In Mississippi, Christian forgiveness does not equate to felony voting reforms
As Haley Barbour faced an onslaught of criticism for pardoning dozens of people convicted of felonies as his tenure as governor ended in 2012, he cited his Christian beliefs for his actions.
“Christianity teaches us forgiveness and second chances. I believe in second chances, and I try hard to be forgiving,” the former governor said soon after leaving office of the more than 200 acts of clemency he granted.
During his eight years as governor, Barbour, like most other Mississippi politicians, did nothing to make that forgiveness more inclusive by creating a system that would make it easier for the literally tens of thousands of people convicted of felonies to have their voting rights restored.
Most Mississippi politicians wear their Christianity on their sleeve. The primary tenet of the Christian faith is forgiveness and redemption. Yet, they do not see as part of that forgiveness and redemption the restoration of voting rights for people convicted of felonies.
Multiple studies have made the argument that restoring voting rights increases the odds that people who have been convicted of felonies will become productive members of society.
Dennis Hopkins, a 46-year-old Potts Camp resident who lost his right to vote as a teenager when he was convicted of grand larceny, but is now a productive member of the community in the north Mississippi hamlet, explained to lawmakers the importance of voting.
“Voting to me is everything,” Hopkins said in 2021 during a legislative hearing. “I tell my kids how important the vote is … it shames me to tell them I can’t vote.”
The old adage that the judicial system moves slowly has never been truer than when it comes to Mississippi’s one-in-the-nation system of preventing people convicted of certain felonies from regaining their voting rights.
On Sept. 25, 2021 (more than 10 months ago), the entire panel of the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments about whether Mississippi’s felony disenfranchisement is unconstitutional. Seventeen judges heard the argument at the federal courthouse in New Orleans. It is not an everyday occurrence for the entire panel to hear oral arguments, so the assumption was that the federal appeals court was placing a priority on the issue.
But since that September day, there have been crickets from the court.
At some point, the court finally will issue a ruling.
In Mississippi, people with felony convictions must petition the Legislature to get a bill passed by a two-thirds majority of both chambers to regain voting rights. Normally only a handful (less than five) of such bills are successful each session. There is also the option of the governor granting a pardon to restore voting rights. But no governor has granted pardons since Barbour in 2012.
For a subset of those who lose their rights, the courts can expunge their record. In some instances that expungement includes the restoration of voting rights and for others it does not. It just depends on the preference of the judge granting the expungement.
During the 2022 session, legislation was passed clarifying that the judicial expungement would always include the restoration of voting rights. That modest legislation would have been the biggest change to the state’s felony voting system since it was incorporated into the Mississippi Constitution in 1890. But it was vetoed by Gov. Tate Reeves.
The U.S. Supreme Court in past decisions has given the states broad leeway in stripping the right to vote for those convicted of felonies. But it is worth pointing out that Mississippi is in a distinct minority of states (less than 10) not automatically restoring voting rights at some point after a sentence is completed.
The aforementioned 5th Circuit is considering the argument that the Mississippi felony voting ban is unconstitutional because it was placed in the 1890 state Constitution as one of many provisions intended to prevent African Americans from voting. If it was done for racial reasons, then it should be unconstitutional, the proponents of the lawsuit argue. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch opposes the lawsuit.
In the 1890s, the Mississippi Supreme Court wrote the disfranchisement of people of specific felonies was placed in the Constitution “to obstruct the exercise of the franchise by the negro race” by targeting “the offenses to which its weaker members were prone.” The crimes selected by lawmakers to go into the provision were thought by the white political leaders at the time as more likely to be committed by African Americans. They also imposed poll taxes, literacy tests, segregated schools, a ban of mixed race marriages and other racist provisions into the Constitution.
They, of course, took all of those steps in the name of Christianity.
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Mississippi Today with Artist Adam Trest
As part of our member-only newsletter, The Exclusive, Mississippi Today caught up with Laurel-based artist Adam Trest. This interview was originally published on July 27 and shared with Mississippi Today members. Each month, we bring our members exclusive interviews and events, such as this conversation with Ben and Erin Napier, to thank them for their support of our newsroom. Become a member by donating any recurring amount today and be the first to hear about our upcoming exclusive interviews and events.
Trest is a part of the Mississippi Arts Commission’s Artist Roster, which selects artists from various medias and helps organizations fund presenting the artists through grants. His work is featured in the Caron Gallery and in a current exhibit at the Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Experience in Meridian, Mississippi.
His unique style caught the attention of many when he was featured on HGTV’s “Home Town” with Ben and Erin Napier. Recently, Trest illustrated a children’s book written by Erin Napier titled “The Lantern House,” which made him a New York Times bestselling illustrator.
Tell us about yourself and how you got your start.
“I started painting before I could write. I can’t remember not doing it. I grew up with parents who saw my potential in the arts and made sure I always had what I needed to create. I graduated in 2009 from Mississippi State with a BFA in Painting, and have been working as a professional artist ever since. I am a painter, I work mostly in acrylic paints and inks.”
Where do you draw your inspiration from?
“I find most of my inspiration from life in the south. I love the flora and fauna of Mississippi, and I love the tradition of storytelling that is so rich in our area. I often refer to my process as “visual storytelling” because I find my work most successful when the viewer can tell me more about my paintings than even I knew about them.”
How has being from Mississippi and the South influenced your work?
“I love the landscape of Mississippi. I just completed a series of paintings for the Mississippi Arts and Entertainment Experience in Meridian (the MAX) that is a celebration of each of the regions of Mississippi. Each painting showcases one of the regions and gives a taste of the plants and animals that are unique to that area. There are so many wonderful secrets in our state, and I had such an amazing experience seeking them out and telling their stories through my work.”
How do you measure success for yourself and what has been the biggest success of your career?
“I was raised in a home that celebrated hard work and persistence. To me the measure of success that I’ve seen has been equal parts hard work and not giving up (my wife would probably say stubbornness). I’m extremely goal oriented, so to me, success comes when I’ve met a goal I set for myself. The biggest success of my career (and also one of the most challenging projects of my career) has been the launch of the children’s book I had the privilege of illustrating for Erin Napier. Working on a traditionally published children’s book has always been a major goal of mine, and seeing that come to fruition, and then also seeing my name on the NYT bestseller list for a few weeks following the release. That was a pretty amazing time.”
Since being featured on Home Town and illustrating The Lantern House, how has the increased attention affected your work? Has it changed the way you approach your art?
“The exposure that has come from both “Home Town” and “The Lantern House” has been pretty amazing. It has given me the opportunity to really push myself into the style I have developed. It has allowed me to create work that I’m really excited about. I wouldn’t say that it had changed my approach too terribly much, but it has given me a springboard to work on projects that would possibly have been out of reach before. One of those projects is a new line of cement tiles that I was given the opportunity to design that will be out later this year.”
What do you hope people think and feel when they view your art?
“My biggest desire for my work is for people to see it and it to evoke some kind of memory. Because my work is heavily influenced by traditional folk art and nature, I love it when my work serves as a sort of illustration that awakens a lost memory for the viewer. When someone comes into the Caron Gallery and sees one of my dog paintings and it reminds them of their childhood pet, or maybe the first dog they brought home for their kids. At that point, the painting has taken on a life and a story beyond anything I could have hoped for. At that point the painting has taken a life of its own.”
How has being a part of the Mississippi Arts Commission artist roster impacted your career?
“Absolutely! Being on the artist roster has opened quite a few doors. Without being on the artist roster, I would not have gotten the museum exhibition that I have opening July 26 at the MAX in Meridian.”
If you were to give a piece of advice to an aspiring artist from Mississippi, what would it be?
“I would probably encourage them to find their peers! One of my favorite things about being a Mississippi Artist is that I get to count myself amongst other artists working in Mississippi today. There are so many wonderful and kind artists around our state, and I have become a better artist for knowing them. Having a local support system in South Mississippi and also an even larger network on the state level. My experience has been one of encouragement and support.”
How can people find your work?
“My original works as well as prints of my work can be found at www.adamtrest.com.”
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Bonus Mississippi Stories: Ben and Erin Napier
Mississippi Today Editor-at-Large Marshall Ramsey sat down with Laurel-based couple Ben and Erin Napier of HGTV’s “Home Town” on Zoom as part of a Mississippi Today member event on July 1. You can gain access to exclusive events, interviews with great Mississippians like artist Adam Trest, and more by joining our member community through a donation of any amount today.
Answering questions submitted by members prior to the event, the Napiers discussed everything from how they have maintained family time during filming to Ben’s enthusiasm for old cars.
Watch the full interview:
Listen to the full interview:
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Reddit AMA recap: What’s next for Mississippi after Roe?
On Friday, July 22, community health reporter Isabelle Taft answered questions on Reddit about the future of abortion, reproductive rights and health care in Mississippi after SCOTUS overturned Roe v. Wade and Mississippi’s trigger law was put into effect.
Click to jump to a specific question:
What other medical procedures will be impacted by the change, and how will they be affected?
What will happen in the case of ectopic pregnancy where the mother will die without an abortion?
Who determines if an abortion would save the life of the mother?
Can a pro-life activist sue a doctor or hospital for performing a life-saving abortion if they feel the mother wasn’t in mortal danger? And how would this threat affect the quality of healthcare across the state?
The broader uncertainty over how new abortion laws will actually be enforced
Do you expect the Mississippi Legislature to continue to restrict abortions in Mississippi (as in removing the exception for rape or life of the mother)?
Do you think there is any risk of people getting arrested for using drugs off-label for abortion?
Do you foresee more Mississippi women [choosing sterilization] instead of building families going forward?
Q: What other medical procedures will be impacted by the change (examples being miscarriages or IVF), and how will they be affected?
A: It’s not completely clear.
Right now, IVF is going on as usual in Mississippi, but I spoke with a doctor earlier this month who is concerned about the future. Defining fertilization as the beginning of life, which the personhood amendment the state voted down in 2011 would have done, would create big legal challenges for IVF, which often involves the creation of excess embryos. But Sen. Joey Fillingane, one of the main architects of anti-abortion laws in the state and the author of the abortion trigger ban, told me that enshrining legal protections for IVF and surrogacy is one of his priorities in this area for the next legislative session.
When it comes to miscarriages, I think there will be more consequences. Doctors have told us they’re worried about situations where someone is miscarrying but maybe the fetus still has a heartbeat. Pre-Dobbs, they would perform a D&C to finish the process and stop hemorrhaging. Now, that may be seen as an unnecessary legal risk and you could see hospitals sending people home to wait. (There’s been a lot of reporting about this happening in Texas, for example, which effectively banned abortion in 2021.)
Nationally there’s also been a lot of reporting about people being denied miscarriage management drugs mifepristone and misoprostol by pharmacists because these are also used in medication abortions. I’ve spoken with pharmacists and doctors about this in Mississippi, and anecdotally no one reported a patient being denied a prescription after Dobbs. (Also important to note that we’re not aware of anyone who was prescribing abortion pills in Mississippi before Dobbs besides the Pink House, where more than half of all abortions were medication abortions.)
And a natural miscarriage is not distinguishable from a miscarriage induced by abortion pills. So one possibility is that people who are miscarrying will be more reluctant to go to the hospital if they have complications, because they could be concerned about intrusive questioning and even law enforcement involvement. (I think people’s experiences with this are going to vary drastically based on where they live, the hospital they go to, even who happens to be on shift at a given time.)
Q: What will happen in the case of ectopic pregnancy where the mother will die without an abortion? Asking for both the letter of the law and what you believe will actually happen in practice.
A: In cases like an ectopic pregnancy where it is very clear that the mother could die without an abortion and there is no chance of a live birth, the law clearly allows Mississippi doctors to do what they have done before the ruling in Dobbs: Terminate the pregnancy. I spoke with a doctor in the Delta this week who did exactly that, without any additional calls to attorneys or hospital administrators.
In practice, pregnancy can involve situations that are dangerous or potentially dangerous for the pregnant person but not as clear-cut as an ectopic pregnancy. Those are the situations that doctors I’ve spoken with are more concerned and confused about. Some pre-existing conditions like pulmonary hypertension make pregnancy itself very risky, but the threat to the person’s life isn’t imminent. Before Dobbs, physicians could have a conversation with their patient about the best course of action and the pregnancy could be terminated in Mississippi. Now, those conversations and choices come with the possibility of up to a decade in prison of a doctor winds up being criminally investigated.
Here’s a story from this week that goes into what doctors are thinking about this issue.
Q: Who determines if an abortion would save the life of the mother? Is it the state or would a doctor be able to determine that?
A: The state’s trigger law isn’t crystal clear on the point of who makes the decision that a person’s life is at risk, and how they’re supposed to make that decision. This is what it says: “No abortion shall be performed or induced in the State of Mississippi, except in the case where necessary for the preservation of the mother’s life or where the pregnancy was caused by rape.”
In practice, that determination is going to fall to doctors around the state, likely in some cases in consultation with hospital attorneys and ethics boards. In some cases, like ectopic pregnancies, the legal standard will be pretty clearly met. In others, it won’t be, and doctors may choose not to perform an abortion where previously they would had a conversation with the patient about what to do.
The lawsuit over Louisiana’s abortion ban is ongoing, but one physician filed an affidavit explaining how the ban affected their work when it was briefly in effect earlier in July. A patient’s water broke at 16 weeks, and the patient wanted the doctor to perform a dilation & evacuation (D&E) to quickly end the nonviable pregnancy. There was no chance that the pregnancy result in a live birth, but the hospital’s attorneys told the doctor she couldn’t perform an abortion. Instead, the patient delivered the fetus naturally, which took hours and also caused her to hemorrhage a liter of blood.
Unlike Mississippi’s ban, Louisiana law includes an exception for “medically futile” pregnancies, but the law also says the state health department is supposed to issue a list of what qualifies as “medically futile,” and it hasn’t done so yet. But that exception should give doctors there more discretion than in Mississippi, where terminating a nonviable pregnancy is legal only if not doing so threatens the pregnant person’s life.
Q: Can a pro-life activist sue a doctor or hospital for performing a life-saving abortion if they feel the mother wasn’t in mortal danger? And how would this threat affect the quality of healthcare across the state?
A: To your question about the possibility of lawsuits, I think it’s too early to say for sure what will happen in Mississippi because all of this is so new. Some OB/GYNs we’ve talked to expressed concern and confusion over the possibility of being sued by someone who believes an abortion wasn’t necessary to save the life of the mother. They don’t appear to be getting guidance on this from any agency or their employers.
Q: Can police legally force a pregnancy test on a woman they suspect is traveling to have an abortion? Can they detain that woman until she gives birth or dies?
Can state law enforcement legally use data from mobile devices to extrapolate if a woman might be seeking an abortion, then target that woman for investigation? Would a compiled list of these women be used legally as a function of abortion law enforcement?
A: I’m going to group your questions about police forcing pregnancy tests and using mobile data because they’re related to the broader uncertainty over how these laws will actually be enforced.
Mississippi law doesn’t have any provision saying a person may not travel out of state to seek an abortion, and the trigger ban specifies that police can’t prosecute a woman for her own abortion. So it would not be legal to detain someone on the suspicion that they were going to travel out of state for an abortion.
I think it’s pretty unlikely that law enforcement would use mobile data proactively to try to surveil for a potential abortion attempt in this way, especially because the trigger law says you can’t prosecute a woman for her own abortion. I do think that when police get a report of a possible illegal abortion (say if a woman comes to a local hospital with complications), we’re likely to see search warrants for mobile data as part of their investigation. This notably happened in the Latice Fisher case in Starkville a few years ago. She said she gave birth to a stillborn baby, and police found that she had searched for abortion pills and used that as part of the murder case against her, even though there was no evidence she had actually taken them. Charges were dropped after local and national advocates raised questions about the dubious test that had been used to claim her baby was born alive. Here’s a Washington Post story about the case and its national implications post-Roe.
Q: Hello Isabelle, do you expect the Mississippi Legislature to continue to restrict abortions in Mississippi (as in removing the exception for rape or life of the mother)? Additionally, has [Philip] Gunn clarified his thoughts on IVF and its continued legal status considering his belief that life begins at conception?
A: I don’t want to make any overconfident predictions but I do expect there will be discussion of further abortion restrictions next session. I think there is going to be appetite for strengthening laws against abortion pills, though I’m not sure what that will look like in practice because the state can’t police people’s mail and the pills are easy enough to order online from places where they are legal. That issue is clearly front of mind for anti-abortion folks in Mississippi, especially after billboards advertising abortion pills went up around Jackson. This is from an email that Pro-Life Mississippi sent out yesterday:
“Billboards are becoming the new battleground against the abortion industry. New billboards promoting abortion pills have appeared in Richland and Jackson… The Mississippi Attorney General’s Office is working on a coordinated response to these types of deceptive advertisements that could result in harming women with dangerous medication.”
(Note that medication abortion has been in wide use around the world for decades with a very low rate of complications, including when used at home without formal medical supervision.)
I don’t know if there will be a push to remove the exceptions but I haven’t heard anything to that effect. It’s worth noting that doctors told us that they don’t expect anyone in Mississippi will be willing to perform abortions in cases of rape, given the legal risks, so that exception may effectively already be moot.
To my knowledge, Gunn hasn’t clarified his stance on IVF. I would be surprised if there is any effort to do anything that would affect IVF: Sen. Fillingane, who authored the abortion ban, actually wants to pass legislation to make clear that IVF and surrogacy are protected in Mississippi. (He fathered twin sons via surrogacy last year so this issue is close to him.) And I think it’s important to note that people who use IVF are generally people with means and access to channels of political influence. I don’t see commitment to the idea of life beginning at fertilization leading lawmakers to pursue laws that would constrain IVF.
Q: Do you think there is any risk of people getting arrested for using drugs off-label for abortion? What precautions can they take? What are good resources for them?
Also, is it a legitimate worry that MS residents may not be able to travel out of state to get an abortion?
A: To your first set of questions, I don’t want to make too many predictions because I think it’s still unclear how law enforcement will seek to carry out these new laws. With 82 different counties, I think we’re going to see a lot of variability in how police and DAs operate and how aggressive they are in investigating and punishing abortions. The trigger ban says a person can’t be prosecuted for their own abortion. In pre-Roe Mississippi, women were not often prosecuted for their abortions but were frequently pressured to testify against doctors and others who had been involved in the abortion. The use of abortion pills is going to be really tough for state authorities to regulate because it’s so easy to obtain them from overseas providers like Aid Access– who would Mississippi authorities prosecute?
This story looks at abortions and prosecutions in MS before Roe:
And this one discusses access to abortion pills and why the state will struggle to control it:
I don’t know what we might see in the next legislative session. I do know the pro-life lawmakers I have spoken with have said they’re not interested in trying to restrict Mississippians’ travel out of state, and Justice Brett Kavanaugh – who joined the majority to overturn Roe – wrote that he would find such a law unconstitutional. But it’s definitely true that many Mississippians won’t be able to travel to obtain an abortion for logistical reasons. Advocates expect the closest clinic will ultimately be in Carbondale, Illinois, a six to seven-hour drive from Jackson. (Currently, clinics in Louisiana and Florida are providing abortions.)
Q: Concerning reproductive health: do you think the state government will now create/enact legislation to make it harder for people to obtain birth control (specifically Plan B or any other estrogen-type pill form of birth control obtained via prescription)?
A: From what I have heard from lawmakers and anti-abortion advocates, there are not plans to do this or push for it.
Q: As a woman who was considering children and is now leaning towards sterilization due to the unacceptable risk involved in Mississippi, do you foresee more Mississippi women making that choice instead of building families going forward? We already have a brain drain problem, so do you think we’ll see even more of us younger folks moving to states with safer healthcare access?
All I have are anecdotal experiences on this, but a lot of my female friends have been pursuing sterilization and long-term contraceptive methods much more actively since the ruling–one has already scheduled a hysterectomy out of state by a doctor willing to perform it (notoriously hard to get when you’re a young woman with no children).
So along those lines, do you think we will be seeing bans on women’s contraceptives? I doubt we’ll see bans on condoms, but plan B and birth control pills could end up on the chopping block given how uneducated people tend to be on how those actually work.
A: One OB/GYN we spoke with mentioned she’s experienced an uptick in requests for tubal ligations since the Dobbs ruling. She also has concerns about the fate of certain emergency contraception, including IUDs, and it’s only reasonable to think other Mississippians might share that concern. Gov. Tate Reeves and other state leaders have said publicly they will not be targeting contraception, but have not specified what they do and do not consider contraception – despite our repeated questioning.
I also spoke recently with Terri Herring, the head of Choose Life Mississippi and a powerful anti-abortion advocate in the state. She said she doesn’t plan to advocate for restrictions on any pregnancy prevention measures, and she includes IUDs in there.
Q: I’ve seen that Google can help police track internet searches for abortions and how to get one. What safety factors do Mississippians need to consider when trying to figure out how to access abortion?
A: I haven’t done any reporting on this topic so I’ll refer you to this general guide from the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit that defends civil liberties on the internet.
Q: Is Mississippi one of the states that are not allowing women with certain diagnoses, for example, rheumatoid arthritis to be able to obtain prescriptions such as methotrexate for their health? (I’ve read Methotrexate and a few other prescriptions have been denied in some states since the overturn because the medication can potentially be used for abortion.)
A: I have not talked to a lot of pharmacists, but the handful I’ve spoken to have said they haven’t heard of this happening in our state. I haven’t heard from any doctors about patients being denied their prescriptions either. If anyone has direct experience with this please send me an email (itaft@mississippitoday.org)!
Q: Also if you do cross state lines for abortion care what will happen if you come back into the state?
A: This is a great question. Abortion complications are rare so for most people, nothing will happen.
If you do have a complication and go to a hospital to get treatment, the hospital is legally required to report the complication to the Health Department. (We recently obtained the annual reports on these complications for 2015-2020, and most years 0 complications were reported. In two years, there were four complications each, all non-fatal.) The complication reporting form doesn’t ask for the patient’s name, SSN, DOB or anything like that, but it does ask for details like age, race, marital status and previous pregnancy outcomes.
After the ruling in Dobbs, Ochsner, which operates some hospitals in South Mississippi, reminded staff that they are required to report abortion complications to the health department.
I don’t know what kinds of decisions hospitals and medical staff will make as to when/whether to involve the police in a situation like that.
Biloxi police told Gautama Mehta of the Sun Herald that if they get a report of a possibly illegal abortion, which is a felony, their understanding is that they are required to investigate it.
The next Reddit AMA:
The post Reddit AMA recap: What’s next for Mississippi after Roe? appeared first on Mississippi Today.
Gov. Reeves justifies omitting volleyball stadium from welfare lawsuit, equivocates on legality of expenditure
Gov. Tate Reeves explained on Thursday that his office, not the independent attorney hired to take the case, used an “objective process” to select who would face charges in the state’s massive civil lawsuit that attempts to claw back millions in misspent welfare funds.
The stated process, with its many caveats, happened to exclude University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation, which the head of the welfare department and its attorney had initially intended on suing.
Reeves, who has been accused of a political cover-up in recent days for firing the private attorney bringing the lawsuit, said the state limited its complaint to people and companies who received payments that a third-party forensic auditing firm labeled as “waste, fraud and abuse” in a narrow October 2021 report or who were the subject of criminal charges.
“We’ve got to have an objective process by which we determine who gets sued. Knowing that, we can add any party in the future,” Reeves said Thursday during a press gaggle at the Neshoba County Fair — his first public comments since he was accused of firing the attorney to protect USM Athletic Foundation and other politically connected players. “… The only exception in the suit that we currently have that was not listed in that ‘waste, fraud, and abuse’ category that we have sued is Prevacus. And the reason for that is because at the time the lawsuit was filed, it was the subject of the criminal indictment from one of the co-conspirators.”
But like Prevacus, the pharmaceutical company backed by retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre, payments to the University of Southern Mississippi Athletic Foundation were also the subject of a criminal indictment and plea. The governor’s office directed the welfare department to remove the USM athletic foundation, whose board includes several Reeves donors, from its initial civil complaint before it was filed.
Reeves’ statement also doesn’t jibe with the fact that forensic auditors found $12.4 million in “waste, fraud and abuse,” but the civil suit seeks to recoup $24 million it says the defendants diverted “from the statutory purposes of that program and squandered by and for their enrichment.”
Nevertheless, the state has, at least to this point, decided against using the civil lawsuit to explore one of the most egregious schemes in the scandal: the use of $5 million in welfare money to build a volleyball stadium at the University of Southern Mississippi.
In fact, the welfare department Reeves oversees removed the attorney who crafted the case, former U.S. Attorney Brad Pigott, for doing just that. Reeves initially approved of his welfare director, Bob Anderson, hiring Pigott on a year-long contract, which ends July 31.
Another paradox in Reeves’ explanation about how they chose which people and purchases to target in the suit is that retired NFL quarterback Brett Favre wasn’t included in the forensic audit report or criminal charges, but he was named as a defendant in the civil litigation.
Asked Thursday afternoon to clarify its process for selecting defendants, the governor’s office sent a statement saying, “It was decided at the time, based on the sheer amount of evidence surrounding Prevacus that was presented in the criminal indictment, that a limited exception would be made (for those entities and individuals connected to Prevacus) to the general policy of sticking to “fraud, waste, and abuse” as identified by the forensic audit. There were many other entities that were questioned and/or included in the indictments that may be added in the future.”
The lawsuit doesn’t limit its probe into Favre to the Prevacus deal; it also includes $1.1 million in welfare money he received for public appearances officials say he never gave – an expenditure never described in the “waste, fraud and abuse” report Reeves referenced.
Favre had been seeking funding from the state of Mississippi to prop up Prevacus. Just weeks after Favre and Prevacus founder Jake Vanlandingham first offered Gov. Phil Bryant stock in the company to get him “on the team” in late 2018, they began receiving stolen welfare funds for their experimental drug projects that eventually totaled more than $2 million. Text messages uncovered by Mississippi Today showed Bryant agreed to accept a company package two days after leaving office, but arrests caused him to back out of the deal.
“We also took into account sensitivities regarding the ongoing criminal investigations that would be improper to opine upon further,” the governor’s statement continued.
Forensic auditors also noted in reports that they were limited in what they could review, preventing them from making determinations in its “waste, fraud and abuse” report about roughly $40 million in spending from nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center, including payments to the athletic foundation and Favre.
“There are certain entities that are in question that the forensic auditor opined that they didn’t have enough information to determine if it was waste, fraud and abuse or not,” Reeves said Thursday. “And the reason they didn’t have enough information to determine that is because some entities, for example MCEC, because of the criminal case, were unwilling to cooperate with the forensic audit. So, there are a lot of entities that are not in the ‘waste, fraud and abuse’ that can be added in the future. This is the reason, by the way, that most of the time in situations such as this the civil case comes after the criminal case.”
The forensic auditors noted that they were limited in whose emails they could review and also unable to retrieve documents not just from Mississippi Community Education Center, but also from the State Auditor’s Office, which as the initial investigating agency possessed many of the pertinent documents.
Some defendants in the civil suit have requested a stay in the case to allow the criminal proceedings to wrap up before continuing the civil proceedings.
“The New Defendants have taken responsibility for their roles, yet they continue to be thrust into the crossfire by powerful forces fighting over political futures and tens of millions of dollars. The State wants to avoid liability and embarrassment, the Feds want their money back, and the public wants answers,” New’s attorney Gerry Bufkin wrote in a motion to stay on behalf of the New nonprofit Mississippi Community Education Center.
The hearing for this motion is set for August 17, and based on Reeves comments, it appears the state may be in support of this route.
Several other entities that received funds categorized as waste, fraud and abuse – such as Through the Fire Ministries, a Christian organization founded by a musician Deborah Bryant favored – were not included in the civil suit. The ministry received $25,000. The other entities named in the forensic audit report that were omitted from the lawsuit received under $25,000.
The Warren, Washington, Issaquena, Sharkey Community Action Agency (WWISCAA), a defendant in the civil suit, was sued for as little as $49,190.
Lobaki Inc., another company that criminal defendants have admitted to defrauding the government in order to lavish with hundreds of thousands of welfare dollars, is also omitted from the civil suit.
MDHS initially announced shortly after receiving the forensic audit that the agency would be suing both the athletic foundation and Lobaki – but then the governor’s office instituted its “objective process.”
When Pigott started seeking information about the volleyball scheme, the largest known purchase within the $77 million welfare scandal, the state abruptly removed him from the case.
The volleyball project began in 2017 when Favre began seeking support for a new athletic facility at his alma mater, where his daughter played volleyball. He had the ear of Bryant and welfare officials John Davis, then-director of MDHS, and Nancy New, operator of a nonprofit that had started receiving a windfall of federal grant funds from the department.
The federal government prohibits states from using this money, a block grant called Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, on brick and mortar, so officials devised a scheme to conceal the true nature of the payment by calling it a lease. The nonprofit pretended that the $5 million lease with the athletic foundation would enable it to provide services to needy people. Nancy New’s son Zach New pleaded guilty to fraud over this scheme. The deal was signed off on by Institutes of Higher Learning and the Attorney General’s Office, according to IHL board meeting minutes.
A separate report from the same forensic auditors described the $5 million payment from Mississippi Community Education Center to the USM athletic foundation as unallowed under federal rules.
To explore all involved, Pigott subpoenaed the athletic foundation for its communication with several key people, including Bryant, his wife Deborah Bryant, and Favre. At the same time, Pigott also subpoenaed conservative radio station Supertalk for its interviews with key defendants in the case who often appeared on the show to tout their work.
The administration didn’t like the direction Pigott was taking.
“There seemed to be a pattern by the lawyer that DHS originally hired to want to move beyond those that were in that (waste, fraud and abuse) category for purposes of this litigation,” Reeves said. “It was almost as if there was a political agenda from this particular lawyer.”
As for the volleyball scheme itself – which could send Zach New to prison – Reeves equivocated on the legality of the expenditure.
“…while they may not have been wise expenditures, or they may not have been expenditures that I would have approved, the question is were they legal, or were they waste, fraud, and abuse. If they were waste fraud and abuse, then we filed suit,” Reeves said. “…I don’t know all the details as to how that (volleyball stadium) came about, what I do know is that it doesn’t seem like an expense that I would personally support for TANF dollars.”
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‘We can’t wait for another death’: Judge rules receiver will be appointed to manage Hinds County jail
A federal receiver will be appointed to manage the Hinds County jail, a federal judge ruled Friday.
U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves wrote officials have received multiple chances to fix the Raymond jail, but they have been unable to. The court will appoint a receiver by Nov. 1.
“We can’t wait for continued destruction of the facilities,” Reeves wrote in his 26-page order. “We can’t wait for the proliferation of more contraband. We can’t wait for more assaults. We can’t wait for another death. The time to act is now. There is no other choice, unfortunately.”
Receivership, a form of intervention by the federal court to take an institution out of the hands of local or state management, was an option considered during three weeks of hearings at the federal courthouse in Jackson earlier this year. Hernandez Stroud, counsel for the Justice Program at the Brennan Center for Justice, said receivership for county jails is uncommon, the Clarion Ledger reported.
The decision to appoint a receiver comes years after the U.S. Department of Justice investigated the jail and settled with the county to come up with a consent decree, whose goal was to help Hinds County address unconstitutional issues at the jail.
Hinds County Board of Supervisors President Credell Calhoun said Friday the county will work with its attorneys to come up with an action plan about receivership.
The county and U.S. Department of Justice can submit ideas for powers and duties of the receiver, but ultimately what the receiver can do will be up to the court.
Calhoun said despite the decision, current members of the board have made progress at the jail, including making plans to build a new one.
“We’ve done a lot to improve the facility since this board was sworn in, and we think we’ve made a lot of progress in the jail,” he said.
In his order, Reeves said the county has spent millions of dollars on the jail, but that hasn’t fixed conditions. He also said building a new jail won’t fix unconstitutional issues occurring now.
In April, Reeves issued an injunction to scale back the county’s consent decree. During a press conference at the time, Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones said the lifted decree was “a step in the right direction.”
By May, the county indicated that it planned to appeal.
Attorneys for the county filed a motion for reconsideration for a March contempt order Reeves filed against officials for failing to fix problems at the jail, which Reeves denied in his Friday order.
A July 19 hearing was a last chance for the county to offer evidence that jail conditions were being addressed, Reeves said. Testimony and evidence showed a risk of harm remains at the Hinds County Detention Center, he wrote.
A team of court appointed monitors have visited the jail since 2016 and offered ways to help the county comply with the consent decree. Reeves said the monitoring team will stop its work once a receiver is appointed.
“After ample time and opportunity, regretfully, it is clear that the County is incapable, or unwilling, to handle its affairs,” Reeves wrote in his Friday order. “The County’s motion for reconsideration is denied. Additional intervention is required. It is time to appoint a receiver.”
Reeves offered two other extreme, less likely alternatives to receivership: the release of jail detainees into the public and closure of the jail. The other was to require the Hinds County Board of Supervisors and sheriff to spend at least a week detained in the jail to experience what life is like there.
“Experiencing life at the jail firsthand would surely motivate the County’s leaders to correct unconstitutional conditions therein. But this also seems an extreme remedy—at least, at
present,” he wrote.
Read the full ruling here:
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‘Black Cloud Rising’ tells a harrowing tale of a formerly enslaved man’s fight for freedom
Through the eyes of Richard Etheridge, we travel the precarious path of his life in David Wright Faladé’s novel, “Black Cloud Rising.” It’s a fictional tale, interwoven with true-life events.
Etheridge was a real person, a member of the African Brigade, fighting in the Civil War. His strength carries him and those like him on their journey to be free from bondage in a land where they know they are necessary, but not wanted; declared free, but not truly.
Etheridge, called “Dick” by all those who know him, was born a slave on Roanoke Island, the son of a slave mother and their owner. He is taught to read and write by his half-sister, his owner’s abolitionist daughter.
His memories of being an “almost” member of his white owner’s family compared to his Freedman status as a fighting man leave him torn in his feelings of being conditioned to feeling he is a nobody to becoming and believing he is a somebody.
Etheridge sees and feels this as he eventually attains the rank of sergeant. The validity of the brigade’s existence is a constant specter. Black men in Union blue, Black men fighting and killing white men, Black men free; juxtaposed against duty to country, family, and oneself. He was a naive 21-year-old when he joined the brigade, their mission — track down Confederate guerrillas in the fall 1863.
Many brigade members like Etheridge fight on the very land where they were once enslaved, battling not only their own conditioned questioning of place as they face off against their former owners, and their sons and brothers, but the morality of it. A morality he comes face to face with on the battlefield, eye to eye with his own half-brother, who once told him he was “just like family.”
“Just like family? We are family!” is Etheridge’s reply. He knows deep in his soul too, that freedom is the rallying cry at any cost.
The book’s title, “Black Cloud Rising,” derives from a song of the era, sung about Black Union troops like Etheridge and his brigade comrades. Their leader is a ginger bearded abolitionist named Edward Wild. “Wild” in his eyes and carriage, he’s a General and John Brown type, a force to be reckoned with, who frees all slaves he, Etheridge, and the African Brigade encounter as they fight their way to securing the North Carolina coastal region and its backwaters. Etheridge and the others in the brigade respect and love him for it.
The brigade is glorious to the enslaved who lay eyes upon them and despised by the white Southerners who loathe and fear them. “When this country is retaken, you ni**ers who’ve betrayed it will not fare well,” Etheridge is admonished by his general’s chastised brother.
“I suspect you are right. Still, I’ll take my chances on freedom,” is Etheridge’s reply.
Faladé brings Etheridge’s “chance on freedom” to life in an arduous, frightening, and bloody journey to freedom; a tale of long ago and seldom talked about.
Faladé is a featured panelist at the Mississippi Book Festival on Aug. 20.
READ MORE: In ‘The Movement Made Us,’ father and son reflect on the past, both remembered and forgotten
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With no ego at all, Willis Wright created the University of South Panola
Editor’s note: On Saturday night, July 30, the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame inducts its Class of 2022. What follows is the final part of a series detailing the achievements of the eight inductees, today featuring high school football coaching legend Willis Wright.
Perhaps it will some day be the epitaph on Willis Wright’s tombstone: “Here lies the man who created the University of South Panola.”
Wright, who should be in the first sentence of any discussion about “Mississippi’s greatest ever high school football coach,” will be inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Saturday night — despite his contention he doesn’t belong.
“I got no business going into that Hall of Fame with those legends,” Wright, 76, said Wednesday. “I’ll just be honest with you. I feel unworthy of this honor. I appreciate it, but I feel unworthy.”
Wright is worthy. It’s not just that as a head coach his teams at eight different schools won nearly 80% of their games. It’s not just that he created the monster at South Panola. It’s not just that one of his schools (Saltillo) thought so much of him, they named the stadium after him. It’s not just that he was a coach on nine state championship teams. And it’s not just that he is widely liked and respected by his peers. It’s all that — and lots more.
Mike Justice, who also belongs in that “Mississippi’s greatest high school coach discussion,” puts it this way: “You can’t have that greatest coach discussion without Willis. He won at all different levels, little schools and big schools, public schools and private schools, Mississippi and Alabama. He won at eight different places. And I’ll tell you this much about him: Of all the great coaches who have come through Mississippi, Willis has the least amount of ego. Most really successful coaches have a huge ego. Willis has none.”
Justice speaks the truth. In fact, no telling how many games Wright would have won if he had remained a head coach throughout his career. He did not. In high school football, the head coach gets all the headlines. Wright didn’t care. In fact, Wright returned to South Panola at the end of his career and served two different head coaches as the defensive coordinator. Those South Panola teams, head-coached by Ricky Woods and Lance Pogue, won 75 games and lost one. You read right: 75-1.
“Yes sir, we had a run there,” Wright said. “Any coach who was a part of it will tell you, we had some out-of-this-world athletes.”
The stories are legion about the speed and power of those South Panola teams. And about how when the coaches showed up at the crack of dawn most summer mornings, the players were already waiting at the field house doors, ready to lift weights and run to get stronger and faster when they already were the strongest and fastest. Wright created that atmosphere as head coach in the early 1990s. He left South Panola in 1993 after his team finished 15-0 and out-scored opponents by an average of 30 points per game. He returned as a defensive coordinator in 2001 for six seasons, during which the South Panola Tigers were nearly always ranked among the top 10 high school teams in the USA.
“To tell you the truth, I enjoyed that more,” Wright said of his days as a defensive coordinator. “That allowed me to just coach without all the other headaches a head coach has. I didn’t sleep much as a head coach, to tell you the truth. I was too intense. The part of coaching I really enjoyed was interacting with the kids, watching tape, coming up with a plan. I loved all that – just loved it.”
Wright’s last season in coaching was Pogue’s first as head coach at South Panola. Naturally, the Tigers finished 15-0 and won the state title.
“First of all, Willis had a big hand in hiring me there,” Pogue said. “Then, he agreed to stay on and help me that first season. I saw it first-hand. He had a unique ability to motivate kids in a quiet, humble way. When you get right down to it, he created the whole South Panola thing and then helped sustain it. Even after he retired, he was still a big part of it.”
Once, when this writer was covering a South Panola game during Wright’s time as defensive coordinator, he coached the entire game with a fishing lure hanging out of the pocket of his shirt.
Asked about it afterward, Wright looked down sheepishly to see the lure and said he had come straight from the lake to the football game and had forgotten about the lure.
Said Pogue, “Willis told me one time he was passionate about three things: crappie fishing, eating and coaching football. I’m here to tell you he was really, really good at all three.”
Wright grew up in Winona, where he well remembers watching Winona native and future Mississippi State and NFL star Billy Stacy play high school football. “Man, there was nothing that Billy Stacy couldn’t do,” Wright said. “He was my hero, and I was hooked on high school football.”
Wright later played for Winona and earned a football scholarship to Holmes Community College. But his father died about that time, “and I had Daddy’s cows to take care of,” he said. “There wasn’t time to play football.”
Still, he completed the two years of junior college at Holmes and then two years at Delta State, majoring in physical education. “I knew I wanted to coach and I knew I wanted to coach high school football,” he said.
And so he did. In the early 1980s, when he was winning state championships at Starkville, Wright was approached by Emory Bellard about joining his staff at Mississippi State. That never happened. Said Wright, “I think I knew down deep that I was a high school coach. I was just smart enough to realize I was doing exactly what I needed to be doing.”
Yes, and few, if any, have ever done it better.
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For MSHOF Induction Weekend event and ticket information, click here.
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