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The first 24 hours of “100 Days of Peace,” an initiative announced by Jackson leadership Wednesday, were marked by a solemn energy and a renewed dedication to making Jackson safer.

In the course of the day, the mayor presented a large ceremonial check to local credible messengers – formerly incarcerated people who work with youth in the juvenile system to interrupt violence – on the steps of City Hall. Separately, kin to gun violence victims from across the state traveled to the capital city to mourn their loved ones outside the state Capitol building and call for gun control policies. Local police patrolled and responded to 911 calls as normal. 

And just as it seemed the day would end without wounds, a man was shot in the knee during a domestic disturbance at a Belhaven apartment complex around 8pm.

100 Days of Peace, also called 100 Days of Action, is a city-wide initiative which aims to find community solutions for crime reduction. The initiative is a partnership with credible messenger programs and will include community listening sessions and town halls, as well as trainings leading up to a Sneaker Ball – a formal gala with informal footwear – to celebrate the work in June.

Benny Ivey, co-founder of Strong Arms of Mississippi Credible Messenger Program, said that he hopes to use his past as an incarcerated person and a former gang leader to mentor younger people who cycle in and out of juvenile detention. Strong Arms of Mississippi received one of three $50,000 grants Wednesday to build up the program’s capacity.

The organization’s motto is “rebuilding communities we once helped to destroy.” Credible messengers are people who have lived experience in the communities that they’re trying to reach.

“Our mentorship program is about building those relationships so that they will listen to what you have to say, because you’re listening to what they have to say,” said Ivey. “We’ve learned that these young men will open up to us about things that they won’t tell anybody, and that’s the first step in changing the mindset.”

Fredrick Womack, Executive Director of Operation Good, which also received one of the grants, said that unity within the community takes a village. He points to helping mothers in the community and getting people who are willing to work into job development courses at Hinds Community College to learn a trade. 

“We’re here to do what’s necessary to heal the problem,” he said. “Not just be a bandaid.”

With the funds provided by the city, Womack hopes to host more community events and block parties to engage at-risk youth. He also said that crime prevention alleviates the strain on city resources used to investigate and prosecute crimes after they happen. 

“I’m glad the city took on this effort in the reduction of crime on the community level,” Womack said. “Each murder that we prevent in Jackson, it prevents the cost of upwards of a million dollars to the city.”

The third organization awarded a grant is Living with Purpose, established in Byram last year by longtime peer counselor John Knight.

The funds come from the city’s Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery, launched in 2022 with a $700,000 grant from the National League of Cities and Wells Fargo Bank. The office is staffed by director Keisha Coleman and community outreach specialist Kuwasi Omari and operates largely as an umbrella, coordinating support for the three grantees who have been conducting youth mentorship and violence intervention on the ground for years.

“We want to be very clear, this 100 Days of Action and 100 Days of Peace is not geared toward what we call the ‘bubble kids’, the kids who are out here that are straddling the fence. It’s geared towards those youth and those communities that are at the highest risk,” Coleman said. “So yes, we are engaging gang members, we are engaging cliques, we are engaging affiliates, we are engaging anyone who’s at high risk of shooting a gun or being shot.”

At the press conference, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba said he has witnessed the credible messengers passing out food in under-resourced communities. When the water crisis peaked in 2022, the mayor said those men were some of the first who entered the frontlines to deliver drinking water to Jacksonians. Research has shown that hunger can be associated with increased risk of experiencing or perpetrating violence.

“I’ve seen statistics in a limited block radius where they’ve had nearly half of a year with no gun violence within one of the areas that had some of the most pronounced gun violence prior to their work,” Lumumba said at the press conference.

The Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery did not supply reports or data on the success of the programs when asked, but Coleman directed Mississippi Today to the individual organizations’ websites. Operation Good’s website claims that while using its own crime intervention model, the organization saw a decrease in violent crimes, from 87 percent to 14 percent over a 3-year period, in the area it had a presence. But “due to the majority of our members being ex-con they started to fade away,” the website states, and in their absence, Jackson’s murder rate began consistently rising, peaking in 2021.

Starting in 2021 under a new national model called the Cure Violence approach, Operation Good reports that it ushered in a 286-day period without gun-related deaths in its first year.

In other cities that have declared periods of nonviolence, leaders have made specific calls to action. For many years in Birmingham, the city council has asked high schoolers to take a 100-day pledge to avoid violent situations, according to local reports. In Memphis, the mayor has successfully asked opposing gang leaders for a 7-day ceasefire in the city, CNN reported. In exchange, the gangs asked for access to well-paying jobs and training to secure those jobs.

“They need money in their pockets. That’s the way you can change it,” Memphis Mayor Paul Young said in 2024, the local news station reported.

During the 100 Days of Action, the city of Jackson said it will partner with the crime-invention groups to host job fairs.

“The reality is while they (JPD) are solving crime, crime is still taking place. You can’t arrest yourself out of the problem. If you arrest somebody at 5 o’clock and you have done nothing to affect the conditions that led them out there in the first place, then they will be there at 6 o’clock,” Lumumba said standing outside of City Hall Wednesday morning.

Later in the afternoon, half a mile away on the steps of the Mississippi State Capitol, dozens gathered from across the state for a day of mourning as part of the National Victims of Gun Violence Day, demonstrating that gun violence is a widespread problem for Mississippi, not just Jackson. 

Data shows that Mississippi has the highest rate of annual gun deaths at nearly 30 deaths per 100,000 people, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Jacqueline Alexander of Woodville, Mississippi, said she lost her nephew in a shooting nine months ago. For her, the wound is still fresh.

“I was bitter. I was angry. I was more hurt than anything,” she said through tears. “My nephew was a vital part of my life, and there’s not a day that goes by that I don’t think about him. People don’t understand, during the funeral times, you have all the love shown, but what do you do after the funeral is over?”

Alexander criticized her local government, saying that there should have been a call to action to solve his murder, and four other unsolved murders in their small town.

“Nobody deserves to be gunned down. A 15 year old child – there should have been a call to order,” she said. “The town should have been on fire.”

Angenel Washington of Natchez, whose daughter was killed in 2020, said she hopes that city and state leaders will use their platforms to push for more policing.

“I’m hoping that leaders will see that this is something that is out of control, and they understand that if they don’t do anything or don’t talk about it, they give consent that they’re OK with it,” Washington said. “… My daughter was willing to fight to help others, so they need to take their job seriously and get to the problem at hand.”

Mississippi Impact Coalition, along with partners The People’s Advocacy Institute, the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign, One Voice and The Sweet Spot of Jackson, came together to demand the Mississippi Legislature pass universal background checks. They also want to repeal open carry, and add restrictions to assault weapons and mandatory waiting periods for gun purchases. No such measures have been advanced by state leaders this session.

“This isn’t just about laws. It’s about lives. It’s about justice. It’s about breaking cycles of trauma and building a future where our communities thrive instead of mourn,” said Danyelle Holmes of the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign.

Mississippi ranks 49th in the country for gun law strength, with no foundational laws in place such as one requiring a concealed carry permit or no carry laws after a violent offense.

Mayor Lumumba said that the 100 Days initiative primarily focuses on interrupting violence before JPD is ever called. JPD employees, the mayor said, have unreasonably been expected to play a dual role of detective and psychiatrist.

“By the time the police have arrived, it has already gone wrong,” Lumumba said in his announcement.

Reached hours after the city’s press conference, Jackson Police Department Chief Joseph Wade said he was not aware of the “100 Days” initiative, though he later met with city leaders to discuss the community-led efforts.

“I’m for this initiative. I fully support it. I am about saving lives in the city of Jackson. I talk about it. I’m transparent to the community,” Wade said, adding that he and his commanders are hosting a public event at Christ United church in north Jackson Thursday afternoon to discuss patterns and strategies in addressing crime. “I just need to know, like, what do the components look like?”

After meeting with city officials Wednesday, Wade explained that the initiative is community-led – JPD does not play a formal role – but that the department will offer whatever educational support is requested.

Day 1 of Peace was an otherwise typical day for the city’s police force, JPD public information officer Tommie Brown said – squad cars patrolling, officers responding to calls and detectives working investigations. By 5pm, Wade said there had not been a homicide in the city and he was unaware of any shooting reports. 

The state-run Capitol Police force did not receive any violent crime reports by late Wednesday afternoon, Mississippi Department of Safety spokesperson Bailey Martin told Mississippi Today, but in the evening it responded to a gunshot victim at Pagoda Village Apartments on Jefferson Street in Belhaven. Martin said the shooting was the result of a domestic disturbance and officers arrested a 30-year-old at the scene for aggravated assault.

Just after midnight, JPD responded to the shooting death of a 22-year-old Memphis woman at Studio 6 hotel in north Jackson. And Thursday morning, a 15-year-old boy who had been reported as a runaway was found deceased in south Jackson from a gunshot wound to the head, according to a briefing by Wade. Officers are searching for suspects in both cases.

So far in 2025, JPD has investigated 11 homicides. This includes two shooting deaths in south Jackson over the past weekend, a woman accused of killing her husband and a teenager charged with killing his grandmother. 

“Every single one were about people that knew each other – interpersonal conflicts, domestic violence situations. And we have a 100% solvability rate,” Wade said Wednesday, before the next two homicides occurred. “Domestic violence situations that happen inside homes, or conflicts dealing with individuals who do not know how to mitigate conflict. So we really need help inside homes, inside residences.”

Capitol Police, which responds to incidents in a central area of the city spanning from south of downtown to north of the Fondren neighborhood, have worked 3 homicides this year for a total of 14 killings in the capital city. This is down from 15 homicides this time last year and 21 in 2021, the year with the highest recorded homicides, according to WLBT.

“Data shows us that even though crime and gun violence is high in Jackson, it’s a small percentage of people that’s committing the violence, and so we are going to target that small population of people who are actually toting the guns and being on the other side of the gun and try to get them into these mentorship programs,” Coleman said.

Coleman told Mississippi Today that the data she referenced was provided by JPD’s data analyst, but the information doesn’t exist in a formal, sharable report because the office “is still developing a dashboard to synthesize the variables to support the raw data.” Later in the spring, though, the office plans to publish a community landscape assessment. Mississippi Today submitted a public records request for the office’s data and expenditures.

Jackson Editor Anna Wolfe contributed to this report.

The post On “Day 1 of Peace” in Jackson, Mississippi appeared first on Mississippi Today.

OXFORD — A judge denied bond Thursday for the University of Mississippi graduate who is accused of killing Jimmie “Jay” Lee, a well-known member of the LGBTQ+ community in this north Mississippi college, and hiding his body. 

Lafayette County Circuit Court Judge Kelly Luther made the decision during Sheldon Timothy Herrington Jr.’s bond hearing, which was held on the heels of the discovery of Lee’s body. Despite the finding, the prosecution also announced that it would not seek the death penalty, just as it had declined to during last year’s trial that resulted in an 11-1 hung jury. 

“The pressure on Mr. Herrington has gotten worse,” Luther said. “The justification for not showing up is about as high as it can get. The only thing higher is if the state had said ‘we’re gonna seek the death penalty.’”

Though Herrington, a son of a prominent church family in Grenada, had previously been out on bond, he will now remain in jail pending trial. The prosecution recently secured a new indictment against Herrington for capital murder and hiding Lee’s remains, which were found in a well-known dumping ground in Carroll County, 19 minutes from Herrington’s family home, wrapped in moving blankets and duct tape and hidden among mattresses and tires. 

Lee was found with a silk bonnet, which evidence shows Lee had worn when he returned to Herrington’s home the morning he went missing on July 8, 2022. 

Herrington’s new counsel, Aafram Sellers, a criminal attorney from the Jackson area, said he was too new to the case to comment on the possibility of a plea deal. But he made several pointed arguments against the state’s move to revoke Herrington’s bond, calling it an attempt “to be punitive in nature when the presumption still remains innocent until proven guilty.” 

Before making his decision, Luther asked the prosecution, who had previously agreed to give Herrington a bond in 2022, “what’s changed since then?” 

Lafayette County District Attorney Ben Creekmore responded that the state now had more evidence, when previously, the case “was mostly circumstantial evidence.” 

“Now they want to hold us to that same agreement when the situation has changed,” Creekmore said. “We tried the case. … Everyone knows it was an 11-1 finding of guilt on capital murder.” 

“It’s not a no-body homicide this time,” he added. 

This prompted Sellers to accuse the prosecution of attempting to taint a future jury, because the court had not established the jury’s split. 

“Just because it’s on the internet doesn’t mean it’s a fact,” Sellers said.  

Prior to discussing Herrington’s bond, Luther heard arguments on Sellers’ motion to dismiss Herrington’s new charge of evidence tampering for hiding Lee’s body. Sellers argued the charge violated the statute of limitations because law enforcement knew, by dint of not finding Lee’s body at the alleged crime scene, that evidence tampering had occurred, so Herrington should have been charged with that crime back in 2022. 

“If there is a gun here that is a murder weapon and I walk out of here and leave and they never find it, but they know a murder happened in this courtroom, they know I moved evidence on today’s date,” Sellers said. “It’s not hard to contemplate that.” 

This led Luther, who said he was not prepared to rule, to ask both parties to provide him with cases establishing a legal precedent in Mississippi.

The post ‘The pressure … has gotten worse:’ Facing new charge, Tim Herrington will remain in jail until trial, judge rules appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Federal immigration officials will soon be able to house an additional 250 people at a privately run prison in the Delta. 

Tennessee-based CoreCivic announced Thursday that it has entered contract modifications for the Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility in Tutwiler, which has held U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainees for years.

“We are entering a period where our government partners, particularly our federal government partners, are expected to have increased demand,” Damon T. Hininger, CoreCivic’s chief executive officer, said in a statement. “We anticipate additional contracting activity that will help satisfy their growing needs.”

The 2,672-bed facility already houses Mississippi inmates and some pretrial detainees, out-of-state inmates including those from Vermont and South Carolina and U.S. Marshals Service detainees, which includes immigration detainees.

On Thursday, CoreCivic also announced contract modifications to add a nearly 800-detainee capacity at three other facilities it operates: Northeast Ohio Correctional Center, Nevada Southern Detention Center and Cimarron Correctional Facility in Oklahoma. 

The company also operates the Adams County Correctional Center in Natchez, which is holding the largest number of ICE detainees, averaging 2,154 a day, according to the data collected by the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse and reviewed by Axios.

The post Mississippi private prison OK’d to hold more ICE detainees appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Ocean Springs homeowners on Wednesday appealed a federal court’s decision to dismiss their lawsuit against the city. The dispute stems from the city’s 2023 proposed urban renewal plan that would have permanently labeled some properties as “slum” or “blighted.”

While later that year the city voted against the plan after receiving public pushback, as the Sun Herald reported, the plaintiffs maintain that the state code behind the city’s plan violates their constitutional right to due process. They also argue that there’s nothing stopping the city of Ocean Springs, whose mayor, Kenny Holloway, supported the plan, from reintroducing the idea down the road.

In January, U.S. District Judge Taylor McNeel granted the city’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit, saying the appropriate way to contest the urban renewal plan was by appealing to their locally elected officials.

“This is somewhat evident by how the Plaintiffs’ complaints to their elected leaders have resulted in their properties being removed from the urban renewal area,” McNeel wrote in his opinion. “In a way, the Plaintiffs have already won.”

Under Mississippi law, cities are not required to notify owners of properties that they label “blighted,” a distinction that doesn’t go away. On top of that, those property owners only have 10 days to challenge the designation, a limitation that doesn’t exist in most states, an attorney for the plaintiffs told Mississippi Today in 2023. In 2023, property owners whose land was labeled “blighted” in the Ocean Springs urban renewal plan didn’t know about the designation until months later.

While Holloway, who also owns a real estate and development company, maintained that the city never wanted to forcibly take anyone’s property, a “blight” designation would have allowed the city to do just that through eminent domain.

The nonprofit Institute for Justice represents the five homeowners and church that filed the suit in Wednesday’s appeal to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

“Mississippi governments cannot brand neighborhoods as slums in secret,” Dana Berliner, an attorney at the institute, said in a written statement. “Obviously telling a person about something when it’s too late to do anything is not the meaningful opportunity to be heard that the U.S. Constitution’s Due Process Clause requires.”

The nonprofit said it plans to make oral arguments in the New Orleans court later this year.

The post Ocean Springs homeowners file appeal challenging state’s blight laws appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi’s only academic medical center hopes to gain a national research designation that could improve outcomes for cancer patients in the state with the highest cancer mortality rate in the country. 

The University of Mississippi Medical Center has sought National Cancer Institute designation since 2012, a process it then expected to take five years, the Jackson Free Press reported at the time. Over a decade later, the medical center is again in the early stages of readying itself for an application.

“This is the top priority of the University of Mississippi Medical Center, with staunch support from executive leadership,” said Patrice Guilfoyle, a spokesperson for UMMC.

Guilfoyle declined to say what has prevented the cancer center from reaching its goal over the past 13 years beyond citing changes in leadership and the COVID-19 pandemic. But Mississippi Today spoke with former faculty members who said UMMC previously closed a critical program and lacked the institutional commitment necessary to achieve the status. 

The National Cancer Institute, a federal agency run by the National Institutes of Health, recognizes cancer centers that meet rigorous requirements for laboratory and clinical research and translate scientific knowledge into innovative treatments for patients. They also provide training for the next generation of cancer-care professionals and perform outreach to the community. Designated centers receive a support grant from the agency and have access to early clinical trials.

Studies have shown that patients treated at NCI-designated centers have lower mortality rates than people treated at non-designated cancer centers. 

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in Mississippi, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Mississippi’s cancer death rate is 25% higher than the national average.

Dr. LouAnn Woodward, vice chancellor for health affairs and dean of the UMMC School of Medicine, wrote in 2022 that gaining the designation was an “ethical imperative.” 

She spoke again of its importance at a recent legislative budget hearing for the medical center.

“With Mississippi’s health outcomes in cancer being as terrible as they are, we are committed to working towards this NCI designation,” said Woodward Jan. 14. “It is the thing that will change cancer outcomes in Mississippi.”

There are 72 NCI designated centers nationwide, but none in Mississippi, Louisiana or Arkansas. Cancer patients in Mississippi seeking care at a designated center must travel to Memphis, Birmingham, Dallas or Houston. The designation was first introduced in the 1970s as a part of a national initiative to increase Americans’ access to cutting-edge cancer treatment. 

Achieving the designation will be a “long, heavy lift,” that could take as long as a decade, said Dr. Rodney Rocconi, who has served as director of UMMC’s cancer center since 2023. It will require the center to recruit faculty, expand its research capacity and demonstrate strong programming in community outreach and prevention.

The application process is like an “ultra marathon,” said Dr. Barry Sleckman, the director of the University of Alabama at Birmingham O’Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center, one of the nation’s first-ever NCI designated cancer centers and the only one in Alabama.

The state Legislature increased its appropriation for the cancer center to $9 million for the current fiscal year – a nearly $5 million increase. The additional funding is being used for research infrastructure, clinical trials and to recruit researchers. 

UMMC has already made significant progress recruiting research faculty, according to Rocconi. In the past year, it has hired 14 faculty members of the 30 he estimates will be necessary to strengthen the center’s research programs and amass the requisite level of federal research grant funding for an application.

Many of the hired faculty members bring federal research grants with them, said Rocconi. A strong NCI designation application requires a cancer center to hold $10 million in cancer-related research funding, though some experts suggest twice that amount is needed. 

UMMC falls short of that benchmark. UMMC currently has $3.8 million worth of active federal National Institutes of Health cancer-related research grants, one major source of peer-reviewed cancer research funding, according to publicly available data. Just $500,000 of that funding comes from the National Cancer Institute itself, the most coveted funding source for aspiring NCI-designated cancer centers. 

These federal grants could be reduced due to a recent Trump administration policy that would cut the portion of National Institutes of Health grant funding available for overhead costs. The change has been temporarily blocked by a federal judge. 

Dr. John Ruckdeschel served as the director of UMMC’s Cancer Center and Research Institute from 2017 to 2020. He previously led Moffitt Cancer Center in Tampa to gain NCI designation in 1998 in seven years and helped the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Center in Detroit regain its NCI status. 

He hoped to do the same at UMMC, but retired in 2020 after becoming frustrated by what he said was the medical center leadership’s lack of support and funding aimed at helping the cancer center achieve the designation. The COVID-19 pandemic created another hurdle, one Ruckdeschel acknowledges was not the fault of the medical center. 

“It is, in fact, difficult to see that there is a genuine institutional commitment to cancer care and cancer research at UMMC,” he wrote in his resignation letter in 2020. 

The year he joined UMMC, the Legislature slashed its appropriation for the cancer center from $5 million to $4.25 million. Facing this financial setback, UMMC depended heavily on researchers’ grant funding to support the cancer center but did not invest sufficient resources to retain faculty members and keep an essential program open, Ruckdeschel said. 

Grant funding rarely covers the costs of researchers’ salaries and laboratories, Ruckdeschel wrote in a 2020 article about UMMC’s strategy for achieving NCI designation. So if more scientists are hired – even if they bring federal grants with them – the institution must dedicate resources to the center. 

“You have to make a pretty major commitment from the University,” Ruckdeschel said. “And they’ve just never been willing to do that.”

NCI-designated centers are required to have community outreach and engagement programming, which UMMC plans to house in the School of Population Health. The cancer center is currently in the process of hiring population health researchers who will direct outreach and engagement efforts, Rocconi said. 

However, in 2021 medical center leadership shuttered a program that would have fulfilled that requirement. The program focused on increasing cancer screenings, researching disparities in access to preventive care and exploring variables that impact access to cancer treatment in Mississippi, said Michael Stefanek, the former associate director of the program. 

The closure means community outreach efforts must be rebuilt from scratch, said Roy Duhe, one of the program’s former faculty members. “I saw no reason to close that program,” he said. 

A community outreach and engagement program is one of the more difficult requirements of a National Cancer Institute application to satisfy because it is unlikely to be funded by grants and requires significant institutional financial support, said Sleckman, the director of Alabama’s NCI-designated institution. 

Guilfoyle, a spokesperson for UMMC, declined to say why the program was eliminated, but said work to increase cancer screenings and research disparities in preventive care and access to cancer treatment are ongoing at the institution. 

The cancer center has outreach programming for lung cancer screenings, telehealth and chemotherapy symptom tracking. 

UMMC also plans to construct a new cancer center building – a five-story, 250,000 square foot facility – that will be housed on UMMC’s main campus and facilitate more collaboration between scientific research and clinical care. The medical center initiated a $125 million capital campaign last month and received its largest-ever donation of $25 million for the building. 

“The main focus and the main priority of UMMC is towards cancer,” Rocconi said. “…Our patients and our state need it.”   

The post As UMMC continues decade-long quest for cancer designation, former leaders say the medical center previously lacked commitment to cancer care appeared first on Mississippi Today.

A House chairman killed a proposal aimed at attracting developers to build a resort and casino in the city of Jackson moments before the full chamber was set to vote on it.

House Ways and Means Chairman Trey Lamar, R-Senatobia, made a successful motion to table House Bill 1879, as its sponsor, Rep. Chris Bell, D-Jackson, was answering questions from lawmakers concerned a casino in Jackson would bring unwanted competition to casinos in their districts.

“We didn’t have the votes,” Lamar said. “We felt like it was worth a conversation. Last year it got brought up in committee and didn’t get brought out of committee. This year it made it out of committee and got brought out to the floor,” Lamar said. “Anytime private investors are willing to invest hundreds of millions in downtown Jackson, we think that’s worthy of a conversation. That’s what happened today.”

Tabling the bill caused it to die with a Wednesday deadline.

A dejected Bell walked away after and declined to speak with reporters. Earlier Wednesday, the Ways and Means Committee quickly approved his bill and sent it to the House floor.

House Bill 1879 would have granted one gaming establishment already licensed in Mississippi the legal authority to build a casino in Jackson, in exchange for a minimum capital investment of $500 million for a resort inside downtown Jackson’s Capitol Complex Improvement District.

“This is an opportunity for the city of Jackson to take advantage of opportunities that have been passed over for several years now,” Bell said. “This act provides economic stimulus to the city of Jackson and developers who want to come inside the city of Jackson.”

The measure was the latest attempt in a yearslong push by some lawmakers to clear the way for casino in the capital city. Such efforts last year fizzled quickly in the Legislature after backlash from those who fear economic disruption of existing casinos, including some lawmakers and the Mississippi Gaming and Hospitality Association.

Under current state law, casinos can only be built along the Mississippi River and Gulf Coast, or on land owned by Native Americans. The House proposal would have changed that, allowing for a casino to be built within 6,000 feet, or about one mile, of the state Capitol building.

Proponents of the legislation said the legal authority to build a casino in Jackson, the most populous city in the state at the crossroad of three interstates, would be the primary draw for developers, not tax credits.

“A casino doesn’t need money to be incentivized to come here,” said Conrad Ebner, an accountant who helped draft the proposal. “The casino will do a market analysis and ascertain that they will make money.”

But opponents, including those in the casino industry, said such a move would give one casino an unfair monopoly over the most populated area of the state.

Speaking to reporters after he killed the bill, Lamar said there were already developers interested in building a casino in Jackson, and he expected the Legislature to try again next year at passing a similar measure if the developers were still interested.

“As far as I know, the developers interested in doing this don’t have any plans to go anywhere,” Lamar said.

Those behind the proposal said the plan was not to build a box casino, but a sprawling resort as well. The resort would include retail stores, restaurants, a spa, an RV Park and a hotel with hundreds of rooms.

In a letter sent to state officials last week and obtained by Mississippi Today, Rickey Thigpen, president of the tourism organization, Visit Jackson, said projections show such a casino resort could attract over four million visitors annually. It would create over 6,722 new jobs and bring in over $70 million per year to Mississippi’s economy, he wrote.

On top of the ability to build what proponents say would be a lucrative project, the bill also would have offered financial benefits to developers.

Beyond the casino, it would have also provided tax incentives for developers to restore blighted properties in Jackson. The incentives included a 25% tax credit for building costs.

The legislation aimed to ease the anxieties of other casinos around the state, who have long feared what increased competition from a Jackson casino could mean for their bottom lines.

Under the proposal, developers reinvesting at least $100 million at existing casinos would be eligible for a 10% tax credit, which could be claimed over three years. But the specter of economic disruption still loomed for some lawmakers who were scrambling to review the proposal on Wednesday.

House Minority Leader Robert Johnson represents Natchez, which is home to several casinos. Johnson said the state’s small casinos went through a laborious process getting off the ground, and that a Jackson casino could upend their businesses.

“I’ll do anything I can to help the city of Jackson, but I’m not going to destroy markets on the river,” Johnson said. “Jackson needs a lot of things. I don’t think a casino solves their problems.”

The legislation included a provision that would have made up for revenue shortfalls at casinos in Vicksburg. It did not do the same for Johnson’s Natchez district.

Bell, a fellow Democrat, said Jackson has been deprived of economic development opportunities enjoyed by other areas of the state.

“It’s interesting he would say that because the state of Mississippi has always swayed projects away from the city of Jackson,” Bell said. “So quite frankly, I don’t give a damn about what other casinos have issues with. I’m going to stand up for the city of Jackson. I don’t give a shit about who cares less about (Jackson).”

In 2024, another House measure to pave the way for a Jackson casino died after it caught the Senate, gaming regulators and the casino industry by surprise. That proposal appeared to give special treatment to an unnamed developer, which some speculated was tied to former Gov. Haley Barbour, who had recently pushed the casino development with state lawmakers.

This year’s bill was crafted to award the legal authority to build a casino in Jackson without favoring one developer, said Ebner, one of the proposal’s authors. Lamar told reporters that there were already unnamed developers interested.

Ebner said the measure would have been a much-needed economic boon to a struggling city.

“Unless they are going to move the capital city, the Legislature is going to have to start funding the Capital City,” Ebner said.

Another bill, sponsored by Lamar and seen at least in part as a shot at the casino lobby would have increased taxes on Mississippi casinos from 12% to 16%. It also died with Wednesday’s deadline for passage.

The post House Chairman kills bill aimed at building Jackson casino, says votes weren’t there appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Voters from 10 Senate districts will have to re-decide in November special elections who should represent them in Jackson, pending court approval, under a resolution the Senate approved on Wednesday. 

The chamber passed the plan 33-16. Two Democrats joined with the GOP majority to support the plan, while three Republicans joined with the Democratic minority to oppose it. 

Even though voters just elected members of the Legislature in 2023, the 10 races will be held again because a three-judge federal panel determined last year that the Legislature did not create enough Black-majority districts when it redrew its districts.

The panel ordered the state to redraw the districts and create a new majority-Black district in the DeSoto County area in the Forrest County area. 

Senate Rules Committee Chairman Dean Kirby, a Republican from Pearl, told senators that the newly redrawn map complies with federal law and will allow Black voters in the two areas to elect a candidate of their choice. 

“It’s not a partisan ordeal,” Kirby said. “We have a court order, and we’re going to comply.” 

The map creates one new majority-Black district each in DeSoto County and Forrest County, with no incumbent senator in either district. To account for this, the plan also pits two pairs of incumbents against one another in newly redrawn districts. 

The proposal puts Sen. Michael McLendon, a Republican from Hernando, who is white and Sen. Reginald Jackson, a Democrat from Marks, who is Black, in the same district. The redrawn District 1 contains a Black voting-age population of 52.4%. 

McLendon spoke against the proposal, arguing the process for was not transparent and it was not fair to the city of Hernando, his home city. 

“I don’t want to be pushed out of here,” McLendon said. 

The plan also puts Sen. Chris Johnson and Sen. John Polk, two Republicans from the Hattiesburg area, in the District 44 seat.  Polk announced on the Senate floor that he would not run in the special election, making Jonson the only incumbent running in the race. 

• The full list of the Senate districts that were redrawn are: 

• Senate District 1: Sen. Michael McLendon, R-Hernando, and Sen. Reginald Jackson, D-Marks

• Senate District 2: David Parker, R-Olive Branch 

• Senate District 10: Neil Whaley, R-Potts Camp 

• Senate District 11: New Senate district with no incumbent 

• Senate District 19: Sen. Kevin Blackwell, R-Southaven 

• Senate District 34: Sen. Juan Barnett, D-Heidelburg 

• Senate District 41: Sen. Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall 

• Senate District 42: Sen. Robin Robinson, R-Laurel 

• Senate District 44:  Sen. John Polk, R-Hattiesburg, Sen. Chris Johnson, R-Hattiesburg 

• Senate District 45: New district with no incumbent 

McLendon and Sen. Derrick Simmons, a Democrat from Greenville, offered amendments that proposed revised maps, but both alternatives were rejected. 

Simmons, the Senate’s Democratic leader, opposed the plan the Senate passed Thursday because he does not believe any incumbent senators should be paired in the same district.

The House earlier in the session approved a plan that redrew five districts in north Mississippi and made the House district in Chickasaw County a majority-Black district. 

Sen. Kirby told reporters he believes the House and the Senate have a “gentleman’s agreement” to pass the other chambers’ plan, which has historically been the custom. 

Under the legislation, the qualifying period for new elections would run from May 19 to May 30. The primary election will be held on August 5, with a potential primary runoff on September 2 and the general election on November 4.

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves has no direct say in legislative redistricting, so once the Legislature passes a redistricting plan, it will go back before the federal courts for approval. 

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Mississippi let a double murderer go free. Twice.

Now he is dead, and an older couple is injured.

In May 2023, the Mississippi Parole Board released James Williams III — 18 years after he was convicted of fatally shooting his father, James Jr., and stepmother, Cindy Lassiter Mangum. Williams had previously tried to poison them to death.

His parole faced pushback from the victims’ family, community members and lawmakers. 

At the time, Zeno Magnum, whose mother was killed by Williams, decried the Parole Board’s decision. “He murdered ‘em, threw ‘em in trash bags, put them in Rubbermaid trash cans and threw ‘em out like the trash,” he said. “We are concerned not only for our personal safety, but also for the safety of anyone who may come in contact with this psychopath.”

Parole Board Chairman Jeffrey Belk defended the Parole Board’s decision, saying they received no objection from the family or others at the time — a claim that Magnum’s family disputed.

Less than five months after his parole, he got drunk and wrecked his car on Oct. 20, 2023, the same day of the Brandon-Pearl high school football game, Magnum said. “There were people everywhere. He’s very fortunate he didn’t kill anybody.”

Williams’ parole was revoked, and he returned to prison. 

A month later, the Parole Board found that by violating the law, he violated a condition of his parole. Three of four members voted to return him to prison for a year, according to court records, and Belk cast the lone “no” vote.

Hinds County Circuit Judge Debra Gibbs vacated the Parole Board’s decision to return Williams to prison for at least a year for violating parole. 

“Mr. Williams has already served more than ninety (90) days in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections,” the judge wrote. “Therefore – unless he is held pursuant to some other sentence or order – he SHALL BE RELEASED IMMEDIATELY from the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections and returned to parole.” 

The judge agreed with Williams’ argument that his DUI misdemeanor constituted a technical violation of his parole, meaning that 90 days was the maximum period he could be imprisoned for a first-time technical violation. The judge’s decision matched a recent attorney general’s office opinion on the subject.

When word came that Williams might go free again, Cindy Mangum’s sister, Barbara Rankin, said her family set up a Sept. 16, 2024, meeting with Parole Board members, she said. “They let him out a week before we were set to go.”

Around noon Saturday, Williams met his death near Sanctuary Drive. The 39-year-old was driving his 2009 Honda Civic north on Will Stutely Drive when he collided with a 2019 GMC Sierra that contained Curtis Jones, 73, and his 72-year-old wife, Ruth, who were traveling east, according to the Mississippi Highway Patrol.

Williams was pronounced dead on the scene. Paramedics transported the couple to St. Dominic’s Hospital in Jackson. Their injuries remain unknown, and the patrol continues to investigate to determine if Williams had been intoxicated.

“The ironic thing,” Zeno Magnum said, “is if he was still in prison, he would be alive.”

The whole ordeal has been “cloaked in secrecy,” he said. “My mom was killed, and it was like pulling teeth to get information on it. It was tough even for me as her son to get information.”

Williams’ death has brought him a wide range of emotions. On one hand, he doesn’t want to celebrate the loss of a human being, he said, but on the other hand, the death “does bring my family and I a great deal of closure.”

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