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Prosecutors fighting the release of death row inmate Jimmie Duncan after a judge found him “factually innocent” of raping and murdering 23-month-old Haley Oliveaux are “not speaking for Haley’s family,” her mother says.

Speaking publicly for the first time, Allison Layton Statham called for Duncan to go free in a July 22 bail hearing. “This innocent man is on death row,” she told Mississippi Today. “Justice needs to be done.”

In April, a judge threw out Duncan’s conviction, questioning their conclusions and citing the failures of his court-appointed counsel.

Prosecutors have appealed the judge’s decision and are fighting his release on bail, saying Duncan poses both a flight risk and “a safety risk to not only the victim’s family, but also the general public.”

Statham disagreed and said she wants all of the evidence, including a sealed video of a bite-mark expert examining her child’s body, made available so that everyone can know the truth. “Authorities are still wanting to bury the truth,” she said. “What they did was railroad him.”

READ MORE: A March 2025 Verite News and ProPublica investigation into the Jimmie Duncan conviction

For a long time, Haley’s paternal aunt, Jennifer Berry, awaited word of Duncan’s execution, she said. “We’ve mourned quite a few people in our family, and we have never mourned like we mourned when that child died.”

Since talking with a documentary filmmaker in February and digging into the case, she believes he should go free. “I’ve been in turmoil since realizing this,” she said. “He’s a young man who was falsely accused of a crime he didn’t commit.”

She has petitioned prosecutors, the attorney general and the governor for a meeting but has yet to receive a reply.

The judge’s dismissal marks at least 10 wrongful convictions involving pathologist Dr. Steven Hayne, who has since died, or bite-mark expert Michael West, who once claimed he matched a suspect’s teeth to a half-eaten bologna sandwich. Eight of these wrongful convictions happened in Mississippi.

In 1994, the American Board of Forensic Odontology suspended West for a year for overstating credentials and misidentifying bite marks, and a dozen years later, he was forced to resign from the American Board of Forensic Pathology.

In 2008, the state of Mississippi barred Hayne from doing autopsies. He once wrote in his autopsy report about removing and examining a victim’s ovaries. The problem? The victim was male.

That same year, Levon Brooks and Kennedy Brewer were exonerated after spending a combined 30 years in prison. West’s bite-mark testimony helped convict Brooks of the rape-murder of a 3-year-old girl in Noxubee County. When another 3-year-old girl was raped and killed, West gave bite-mark testimony that helped lead to a death sentence for Brewer.

DNA discovered the truth: a serial killer had raped and murdered both girls. He confessed to his crimes, and Brooks and Brewer were freed.

It remains unknown how many other wrongful convictions these experts may have played a role in. Hayne once said he conducted up to 30,000 autopsies in Mississippi. West has said he analyzed more than 300 bite marks and investigated more than 5,000 deaths. He no longer believes bite marks should be used in court and did not respond to requests for comment on the dismissal of Duncan’s conviction.

Berry felt compelled to come forward now and call for a review of each case in Louisiana and Mississippi involving these discredited experts, she said. “Every case they put their fingers on needs to be reopened and examined.”

‘I wasn’t going to lie for them’

On the morning of Dec. 18, 1993, Statham said as she left for work Oliveaux was bouncing on her bed, tossing her “moo cow” in the air. She said she left her daughter in the care of the 25-year-old Duncan, whom she loved and had been living with for several months.

Duncan, who has maintained his innocence for more than three decades, told police he made Oliveaux oatmeal for breakfast and put her in the bathtub, where the water measured less than 3.5 inches. While doing dishes, he said he heard a noise and found her face down in the water. He said he grabbed her out of the tub and ran next door. The neighbors, paramedics and doctors were unable to save the life of Oliveaux, who had suffered recent seizures.

When Statham said she arrived at the emergency room, Duncan was distraught, apologizing over and over. Police charged Duncan with negligent homicide.

At the hospital, when West Monroe Police Detective Chris Sasser examined the body and saw the girl’s anus dilated and “laying open,” he concluded she “had been sodomized,” according to the police report. “It was a horrible sight.”

Rather than use a nearby pathologist, then-District Attorney Jerry Jones had the girl’s body transported two hours away to Mississippi for Hayne to do the autopsy. After the pathologist examined Oliveaux, he called in West to examine suspected bite marks.

Video captures West’s initial examination, starting at 9:35 p.m. He mentions a bruise on her left elbow, possible abrasions and contusions, and visible diaper rash. No mark can be seen on her cheek, and West makes no mention of one.

Twenty minutes later, Hayne telephoned Detective Sasser and said at about the time of the child’s death, she suffered lacerations and penetration to the anus, which the pathologist attributed to sexual assault, as well as multiple contusions to multiple surfaces on the body and lacerations and contusions to the scalp, according to the police report.

Hayne also said there were adult bite marks on the child made at or about the time of death and asked for the suspect’s dental molds.

After receiving this information, Sasser contacted a prosecutor, and the charge was upgraded to first-degree murder, which can carry a death penalty in Louisiana.

After the molds arrived the next day, the video resumed. West can be seen jamming a mold of Duncan’s teeth into the child’s cheek. West identified these as bite marks belonging to the suspect.

Hayne did the autopsy. He concluded that Haley’s death was a homicide, that her injuries suggested she had been sexually assaulted at or about the time of her death and that she had been forcibly drowned.

Other pathologists questioned Hayne’s conclusions. A rape kit came back negative. The Louisiana State Crime Lab tested Duncan’s clothing, the child’s clothing and her bath toys for any seminal fluid. There was none.

In the days following her daughter’s death, Statham said prosecutors called her into their office. She said they asked her if her daughter ever said or implied that Duncan wanted her to suck his penis like a baby bottle.

She told Mississippi Today that her toddler daughter could hardly speak. “She could say, ‘I want burgers,’ or ‘I want M&Ms,’” she said.

After she told them no, she said they replied, “If you don’t tell the truth, you could be implicated.”

She was 21 at the time. “My baby died, and the man I loved had been hauled off,” she said. “It was very intimidating. I was scared. But I wasn’t going to lie for them.”

Months later, police got a statement from jail inmate Michael Cruse. He quoted Duncan as saying the baby pointed at his penis and he said “something about a bottle or bobble.” Cruse later testified that Duncan said he blacked out and when he came to, he was trying to have sex with the baby and killed her because he “couldn’t get the baby to be quiet.”

To demonstrate his innocence, Duncan took a polygraph test. He reportedly showed no deception when he said he didn’t kill the child or hold her head underwater. Jurors never heard this, because polygraphs are inadmissible as evidence.

By the time the trial began in 1998, much of the important physical evidence was gone. The rape kit had been lost. So had Hayne’s autopsy slides. Samples of her blood that no one had tested for toxicology — a standard practice for autopsies — had been destroyed. So had Hayne’s detailed reports on his slides.

All that experts had available to examine were Hayne’s autopsy report and a few photos of the child’s body and injuries.

In his opening remarks at the 1998 murder trial, the district attorney said Duncan “rode that baby like a bull” and “in a sexual frenzy … bit her behind the ear … bit her elbow … She screamed, and she died in a bathtub full of water so bloody you couldn’t see the bottom.”

With West’s credentials now under question, prosecutors relied on another expert, who looked at West’s photos and identified Duncan as the one who made bite marks on the child. That expert didn’t see West’s video. Neither did the defense experts. Neither did the jury.

Hayne backed up the prosecution theory that Duncan drowned the child to cover up his sexual assault. He told jurors the bruise on her head was “consistent with a digit, such as a thumb or finger, pressing down on the back of the head.”

Asked if the child could have suffered a seizure, Hayne said no because “the brain showed no sign of seizure activity.”

Hayne testified that the child wouldn’t have survived her anal injuries, and another doctor told jurors there would have been so much blood, it would be like someone having their head cut off.

But police never found a drop of blood anywhere in the house, never found any evidence of cleaning. The detective later said if there had been any blood or semen at the scene, they would have discovered it.

Hayne testified that fragmented tomato, pickle and onion were in the child’s stomach, but no oatmeal — a detail prosecutors seized on as proof that Duncan concocted this cover story to conceal his horrific crime.

When police arrived, they found oatmeal in the kitchen, in the bathtub and on Duncan’s clothing. The neighbor saw uncooked oatmeal when he cleared Oliveaux’s throat before performing CPR.

The prosecutors told jurors the uncooked oatmeal was proof he planted it.

The jury convicted Duncan and sentenced him to death.

‘Bad medicine, bad science and bad lawyering’

Tucker Carrington, who wrote a book on Hayne and West with journalist Radley Balko, “The Cadaver King and the Country Dentist,” said the Louisiana case bears similarities to the case of Jeffrey Havard, convicted of capital murder for allegedly raping and killing an infant in Natchez in 2002, thanks to Hayne’s testimony.

Havard has said he was bathing his girlfriend’s 6-month-old baby, Chloe Britt, when she slipped from his hands and hit her head on the toilet.

But as in Duncan’s case, law enforcement officers thought the baby had been sexually assaulted. At trial, a parade of doctors and nurses testified about anal rips and tears they saw, describing the worst anal trauma they had seen, and prosecutors called Havard a monster.

The autopsy report, however, showed no such damage, only anal dilation and a small contusion. The rape kit came back negative.

Despite that, Hayne’s testimony backed the prosecution’s theory of sexual assault, and Havard was sentenced to Mississippi’s death row.

After examining the case, renowned pathologist Dr. Michael Baden concluded that Britt’s injuries were consistent with her being accidentally dropped and that she wasn’t sexually assaulted. “Dilation of the anus occurs normally in children when they die as muscles relax and when seen by a casual observer can be misinterpreted as evidence of perimortem penetration,” he said.

Other pathologists agreed with Baden that the anal dilation had been misread as abuse, and in 2014, Hayne told a reporter he didn’t believe a rape took place. He said the anal contusion could have resulted from a bowel movement.

He originally testified that the baby had died from shaken baby syndrome. Now he said he didn’t believe that was true because science had since determined such conclusions were flawed.

At least 37 people have been exonerated in shaken baby cases after being wrongly imprisoned, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

Havard’s lawyer, Graham Carner of Jackson, said the case is filled with “bad medicine, bad science and, frankly, bad lawyering.”

After a three-day hearing where the defense called Hayne to testify, the trial judge reduced Havard’s sentence from death to life. His appeal for freedom is now pending in U.S. District Court.

“Innocence is different than not guilty, and innocence is different than you didn’t get a fair trial,” Carner said, “but I believed as soon as I dug into Jeffrey’s case that he was an innocent man and I believe that to this day.”

‘Science, like law, evolves over time’

The damage that Hayne and West have done to Mississippi is immense, said former state Supreme Court Justice Oliver Diaz Jr., and he is stunned the state has never reviewed their cases for possible wrongful convictions.

“They operated in Mississippi for years unchecked,” he said. “Mississippi used Hayne as the state medical examiner, even though he did not meet the statutory qualifications.”

Hayne’s testimony helped convict Tyler Edmonds, who was just 13 when he falsely confessed that he and his half-sister had both killed her husband. He said she had told him she would “fry,” but he would go unpunished.

At trial, Hayne testified that the fatal wound was consistent with two people pulling the trigger, saying, “I can’t exclude one [shooter], but I think that would be less likely.”

The Mississippi Court of Appeals concluded such testimony was scientifically unfounded: “You cannot look at a bullet wound and tell whether it was made by a bullet fired by one person pulling the trigger or by two persons pulling the trigger simultaneously.”

Diaz said Hayne’s testimony prompted him to dig deeper. “Two hands on a trigger? You don’t have to do any research to know that’s ridiculous,” he said. “That’s what led me to look at Hayne closer.”

What he found was disturbing. He didn’t realize Hayne was essentially acting as state medical examiner, but he wasn’t a board-certified pathologist.

Diaz wound up writing a scathing dissent centered on the pathologist that prompted other justices to change their minds, he said. “As science, like the law, evolves over time, one generation’s expert is another’s quack.”

He now regrets the first vote he cast on the high court, a death penalty case that relied on the words of Hayne and West, he said. “Based upon their testimony, my first Supreme Court vote was to execute an innocent man, Kennedy Brewer.”

He and other justices later supported the dismissal of Brewer’s conviction, and his last opinion called for the end of the death penalty. “It’s not a workable system when errors like this can take place,” he said. “No matter how careful we are, we’re going to vote to execute innocent people.”

What the jury never heard

In November 1993, Statham brought her daughter twice to the hospital for seizures after she stopped breathing. One doctor suggested she could be suffering from Stevens-Johnson Syndrome, a potentially life-threatening reaction, often to medication, that can cause lesions in the mouth and the genital area. The disease can also cause seizures.

Nearly three weeks before her death, a chest of drawers fell on Haley, who suffered three skull fractures and a subdural hematoma that caused her to spend six days in the hospital. Duncan and Statham told child social services that she had been climbing to reach her piggy bank.

But the jury never heard about this serious injury because of a deal that Duncan’s original lawyers made with prosecutors.

Pathologists say it’s critical to know everything possible about a person’s medical history before drawing conclusions about a death. Testimony shows police knew Oliveaux’s medical history, but it remains unclear if Hayne knew that history before concluding she had been raped and killed.

In a six-day hearing last September, two pathologists called Hayne’s conclusions unfounded, said they saw no evidence of a rape or homicide, and believed Haley drowned accidentally, perhaps after suffering a seizure.

In one sworn statement, former jail inmate Michael Lucas said he heard Duncan tell Cruse that he didn’t kill the toddler. An investigator testified that Cruse now admits he lied at the 1998 trial because he wanted leniency for the felony he was facing.

Duncan’s lawyers told those at the hearing that they planned to show West’s video involving Haley, warning that it was graphic and disturbing. An excerpt of that video had first surfaced in 2009 when the Reason website published it. The video appalled many in the legal and forensic science communities.

The video showed West jamming, dragging and scraping Duncan’s dental mold across the child’s body dozens of times. Some of those in the courtroom gasped, some covered their eyes, and others, including Duncan, wiped away tears.

After seeing the video, Lowell Levine, past president of the American Board of Forensic Odontology, called what West did “fraud.”

In 2009, the National Academy of Sciences concluded there was no basis in science for forensic odontologists to conclude a person is “the biter” to the exclusion of all other suspects. 

Adam Freeman, past president of the American Board of Forensic Odontology, testified that the bite marks identified on Haley weren’t bite marks at all. He called these determinations “junk science” that can’t be defended scientifically.

In 2015, he helped conduct a study on the reliability of bite marks. In all but a few cases, board-certified dentists couldn’t even agree if they were looking at a bite mark. As a result, he resigned from leadership in protest and stopped doing any bite-mark analysis.

Nationwide, at least 34 wrongful convictions have occurred since 1989 because of bite marks, six of them in Mississippi that all involve West, according to the National Registry of Exonerations.

Dr. Robert Bux, who served as chief medical examiner for the El Paso County Coroner’s Office in Colorado Springs, questioned how Hayne could say the child’s injuries matched shoving her face underwater.

If that were so, “I’d expect to see injuries on the front part of her body, particularly on her forehead or nose, cheeks, anterior parts of shoulders, anterior parts of the knees,” said Bux, who helped investigate Pat Tillman’s death in Afghanistan.

The autopsy showed lacerations to the anus. Bux said these could have been caused by an infection, a diaper rash, a hard stool or vigorous washing. “There’s no way to know. You have to look at it microscopically, and it wasn’t looked at,” he said.

Up until 2007 or so, people believed anal dilation proved sexual abuse, he said. “A dilated anus means nothing. We saw it all the time in adults and children.”

The lack of blood at the scene suggests something other than a violent assault, he said. “It’s absolutely bloodless. I mean where is the blood in the sink? Where’s the blood on the victim?”

He rejected the claim by Hayne that the child stopped bleeding because she was dead. Blood gives way to gravity, he said. “It’ll come out drip, drip, drip, so, you’re going to see it, and you’re going to see it for hours, and you’re going to see it for days. I don’t think you can just wash that off because it’s going to continue to ooze after she’s dead.”

Her death appears to be “a tragic accident of drowning,” he said. “I don’t see any evidence to me that would support that it was forced.”

She drowned, possibly because she suffered another seizure, he said, “but I can’t prove that because Hayne didn’t do any investigation that would help us on that.”

Hayne’s lack of research and examination prompted Duncan’s lawyers to twice ask for the exhumation of Oliveaux’s body before the 1998 trial. The judge denied the requests.

Her mother said if her daughter’s body needs to be exhumed to answer any questions, she supports that. “It might give us some answers to what happened then,” Statham said.

If prosecutors win their appeal, Duncan would remain on death row and face execution. ProPublica and Verite News reported that Duncan’s bid for freedom has become more urgent with Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry pushing for executions. In March, Louisiana held its first execution in 15 years, using nitrogen oxide to put Jessie Hoffman Jr. to death.

If Duncan faced another trial, jurors would hear a much different story, his lawyers said. “Rather than the State’s sensational story of pure horror — including rape, biting, blackouts, a panicked forcible drowning, and a cover-up involving massive quantities of blood that Mr. Duncan, cold and calculating, cleaned up before seeking help for the child — the jury would instead hear the true story: Haley tragically but accidentally drowned in the bathtub.”

After the 1998 trial, Statham spiraled downward. She could have survived her daughter’s death, but surviving this horror story proved nearly impossible, she said.

Duncan’s conviction didn’t just destroy his life, she said. “All of our families were destroyed by this. We’re still collateral damage in this.”

Catherine Legge is an award-winning documentary filmmaker who lives in Toronto. Formerly executive producer of original video for GEM, she also spent two decades traveling around the world as a documentary director at CBC. Her indie films under her banner Play Nice Productions have been shown in 250+ countries including “The Unsolved Murder of Beverly Lynn Smith,” “Met While Incarcerated/From Prison With Love,” and “Billion Dollar Caribou.” Her current film and podcast “The Murder That Never Happened” takes place on death row in Louisiana.

School districts in Humphreys County and Yazoo City are one step closer to regaining local control. 

The Mississippi Department of Education on Tuesday disbanded the Mississippi Achievement School District, which consolidated the struggling school districts in 2019 into a single one under direct state supervision. 

The Legislature created the Mississippi Achievement School District in 2016 to target the lowest-performing schools in the state. Yazoo City and Humphreys County, both majority-Black and low-income areas, were the district’s inaugural school systems. 

But House Bill 1696 passed in 2024 — co-authored by Democratic Rep. Timaka James-Jones, who represents Humphreys — dissolved the Mississippi Achievement School District starting July 1, 2025. 

Republican Rep. Kent McCarty of Lamar County, who authored the bill as vice-chair of the House Education Committee, said the legislation was aimed at giving districts more control.

“I hope the extra flexibility allows them to move toward more independence,” McCarty said Thursday. “Eventually, we’d love to see every district function independently without oversight from the department and make the improvements they need to be high-performing districts.”

But that doesn’t mean the districts are fully back to local control. They’ve just separated and become “districts of transformation” — a different, more widespread framework for low-performing schools to improve their student achievement. 

School systems can become districts of transformation if they consistently receive failing grades in the state’s accountability report card. Under that model, those districts have to develop and implement improvement plans. They get support from the state education department and are closely overseen by the agency. State takeovers can mean more teaching observations and frequent classroom visits from administrators. 

Since 1996, school districts have been taken over using the “district of transformation” model 23 times. Four districts currently operate under the model: Holmes, Noxubee, Humphreys County and Yazoo City.

Earl Watkins, who previously managed the Humphreys County and Yazoo City schools as superintendent of the achievement district, will take the helm of the Yazoo City school district, while Stanley Ellis will lead the Humphrey County district. 

The two superintendents will still answer directly to the state Board of Education.

That’ll be the case for at least one more year — both Yazoo City and Humphreys County received “C” marks on their state report card this past school year, so if they receive “C” grades this year, they still need one more consecutive year of that grade or higher to regain local control. 

“With the scores we have, we’re well on the way to the next steps,” James-Jones said. “It really does boost the pride of our community and we have this united goal now. We’re looking forward to our students getting everything that they need to be successful.”

Humphreys, which received a “D” rating during the 2023-2024 school year, made a “C” by two points.

The growth was largely due to higher scores among the bottom 25% of 3rd to 8th grade students in math and English. Both English and math test scores are given extra weight along with any improvements made by students in the bottom 25%.

Yazoo City raised its grade from an “F” through similar means, with math students in the bottom 25% showing more growth from last year. 

Tenashe White, who teaches 8th grade math in Humphreys, gives credit foremost to her students. But she also acknowledges the help of educational consultants and her fellow teachers who helped plan activities that helped students master math standards through play.

“We threw math bowls, science bowls, spelling competitions to kind of open it up more so they can have some fun but also perform on the tests,” White said. “We had different incentives like ice cream socials.”

Ellis started as the Humphreys superintendent Tuesday. He said anyone who’s not focused on teaching and learning will find themselves “out of place” at the district. 

“Our motto is, ‘New day, new direction,’” he said. “This is our opportunity to get a new start.”

In one of his first acts as mayor of Jackson, John Horhn announced the team that will help him lead the city, including several new faces and some holdovers, at a packed meet-and-greet at the Two Mississippi Museums Thursday. 

Leading the appointments as the city’s interim chief administrative officer, Pieter Teeuwissen, a former Hinds County Court Judge who served as city attorney under former mayors Harvey Johnson and Frank Melton. 

The chief administrative officer is a vital position in Jackson City Hall as Teeuwissen will essentially serve as the deputy mayor, with most of the city’s departments reporting to him. So far, Teeuwissen said the job has mostly entailed a lot of reading in preparation for the city’s intensive budget process. 

“How do we craft a budget with audits that are now three years old?” Teeuwissen said, referring to the city’s failure to complete timely audits in recent years. “That would be the issue, and if you ask me next Monday, that’s gonna be the issue. Next Tuesday, next Wednesday, until we get a budget done.”

Willie Bozeman, Horhn’s campaign manager, will serve as interim chief of staff. Horhn’s appointments can serve in an interim capacity for 90 days, and Horhn must put their name on the agenda to be confirmed by the Jackson City Council before that time period is up.

Other new faces in the administration include: 

• ReSean Thomas, a former leader of the firefighters union who helped secure pay raises in recent years, will serve as interim fire chief;
• Von Anderson, who oversaw communications for Horhn’s transition team after serving as the chief commercial officer for the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, will be the interim director of planning and development;
• Grace Fisher, a former communications director at the Mississippi Department of Corrections and editor at the Clarion Ledger, will serve as interim communications director;
• Pearlean Campbell, former victim services director at MDOC, will serve as interim constituent services director;
• Nathan Slater, a local technology consultant, will oversee the IT department;
• and Jamal Sibley, a staff on the Horhn campaign, will serve as interim special assistant to the mayor. 

Slater has already started working on the city’s website and said he hopes to roll out a new one within 30 days. 

Of the directors Horhn has retained from former Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s leadership team, the most notable is Fidelis Malembeka, the chief financial officer. 

Other holdovers include City Attorney Drew Martin, Municipal Clerk Angela Harris, Police Chief Joe Wade, and Director of Human Resources, Toya Martin. 

Emad Al-Turk, the contractor for the city’s public works department, will stay on with public works director while Horhn launches a national search for a new one, WLBT reported. 

A bit over 200 years ago, a group of guys made a pretty big splash about their tea. They made history. Revolutionary, to say the least. Even before then, tea has been a soul soother the world over. 

Whether sipped from dainty cups, pinkies out accompanied with giggles; or whispered secrets or on hot, sunny days over ice, lazing on a front porch; or as spiritual satisfaction after an elaborate ceremony steeped in tradition, tea offers a quiet revelation.

Christina Berry, owner and chief tea officer of ‘Sippsi Good Tea in Jackson, has a desire to be a revelation. 

“When I decided to start the business, I went to a tea conference to learn all that I could. At first, drinking tea out of my cup was just something that I did daily. But I wanted an understanding of the business of it,” said Berry, as she sipped a blended brew in her tea shop, located in the Pinnacle Building in downtown Jackson.

“I met this really great network of women in the tea industry. I knew I wanted to attract different consumers and bring us all together with tea. So one lady that I really connected with was willing to be my mentor. She encouraged me in naming my business and making it Mississippi-related, (and) even though seemingly everything in the state is sip this or sip that, I stuck with it.”

‘Sippsi Good Tea offers a wide variety of teas, from herbal to apothecary teas for wellness. There are green and black teas as well as bottled favorites with catchy names like Shade Tea Mechanic, a cranberry and orange flavor, and Berry Southern, a blackberry flavor. Add a locally baked pastry with your tea.

The selection includes Southern Hospitali-Tea and Wild Strawberry Fields, a caffeine-free Mississippi Blueberry and a green tea, among others. You can even blend your own.

The teas can be purchased in-house or online, and also at the 2 Mississippi Museums.

Berry said she’s pondering another kind of tea as well.

“I’ve had input from some customers that suggested I should do strawberry-raspberry lemonade, and also a blueberry. We’ll see. I invite everyone to come in, take your time and ‘Sipp deeply. You’re home.”

‘Sippsi Good Tea is located at 100 E. Capitol Street, Suite 106 in the Pinnacle Building in downtown Jackson.

Hours: 7 a.m. – 3 p.m.

Online: sippsigoodtea.com

Mississippi will attempt to overturn a portion of a recent federal court decision that found the state’s latest legislative redistricting plan unlawfully diluted Black voting power. However, it’s unclear what part of the court order the state will contest. 

The three-member state Board of Election Commissioners on Thursday filed a court document declaring it intends to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court an order issued by a federal three-judge panel. 

A representative in Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office, which is filing the appeal on behalf of the state, said the appeal will not disrupt the upcoming elections. Fourteen legislative districts around the state are preparing to conduct the election based on the lower court ruling.

Fitch’s office has not yet filed a substantive briefing outlining what portion of the lower court’s order it intends to appeal. But an official within Fitch’s office said the appeal will only present a narrow legal issue to the nation’s highest court and not appeal the entire lower court order that required the state to conduct do-over elections this year.

Still, the appeal is notable because it comes in the middle of special elections that the lower court ordered the state to conduct to allow Black voters in Mississippi a realistic chance to elect candidates of their choice. The party primaries are scheduled for August.

The nonprofit group that administers federal family planning money in Mississippi had its funding restored Wednesday, one month after it was forced to lay off half its staff and three months after its funding was withheld by the federal government.

Title X, a federal program that has been providing money for family planning services to states for over 50 years, flows through Converge to 91 clinics around the state. On March 31, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services told Converge it was withholding $4.5 million intended for Mississippi’s Title X program indefinitely during an investigation into the organization’s diversity, equity and inclusion practices. 

“We are relieved to have received our Notice of Award for Title X funding today, which enables us to return to the essential work of supporting our clinical network, maintaining operations, and meeting the needs of our communities across Mississippi and Tennessee,” Jamie Bardwell, co-executive director of Converge, said in a statement. 

The nonprofit will be rehiring some of the 10 staff it laid off, but is not currently able to rehire all due to “continued instability of federal funds,” Audrey Sandusky, vice president of communications and marketing at Converge, told Mississippi Today. 

The team received a letter from HHS on June 25 that the investigation found Converge to be compliant with the law and that funding would be restored. 

“OASH (Office of the Assistant Secretary of Health) reminds you of your ongoing obligation to comply with all terms of the award, including by not engaging in any unlawful diversity, equity or inclusion-related discrimination in violation of such laws,” the letter read. 

That same day, Sen. Bradford Blackmon, D-Canton, wrote a letter urging Republican Gov. Tate Reeves to push HHS to restore Converge’s funding. Blackmon wrote that the money supported services delivered through federally qualified health centers, which he called “lifelines in both rural and urban areas of our state.”

“The stakes for our communities could not be higher,” Blackmon wrote. “In 2024 alone, over 16,800 Mississippians, the majority of whom are uninsured and living at or below the federal poverty level, relied on Title X-supported services provided by Converge’s network.”

A spokesperson for Reeves did not immediately respond to Mississippi Today’s questions Wednesday about whether the governor advocated for the return of federal funding to Converge.

Blackmon has been a supporter of reproductive health care. Last session, he introduced a protest bill called the “Contraception Begins at Erection Act,” which would have made it unlawful for men to discharge genetic material without the intent to fertilize an embryo. 

Converge leaders still do not know what prompted the HHS investigation, though the initial allegation referenced a 2020 statement the nonprofit made committing to diversity in health care during the wake of the George Floyd protests. 

The team is proceeding with caution, but eager to resume a range of services related to helping people get pregnant, preventing pregnancy through birth control like long-acting contraception, cancer screening, pregnancy testing and STI testing and treatment. 

“This marks a critical step forward for communities that have gone without essential family planning funding for three months and have worked tirelessly to provide care with limited resources,” Bardwell said. “We look forward to resuming services, reconnecting patients with trusted providers, and continuing the vital work of ensuring access to high-quality, compassionate care across the South.”

John Horhn became the mayor of Jackson on Tuesday, after his fourth run for the office. At the swearing in ceremony, several delegates — including Congressman Bennie Thompson, Gov. Tate Reeves and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann — joined Horhn on stage.

Read the Mississippi Today Jackson team’s full coverage of the inauguration ceremonies.

By Tuesday evening, the room where Jackson Mayor John Horhn took the oath of office between gospel performances by the Mississippi Mass Choir earlier in the day had transformed into a glittery gala, replete with a red carpet, lit candles and a classically raunchy gig by blues musician Bobby Rush.

It was a spectacular party that helped generate half a million dollars in sponsorships for Tuesday’s inauguration festivities. More than 140 sponsors across Jackson made monetary and in-kind donations to celebrate Horhn, a longtime state senator from northwest Jackson, finally attaining the office he’d sought for 16 years.

“What better way to kick off and put the cap on such a monumental day, a momentous day, than to come out to the Jackson Convention Center and throw a party,” Horhn said after he took the stage.

All told, Horhn’s inauguration committee raised more than $485,000 in cash sponsorships and $150,000 in write-off donations to organize Tuesday’s events, including the bash that was free and open to the public and featured food from more than 20 local businesses and a pricey cash bar. 

While the final tally of what was spent Tuesday or how many people attended isn’t complete, Jeff Good, a local restaurateur who oversaw the committee’s finances, said he had budgeted about $320,000 for the day and estimated 2,500 attendees. Horhn will be able to use any leftover funds to put on future events. 

Each sponsor had a different motivation for donating, Good said. Some were local companies who have sought city contracts, while other Jacksonians made financial contributions simply because they are fans of Horhn. 

“There’s so many things that John has done,” Good said at the gala. “Everybody loves John.” 

While past mayors have thrown similar balls upon their inauguration, Horhn’s party was especially well-attended and inclusive, multiple attendees said. 

In the weeks leading up to the gala, the inauguration committee circulated a digital chart inviting people to sponsor the event at different levels from the lowest tier, called “spark” at a minimum of $500, all the way up to the “drum major” at $15,000 or more. 

Sponsors were to make the checks out to a 501(c)4 set up by the inauguration committee, Good said, and send them to a P.O. Box managed by Willie Bozeman, Horhn’s chief of staff and interim campaign manager. 

What did the sponsors get in exchange for their contribution? Good pointed at gigantic screens on either side of the gala’s main stage that listed the sponsor’s names. 

“We read their names on the podium,” he said. “They get the notoriety that they supported the mayor. It’s no different than if you’re doing a charity ball.” 

Sponsors also got dedicated tables, an invitation to a VIP reception, a swag bag and acknowledgement in the event program — a list that reads like a who’s who of Jackson and included developers like the Mattiace Company and Gabriel Prado, prominent law firms such as Butler Snow, nonprofits, lobbyists, engineering firms and well-known city construction contractors. 

“When you read the sponsorship list in our program, it is Jackson businesses, Jackson families, Jackson couples,” Good said. 

Cynics might say these donations will be used to get the mayor’s ear down the road.  

“Some folks are doing it to reap the benefits of contracts,” said David Archie, a former Hinds County supervisor recently hired by former Mayor Chokwe Lumumba after running for mayor himself, as he was looking for a table to sit at. “Some folks are doing it to be on the staff or to have family members on the staff.” 

But many others felt their sponsorship was more akin to a “thank you.” Carla Kirkland, the chief executive officer of an education consulting company that works with Jackson Public Schools, said she didn’t need to donate to get Horhn’s attention — she’s known him since he was a senator. 

Instead, Kirkland said she donated $15,000 to show Horhn that she has his back, much more than she’s given past mayoral administrations. 

“I think it shows the support that we are showing for the new administration and just letting them know that we are behind you,” she said. “We will put our money behind you, and we will put our name behind you.” 

Kirkland went even further, helping to fundraise for the gala, which she said was easy to do. Through her group chat network, she said she sold over 100 “spark” sponsorships. 

“I am in a GroupMe with the AKAs, with the Jack and Jills … with Women for Progress,” she said. “So I just pulled together my network.” 

The gala also proved to be a good networking opportunity: While talking to a reporter, Kirkland spotted Errick Greene, the Jackson Public Schools superintendent. He took a picture with Kirkland and her team. 

2C Mississippi, a Ridgeland-based nonprofit focused on climate resilience in Mississippi, recently joined a national lawsuit against the Environmental Protection Agency after the government terminated over $20 million in grant funds for the organization.

In February, the lawsuit says, the EPA followed directives from President Trump to cut federal spending by terminating grants for a variety of environmental justice and climate resilience projects. Lawyers from a number of groups, including the Southern Environmental Law Center and Earthjustice, filed the complaint in federal court in Washington D.C. on June 25. The complaint asks for full funding of the roughly 350 awarded grants impacted by the EPA’s cuts.

The Ridgeland organization, federal data shows, was set to receive about $20.5 million for two projects in Jackson: $20 million for a self-sustainable “resilience hub” and $500,000 to complete a “microparks” project aimed at tackling flooding and blight in the city. 2C Mississippi, one of the over 20 plaintiffs from around the country, received just $300,000 of those funds so far.

In a March memo the EPA sent to 2C Mississippi, the agency wrote, “This EPA Assistance Agreement is terminated in its entirety effective immediately on the grounds that the award no longer effectuates the program goals or agency priorities.”

Dominika Parry, who founded the nonprofit in 2017, called it a “nearly impossible task” to obtain the $20 million elsewhere for the resilience hub, a concept she said is growing around the country, such as in New Orleans. The idea, she explained, is to provide shelter both during emergencies but also during general times of need.

“ This is a place where people can come, stay overnight, have access to energy, be in healthy conditions,” Parry said.

Features would include a tornado shelter, 150 beds, showers and charging stations, as well as job training and community spaces. Parry added the facility would be self-sustainable with an independent well water system as well as solar panels with battery storage. Working with Jackson nonprofit Voice of Calvary Ministries, Parry secured a site for the hub at a former church in west Jackson.

The microparks project, which she discussed with Mississippi Today last year, seeks to take on both blight and flooding by turning dilapidated properties in flood zones into communal green spaces with public art and gardens. Despite having already selected the locations and cleared the land for the parks to live in, Parry said she’s had to pause the project since the EPA’s termination. She was optimistic that funding could come from elsewhere, but it’s unclear how long that would take.

Without the grant money, Parry’s unsure if her organization as a whole can survive. Already, she said, she’s had to start working for free as well as reduce her employee’s salaries.

“Losing that funding is a pretty existential change to our functioning,” she said.

In a separate project, 2C Mississippi secured a $1.5 million federal grant for a recently unveiled green space on Farish Street.

“So far we’ve been incredibly grateful and lucky that we were able to keep delivering and build trust, and now the idea we are going to go and tell people we don’t have the funds, that weighs on me,” Parry said. “People in Jackson have been promised many, many things that never happened.”

Other Mississippi groups whose grants were terminated include the Gulfport-based Steps Coalition and Jackson State University. Steps Coalition, according to federal data, received just $122,000 of a $500,000 grant to engage residents in local land-use and leadership training. JSU received about $60,000 of $100,000 from two EPA grants to train water technicians, support grant writing in underserved communities, and provide water to a garden at Blackburn Middle School in Jackson.

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

On the evening of April 5, my phone and our community’s emergency siren both started screaming at once, jarring my husband and me to our feet. I clicked my phone and heard an automated voice begin to speak, warning of a tornado near Oxford. 

My husband, emergency bag in hand, called for the dogs to follow as we hurried down the stairs to our “safe place,” a windowless storage room in the basement. Even there, we could see angry bursts of lightning and hear the siren as it continued to wail. 

My family — as do others across the state — knows how to respond to the severe storms and dangerous tornados that interrupt our lives, often with devastating results. 

In the past, the federal government, through FEMA, has also responded. But now the Federal Emergency Management Agency is threatened by an administration that wants to overhaul it. President Trump has said he wants to “fix a terribly broken system” by shifting emergency disaster response to the backs of the states. 

Together with Congress, we need to insist, as we’ve repeatedly done in the past, that the executive branch work alongside us when disaster strikes our communities. 

*

The Trump administration is not the first to downplay its role in providing emergency relief to Americans during disasters. President Calvin Coolidge took a similar stance during the Great Mississippi Flood of 1927. 

That year, months of persistent rain combined with runoff from melting snow pushed levees that had been engineered to constrain the Mississippi River beyond their limits. Beginning in mid-April, levees from Illinois to Louisiana began to crumble, and as they did, waves of turbulent water flooded fields and swept through towns. 

While numbers hint at the destruction –hundreds of souls lost, hundreds of thousands of people displaced and thousands of square miles flooded — they don’t reflect the agony or suffering of those whose lives were capsized during the flood.

*

In late April of 1927, President Coolidge created a commission, headed by Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover, to respond to the massive flooding that had by then spread across at least seven states. Unwilling to allocate any federal money to the effort, Coolidge instead called on the American public to donate $5 million. 

Hoover, an engineer by training, leveraged the public’s donations with the capacity of the American National Red Cross. Their volunteers provided food, clothing, medical care and temporary housing to those whose homes were destroyed. 

Meanwhile, the president stood steadfast, refusing to use federal tax dollars to provide relief. 

Or rebuild bridges or roads that had been swept away. 

Or invest in future flood-control efforts.

Newspapers up and down the Mississippi River Valley criticized President Coolidge’s insistence that the states absorb the cost of rebuilding their communities while also bracing for seasonal floods that would occur again. 

“It seems obvious,” wrote the Memphis Commercial Appeal, “that neither the head of the nation or any one of his responsible advisors realizes either the nature or the immensity of the problem.” 

The paper went on to question how a nation as wealthy as the United States could impose the “burden of tremendous loss, sacrifices, agonies and destruction,” on individual states. 

In Jackson, the Clarion-Ledger also questioned the government’s response, particularly since President Coolidge had repeatedly refused to witness the flooding in person. “Not a dime has the government appropriated. The truth of the matter is that it has been necessary to school President Coolidge day by day a bit more towards the realization of the immensity of the catastrophe.”

The public and Congress continued to demand that the federal government assume a new responsibility for its citizens, one that included disaster relief, recovery and prevention. 

Eventually, Coolidge struck a deal with Congress and in May 1928, Congress enacted the 1928 Flood Control Act. The law authorized the Corps of Engineers to design and construct projects that would control flooding on the Mississippi River and the Sacramento River in California. 

The new law also ended the philosophy that regional disasters were solely the responsibility of the states. Instead, it acknowledged that the wealth of the country would be used to alleviate the suffering of its citizens. 

In 1950, the Federal Disaster Relief Act created the pathway for states to ask the president for federal help during crises.  This was followed by the establishment of FEMA in 1979.

*

So far this year, more than 60 people have lost their lives due to tornados in the United States, including at least seven people in Mississippi. Though storms have uprooted trees, flooded streets and caused property damage in Oxford, our community has largely been spared the heartache these deadly tornadoes caused elsewhere. 

We don’t know what the future holds for FEMA. In April, President Trump appointed former Mississippi Gov. Phil Bryant to a council charged with recommending changes that may overhaul the agency. 

But as tornado season rolls into hurricane season, we know that the destruction caused by these severe storms is more than any of us can bear alone. We must insist that the federal government keep its sleeves rolled up and support our communities during times of disaster.

Bio: Shirley Wimbish Gray lives in Oxford. A retired writing instructor and science editor, she writes about what is often overlooked or forgotten, particularly in the American South. Her recent essays have appeared in Earth Island, Brevity Blog and Persimmon Tree.