he knows how to change for (the) better.”
William found a new motivation after being granted parole eligibility. He took college classes, including psychology, which taught him that people react in unpredictable ways under fearful circumstances and gave him a new perspective on the behavior of Andre Smith that day in the Western Auto. He also started teaching. “I wanted to learn how to actually help people. If I see something going on, I want to know how to approach it, diffuse it,” he said. “Because guys can lose their life.” And, to an extent, William feels like he did.
“Three people lost their lives pretty much. Big chunks of it. Billy Dover lost his life. Andre lost his life. And I lost a portion of my life that I can never get back,” he said. Andre Smith, who was 19at the time of the crime and not eligible for parole consideration under Miller, is serving a sentence of life without parole at the Marshall County Correctional Facility.
On Dec. 29, 2021, though, William got the rest of his life back: He was granted parole.
In a matchingblue sweatsuit, provided by the state, William walked out of prison into the winter Mississippi air. Everything he wanted on his first day of freedom was so small: a bath, a pedicure, a hamburger. His mom and brother, Cedric, picked him up, drove straight through Lambert, and continued the 25-minute drive up the highway to his brother’s new house in Batesville.
Still, William was not quite free. In the court of public opinion, he said, he will forever be seen as a murderer. “This is what I’ll be for the rest of my life,” he said. “A whole family hates me – they don’t even know me – but they think I killed their loved one.”
The Dover family, who had advocated against William’s parole eligibility during his Millerhearing, did not want to comment.
Now, William lives in Horn Lake, an hour north of Lambert, by the border of Tennessee, and works a factory job with spices that make him sneeze. He tries to fill his free time, after work, with pottery and candle-making classes. He craves a schedule, and routine. He had developed that in prison. At any time, he can still say what is happening on the inside.
On a Monday evening in late November, when eating Alaskan snow crab legs at a Red Pier by his house, he looked at his watch and said, “It’s canteen night,” referring to the time where inmates can go buy items at the convenience store. Often, this night would turn violent, especially if someone didn’t have any money to spend, he reflected.
William’s good fortune is rare. In Mississippi, there are five Miller-eligible felony murder cases in which the defendant was not the triggerman in the murder. William Davis is the only one out on parole. Two have been resentenced to life without, one is awaiting his Miller hearing, and the other, Alexander Hymes, has been given parole eligibility but isn’t out yet. Around 15 guys, still on the inside, often call William and ask him for advice. On the outside, he and six paroled juvenile lifers keep in touch regularly, offering support and providing updates on jobs and family. They call their group Life After Life.
Only an empty lot remains in Lambert, Miss., at the site of the Western Auto Store where Billy Dover was killed on July 3, 1998. There’s no bank or club in town, just some graffiti that reads, “Club Good Times” on an abandoned brick building Credit: Elena DeBre/MCIR at Mississippi Today
Almost a year after his release, William, now 42, stood outside his old yellow and green craftsman style house in Lambert. He sat down on the porch, and watched Darby Avenue, just as he used to when he was 13, before he joined the streets, before the incident at the Western Auto Store, before his capital murder conviction. There is a group of guys still smoking crack behind his house. People driving by honk and wave at him still. But, so much has changed. His house is empty and shuttered with a “No Trespassing” sign. The Western Auto Store is gone — only an empty lot remains. There’s no bank or club in town, just some graffiti that reads, “Club Good Times” on an abandoned brick building. As he walked his old path from his house to where the Western Auto Store once stood, every third car or so that passed by him honked. Around every fifth car stopped to pull over and talk to him.
“I don’t come down here. I really don’t. I try to stay out of this,” William said.
A police officer, Veronica Survillion, got out of her patrol car to give William a hug.
“When nobody believed, I believed in him,” she said. “You can basically go to prison for life for basically anything around here.”
William nodded but also laughed. As both a felony murder defendant and a Miller defendant, he was well aware of a paradoxical truth: while the legal system had locked him up for life, it had also set him free to a new one.
“I’m forever grateful,” William said, but then reflected, “I’ll forever be looked at as a murderer.”
Elena DeBre filed this report in collaboration with the Yale Investigative Reporting lab at part of the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting Immersion Program for up-and-coming journalists.
