Lee is well-known on campus for his involvement in the LGBTQ community. Credit: Courtesy Oxford Police Department
The Mississippi Attorney General’s Office and a Federal Bureau of Investigation field office in Oxford are now providing “additional resources and assistance where needed” in the search for Jimmie “Jay” Lee, a 20-year-old University of Mississippi Student who has been missing for 12 days.
That’s according to an update Tuesday afternoon from the Oxford Police Department, which is putting out statements on behalf of all the agencies involved in the investigation.
The department’s update does not say when, specifically, the FBI and the AG’s office became involved in the search for Lee. Police officials did not respond to Mississippi Today’s inquiry by press time, and a spokesperson for the AG said the office doesn’t comment on open investigations.
In the statement, Oxford police also said that officers have conducted more “physical area searches,” obtained and reviewed “additional video footage” and are reviewing data that has been returned from digital warrants.
It’s not unusual for local police to call on state and federal authorities to provide more resources in missing persons cases, but experts and law enforcement standards emphasize the importance of swiftness. This is for several reasons, including to preserve evidence and protect the missing person from imminent danger.
Lee, a Black student who is well-known in Oxford’s LGBTQ community, was last seen sitting in his car at Campus Walk Apartments, where he lived, on Friday, July 8, at 5:58 a.m. He was wearing a silver robe or housecoat, a gold cap, and gray slippers.
He was reported missing later that day at 8:28 p.m. to the University of Mississippi Police Department. An officer conducted a welfare check at Campus Walk Apartments, where Lee lived, but there was “negative contact,” according to UMPD’s incident report obtained by Mississippi Today.
Oxford police started working on the case two days later, according to the department’s incident report. The first page of OPD’s report, which was created on July 10 at 11:59 p.m., contains little information about the investigation and says only that “Detective MIke (sic) Burks, was assigned to investigate a missing person case handed over from the University Police Department.”
Mississippi’s public records law gives police departments broad discretion to redact or withhold any information “that would impede the public body’s enforcement, investigative or detection efforts.”
Shelby Hernandez, the records custodian for the Oxford Police department, said the first page of the incident report is the only part that is publicly available “considering everything that’s going on.”
The day after Oxford police started working on Lee’s case, officers found his car in the impound lot of a local towing company called Bandit Towing that services Molly Barr Trails, a student housing complex. Bandit Towing had taken Lee’s car from Molly Barr Trails in the afternoon of July 8.
At Molly Barr Trails, multiple residents told Mississippi Today that police visited the beige complex in northeast Oxford several times in the week after Lee went missing. Residents say officers have knocked on their doors or stopped them in the parking lot to ask if they’d seen Lee.
On Wednesday, July 13, Desoto County sheriff’s deputies walked K-9 dogs through the complex, multiple residents said. Officers also used what appeared to be a black light to search a unit.
Some residents told Mississippi Today they feel unsafe at Molly Barr Trails. Some residents told Mississippi Today they feel unsafe at Molly Barr Trails and that the investigation seems to be moving slowly. One resident said he feels “like more could be done.”
“Oxford is so small – everybody know everybody around here,” said a resident named Chuck Scott.
Crimestoppers, a nonprofit that supports law enforcement, has pledged a $1,000 reward for finding Lee. Lee’s family is offering a $5,000 reward.
Lee was spending the summer in Oxford finishing his bachelor’s degree in social work. He is already accepted into UM’s masters program in social work and is scheduled to start this fall.
The day he went missing, Lee was supposed to go to a donation drive for baby formula that he organized as part of a summer internship with the Mississippi Department of Child Protection Services in Lafayette County.
A rally is planned for Wednesday at 7 p.m. at the Circle on University of Mississippi’s campus. There will be “group prayer, speeches, bubbles and lighting tea candles to illuminate Jay’s way home,” according to a flyer.
Eric Moulds shown here at his induction into Mississippi State’s M-Club Hall of Fame will be inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame during ceremonies on July 30. (Photo by Kelly Price)
Editor’s note: On July 30, the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame inducts its Class of 2022. What follows is Part II of a series detailing the achievements of the eight inductees, today featuring Mississippi State and NFL standout Eric Moulds.
Jackie Sherrill recruited and coached many, many splendidly gifted athletes in his stints at Pittsburgh, Texas A&M and Mississippi State.
Lucedale’s Eric Moulds, soon to be inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame, Sherrill says, was the best of all.
Rick Cleveland
“Size, speed, maturity and football knowledge, Eric Moulds had it all,” Sherrill said. “I was fortunate to have some great ones who had many years in the NFL, but Eric was the best overall. He won so many games for his teams, first at State and then at Buffalo in the NFL.”
As a player, Moulds stood 6 feet, 2 inches and packed 225 pounds of muscle. He ran with the speed of a world class sprinter. Playing on predominantly running teams at State from 1993 until 1995, he caught 117 passes for 2,022 yards (just over 17 yards per catch).
He also excelled as a kick returner, leading the nation in kickoff returns in 1994 with 33 yards per return. We can only imagine what it was like to speed down the field, covering kickoffs, and see a muscular 225-pounder coming at you, carrying the football, at world class speed.
That speed/size quotient, along with sure hands, made him a first round draft choice of the Buffalo Bills, for whom he played 10 of his 12 NFL seasons. For his pro football career, he caught 764 passes for 9,995 yards and 49 touchdowns. He was a much-feared deep threat, once averaging more than 20 yards per catch for an entire season. Another remarkable statistic: 475 of his 764 NFL catches resulted in a first down.
He made the All-Rookie team in 1996 and played in three Pro Bowls later in his career. Twice, he was named All-Pro. None of those awards, Moulds says, compares to his being voted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.
For the Bills, Eric Moulds was the total package.
“When you look at all the great athletes who are from Mississippi, it just makes you so proud, man,” Moulds said. “There are about 300 people in the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame and now I am going to be part of that.”
Moulds said he is well aware that Mississippi leads the nation per capita in producing both NFL players and Pro Football Hall of Famers. “And it’s not just the guys who were born in Mississippi either,” Moulds said. “I’ve run into so many guys around the league whose roots are in Mississippi, guys like Charles Woodson and Larry Fitzgerald. Woodson’s people were from Picayune, Fitzgerald’s from Natchez. It’s amazing. I’m proud to be part of that.”
These days, the 49-year-old Moulds lives in Charlotte where he has a training facility and works with athletes from high school to the NFL. Among the players he trains now is another Lucedale native, Ty Tryfogle, who played his college football at Indiana and who Moulds believes is about to make a splash for the Dallas Cowboys as an undrafted free agent.
Moulds says he enjoys working with younger players because it keeps him close to the game he loves.
“There’s a lot about football I don’t miss, but I miss the camaraderie of the locker room and the relationships you have with your teammates,” Moulds says. “My business still connects me to that. I enjoy it.”
Moulds says he and many of his former Mississippi State teammates stay in touch, and he remains close to Sherrill. “Coach Sherrill was a players’ coach,” Moulds says. “He had a couple of simple rules – be on time and never wear a cap or hat inside – and other than that, he expected you to take care of your business.”
Clearly, Moulds took care of his.
•••
The 2022 Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Induction Class includes Moulds, world swimming champion Maggie Bowen-Hanna, basketball coach Kermit Davis, Sr., baseball standouts Barry Lyons and David Dellucci, golf champion Jim Gallagher Jr., football star Eric Moulds, and football coaches Bob Tyler and Willis Wright.
Dr. Nina Ragunanthan wonders exactly how long she’s supposed to watch a miscarrying woman bleed before Mississippi law permits her to perform an abortion.
The OB/GYN in the Delta worries that the state’s new laws — banning abortion “except in the case where necessary for the preservation of the mother’s life or where the pregnancy was caused by rape” — could force doctors to wait for patients to deteriorate before providing life-saving care. She wonders: Who decides when the patient’s life is in danger, and how imminent does the danger have to be?
“Does it have to be that she’s going to die in 30 minutes if we don’t do this?” said Ragunanthan, who spoke to Mississippi Today in an individual capacity and not representing her employer. “That she’s at risk of dying within 24 hours? How much are we going to let her bleed? Do we have to wait until she needs a blood transfusion, start transfusing the blood, then do an abortion? … Am I going to be at legal risk for saving someone’s life if a court decides the risk to life wasn’t imminent enough to justify (an abortion)?”
These questions — and many others — haven’t been answered by state officials, law enforcement officers, hospital leadership or judges. And some OB/GYNs worry the lack of clarity will have a chilling effect on physicians who will either delay or refuse to perform abortions for fear of legal repercussions. If a doctor’s decision is challenged and they wind up on trial for performing an allegedly illegal abortion, they face up to 10 years in prison.
Two of the health care workers interviewed by Mississippi Today spoke on the condition of anonymity because they fear backlash or even legal scrutiny for discussing a highly sensitive topic.
Marc Rolph, a spokesman for the University of Mississippi Medical Center, said the hospital won’t comment on any questions related to the state’s new abortion laws and how its doctors will implement them. UMMC is home to the state’s largest group of maternal-fetal medicine subspecialists, and OB/GYNs around the state, like Ragunanthan, frequently refer patients with high-risk pregnancies there. Some UMMC doctors reached by Mississippi Today said they had been instructed not to speak to media about anything related to abortion.
None of the medical professionals interviewed by Mississippi Today said they had received any guidance from their employers as to how to interpret the new laws.
“Have I read a sheet of paper that tells me what to do in the middle of the night when I’m on call?” one Jackson-area OB/GYN said. “No, there’s not that. You’re probably going to need approval if you’re facing a difficult decision, particularly with the exceptions in the law.”
Mississippi Department of Health spokeswoman Liz Sharlot said the agency could not answer any questions dealing with the impact of the state’s abortion laws in the wake of the Dobbs ruling. She referred questions to the Attorney General’s office, though on Tuesday all pending litigation ended when the state’s last abortion clinic dropped its lawsuit that sought to prevent the ban from taking effect.
Questions sent to the office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch, who argued on the state’s behalf that the U.S. Supreme Court overturn Roe, were not answered.
The Mississippi State Board of Medical Licensure executive director Dr. Kenneth Cleveland said the board does not currently have plans to issue any statements about abortion issues in Mississippi. The board has the authority to investigate physicians and revoke their licenses for performing illegal abortions.
Anti-abortion advocates, lawmakers and some doctors say that the exception gives physicians the discretion to determine when an abortion is necessary. They point out that most of the roughly 2,500 abortions performed annually in Mississippi prior to the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization were elective. They say that doctors already regularly make weighty choices in high-pressure situations.
“I don’t see that these decisions have changed with this law,” said Dr. Geri Weiland, president of the Mississippi State Medical Association and a Vicksburg pediatrician. “I really don’t. I think the decisions have always been difficult.”
Dr. Terry McMillin, an OB/GYN in Greenwood, describes himself as pro-life. He doesn’t foresee the new abortion restrictions changing his practice at all. This week, he removed an ectopic pregnancy just as he always has, with no extra calls to attorneys or administrators.
He generally refers patients with high-risk pregnancies to UMMC early on. In other complex situations, like labor beginning before viability, he counsels patients about what to expect and monitors them carefully for signs of danger. Those situations, and others where an abortion could be necessary to save the pregnant person’s life, are rare, he said.
“A lot of times I’m gonna put it in the hands of the creator, because I believe there is a God, and I believe in the providence of God, that everything happens for a reason and that he’s in control of it all, so I think we should give life a chance, if we can,” he said.
Richard Roberson, vice president of state policy at the Mississippi Hospital Association, said the organization had been fielding questions from members about compliance with the new laws, but that decisions will largely be made by medical staff on a case-by-case basis. Clarification from lawmakers or through the courts would be helpful, he said.
“It’s hard to issue specific guidance on a very non-specific law,” he said, referring to what hospital administrators might be able to provide their staff at this point.
Even so, he doesn’t expect doctors or patients to be at risk of legal or medical consequences: Physicians have always sought to protect maternal and fetal health in complicated situations, and he doesn’t see that changing.
But some doctors aren’t reassured.
The Jackson-area OB/GYN said that life-threatening conditions during pregnancy often occur on a spectrum and can develop over time; they’re not always an obvious catastrophe like an ectopic pregnancy that could rupture and cause internal bleeding. For example, a patient with serious pre-existing heart problems will likely be stable early in a pregnancy but have a high risk of developing life-threatening symptoms as the pregnancy progresses.
Before, the doctor routinely presented the option of early termination. Now, the OB/GYN said, “that discussion has been taken out of our hands as clinicians.”
“There’s a huge gray zone which leaves people at risk and providers possibly confused,” she said.
Doctors also expect that even though the law permits abortions in cases of rape, no one in the state will be willing to do the procedure under those circumstances, fearing potential prison time or costly lawsuits.
“I don’t think people in Mississippi can have comfort around, ‘Oh, if I’m raped, I will have access,’” the Jackson-area OB/GYN said. “You probably won’t. You’ll have to find someone to do it that includes a hospital with the whole team there supporting that, and that’s much more difficult.”
The people who wrote the laws that now dictate decisions in every hospital around the state don’t seem to understand pregnancy, doctors told Mississippi Today.
“The situation is far too complex for a statute,” said one women’s health care provider. “It needs to be between the doctor and the patient.”
The Jackson Women’s Health Organization was for years the only facility in the state that provided elective abortions. Before the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in June, Mississippi doctors generally sent patients there or to clinics in other states for non-emergency procedures.
In emergencies, however, doctors at hospitals around the state have terminated pregnancies to protect their patients. Though the law still technically permits that, the language “in the case where necessary for the preservation of the mother’s life” isn’t a clear medical standard.
Mississippi OB/GYNs interviewed by Mississippi Today listed a range of scenarios in which a patient’s life is clearly at risk, but maybe not enough risk to pass muster under the law.
Up to about 30% of all pregnancies end in miscarriage, and some people experience heavy bleeding. One potential treatment is a dilation & curettage (D&C) to remove the tissue from the uterus. Ragunanthan said that if the fetus still has cardiac activity, the procedure is an abortion, though there’s no chance of a live birth. Facing legal uncertainty, Ragunanthan worries doctors may stand by as the patient bleeds and potentially requires a blood transfusion.
“I work in a rural hospital where – it’s not like a major trauma center, we don’t have a huge blood bank, and so things like that scare me,” Ragunanthan said.
She described another scenario: If a woman’s water breaks before viability, which occurs around 24 weeks of pregnancy, the fetus has a very low chance of survival because its lungs cannot develop without amniotic fluid. The woman then has a high risk of infection, but the fetus may still have cardiac activity.
As part of the ongoing legal battle over Louisiana’s trigger ban, a New Orleans doctor filed an affidavit describing how after a patient’s water broke at 16 weeks, the doctor planned to perform a dilation and evacuation (D&E) to end the nonviable pregnancy. Then her hospital’s lawyers told her that wasn’t legal.
Louisiana’s ban – which had briefly gone into effect before a judge issued a temporary restraining order while the court challenge plays out – includes an exemption for “medically futile” pregnancies that could apply in such cases (though the state health department has not issued a list explaining what situations that includes). Mississippi’s law has no such exemption.
“What are you supposed to do?” Ragunanthan said. “Are you supposed to wait until she becomes infected? … Do you have to wait until it gets into the bloodstream?”
For people with pulmonary hypertension, becoming pregnant carries a roughly 30 to 56% risk of death. The women’s health care provider who spoke to Mississippi Today said she wasn’t sure what the law would permit in such a case.
“It feels like to me, the laws are written for – ‘Well, there’s that chance that everything will be OK,’” she said. “A lot of times it’s just not.”
The Jackson-area OB/GYN said she thinks the onus to explain how to apply the new laws at the bedside falls on lawmakers, regulators and law enforcement.
“I need their help on what they will choose to prosecute and what they won’t,” she said
Sen. Joey Fillingane, R-Sumrall, principal author of the trigger ban, said he thinks doctors will do what they need to do to save a patient’s life. If a doctor’s decision is called into question and criminally investigated, he said he expects they would have documentation to show they had acted in accordance with the law.
“I mean, I didn’t go to med school, so I’m not going to sit here and armchair quarterback what a bunch of OB/GYNs will be deciding, whether this specific case is sufficient to qualify,” he said. “That’s why we meet every session. We can certainly revisit that law and add more flesh to the bone.”
Weiland, the head of the state medical association, said she doesn’t expect to see doctors being investigated and prosecuted for making good-faith decisions.
“Mississippians are very fair people,” she said. “I don’t see the state supporting doctors being prosecuted for doing what we’ve been doing, taking care of moms and complications of pregnancies forever. That’s what we do … Maybe I’m being too optimistic about it. But I personally don’t see that being something that’s supported by this law.”
Mississippi Today community health editor Kate Royals contributed to this story.
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Attorneys for Jackson Women’s Health Organization announced Tuesday it was dropping its legal efforts to continue to perform abortions in Mississippi.
Rob McDuff, an attorney for the Mississippi Center for Justice who represented the clinic, said the failure of the state Supreme Court to hear the case “on an emergency basis” led to the decision for Jackson Women’s Health Organization to drop the lawsuit and to relocate to another state where abortions are not banned.
The clinic was the last abortion provider in the state.
The clinic had filed an emergency petition with the state Supreme Court asking the justices to prevent from going into effect state laws banning most abortions in Mississippi. The clinic pointed out that in 1998, the state Supreme Court had ruled that abortion was a right protected by the Mississippi Constitution. That ruling, the clinic argued, would supersede the state laws passed in later years to ban abortions.
But in a statement Tuesday, the Mississippi Center of Justice said that because of the Supreme Court’s refusal to hear the abortion clinic appeals in an expedited matter, the lawsuit was being dropped. Diane Derzis, the owner of the clinic, recently sold the building in Jackson’s Fondren neighborhood where the clinic, known as the Pink House, was located. She is continuing with plans to open a clinic in New Mexico.
“In recent years, the Mississippi Center for Justice, the Center for Reproductive Rights, and the Paul Weiss law firm have filed several lawsuits to keep the clinic’s doors open, and to preserve and expand access to abortion in Mississippi,” said Vangela Wade, chief executive officer for the Mississippi Center for Justice. “We will continue to work for the day that right is restored and that every Mississippian has the resources to make their own reproductive and family planning decisions.”
With the decision to drop the lawsuit, left unresolved is the 1998 state Supreme Court decision in Pro-Choice Mississippi v. Kirk Fordice that recognized the right to abortion as part of the Mississippi Constitution. After that decision was issued, the state Legislature in 2007 passed a law saying most abortions would be banned in Mississippi if the U.S. Supreme Court ever stripped away the right to an abortion as part of the federal Constitution. And in 2019 the state Legislature passed a ban on all abortions after six weeks except in cases of medical emergencies.
State officials said those laws took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court in late June overturned Roe v. Wade, which granted the right to an abortion, in a case involving Jackson Women’s Health Organization.
But Jackson Women’s Health Organization filed a lawsuit to block those laws from taking effect based on the 1998 state Supreme Court ruling. The lawsuit argued that the Supreme Court ruling, which was based on the Constitution, trumped state law. But Chancellor Debbra Halford of Franklin County rejected the clinic’s arguments. The clinic appealed that ruling to the Supreme Court, but on Tuesday decided to drop the appeal.
While that appeal was pending before the Supreme Court, doctors at the clinic stopped performing abortions opting not to risk the punishment doled out in state law – a possible prison sentence and a loss of medical license – even though in the lawsuit they argued they still had the right to perform abortions based on the 1998 state Supreme Court ruling.
Mississippi Today could not get a definitive answer from the Supreme Court on whether it could take up the lawsuit even though it was dropped and reconsider the 1998 ruling granting a constitutional right to an abortion.
Theoretically, a doctor could perform abortions in the state and argue in court he or she had the right based on the 1998 Supreme Court ruling. But the doctor would be risking his or her livelihood based on how the court ruled on the issue of the Constitution versus state law.
In a statement, McDuff said, “Diane’s work is not done, and we applaud her commitment to continuing to ensure people can exercise their right to abortion. As she has stated, she is working to open a clinic in Las Cruces, New Mexico, where she can provide abortion care without fear of being put in prison for 10 years. We thank Diane; the clinic’s executive director, Shannon Brewer; and its medical director, Dr. Carr-Ellis; all of the clinic’s employees; and the Pink House Defenders, for the heroic work they have done so Mississippians could make their own decisions about pregnancy and childbirth.”
Editor’s note: Vangela M. Wade is a member of Mississippi Today’s board of directors.
Maggie Bowen will become the first Mississippi Sports Hall of Famer who will be inducted as a competitive swimmer.
Editor’s note: On July 30, the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame inducts its Class of 2022. Today, we begin a series detailing the achievements of the eight inductees, beginning with world champion swimmer Maggie Bowen.
Little Maggie Bowen, future world champion swimmer, was six years old — two years younger than older sister Mimi, who already was winning medals for the Jackson Sunkist swim team.
Baby sister wanted no part of it — the swim team, that is. Seems Maggie didn’t want to get her face wet. She would not put her face under the water, which was fine with her parents who never forced the issue.
Rick Cleveland
Mimi apparently had other ideas. One afternoon, the two were playing on the shallow end of the pool. Maggie was perched on her older sister’s shoulders until … Mimi went under water, taking Maggie with her. And the rest, as they say, is history.
Maggie Bowen, now Maggie Bowen-Hanna, went on to become the greatest swimmer in Mississippi history. Yes, and on July 30, 36 years after her sister dunked her and 21 years after she became a world champion, she will be inducted into the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame.
“I feel so honored and so blessed,” Bowen-Hanna said in a phone conversation from Louisville, Ky., where she now lives. “It’s been so long ago that I was a competitive swimmer. And I know swimming is not one of the really popular or well-publicized sports in Mississippi. To be remembered in this way after all those years, well, it just feels like a huge, huge compliment.”
Another way to look at it: This probably should have happened years ago. We could spend the rest of this column – and this week – listing all the awards, medals and competitions Maggie Bowen won. So let’s just hit the highlights:
In 2001, swimming at the world championships at Fukuoka, Japan, she won the gold medal in the 200-meter individual medley and silver in the 400 medley. She was the best in the world at what she did. How many Mississippians can say that?
At Auburn, where she swam with older sister Mimi, who was also an NCAA champion, she was a 21-time All American and SEC Women’s Swimmer of the Year three times.
In 2001, she was the Clarion-Ledger’s Mississippi Sports Person of the Year.
She came hauntingly close to making the U.S. Olympic team three different times, missing by as little as 15 hundredths (0.15) of a second. That was when she was a freshman at Auburn.
Bowen-Hanna, on the winner’s stand in 2001.
“That was such an intense moment of frustration for me,” Bowen-Hanna said. “At the same time, I don’t think I would have had the same amount of success that I had as a college swimmer – or been a world champion, for that matter – had I not experienced that profound disappointment. I had a whole new level of drive and motivation after that.”
Understand, even before that bitter disappointment, Bowen-Hanna was an intensely competitive person. “As strong-willed as they come,” her mother, Marty Bowen, says.
Bowen-Hanna came by it honestly. Her father, Bo Bowen, was an outstanding running back and a captain of the Ole Miss football team in 1969. Said Maggie of her father, “He is one of the most competitive people I have ever known. I would say both Mimi and I got a lot of that will to win and work ethic from him.”
Bo Bowen’s father, Buddy Bowen, was a standout on John Vaught’s 1947 SEC Championship team at Ole Miss and was drafted by the Washington Redskins. Maggie’s maternal grandfather, Johnny Black, played college football at Southeastern Louisiana.
“I definitely benefitted from a long line of athletic and competitive genes,” Bowen-Hanna said.
There’s also no overstating how much sister Mimi (now Mimi Bowen-Crush) has meant to Maggie’s success.
“I always wanted to go anywhere Mimi went. I would have followed Mimi anywhere,” Maggie said.
In fact, she did follow Mimi to Louisville, Ky, where both live and both actively support Mimi’s four children, all talented competitive swimmers.
Maggie Bowen-Hanna says she rarely swims these days. She runs for fitness and says her swimming career seems long, long ago.
But, she says, “It’s so nice to be remembered all these years later.”
•••
The 2022 Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Induction Class includes Bowen-Hanna, basketball coach Kermit Davis, Sr., baseball great David Dellucci, golf champion Jim Gallagher Jr., football star Eric Moulds, and football coaches Bob Tyler and Willis Wright.
Editor’s note: This story contains references to suicide. If you or someone you know may be considering suicide, contact the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or dial 988. Local resources include the Mississippi Department of Mental Health DMH Helpline at 1-877-210-8513.
After 121 summers in the Mississippi Delta, the state’s oldest and largest prison is getting air conditioning.
Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain said 48 air conditioning units have been installed at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman buildings so far, covering 40% of the prison population.
The process is expected to be complete in the spring, and then air conditioning will be installed at the state’s other prisons, Central Mississippi Correctional Facility and Southern Mississippi Correctional Institution.
“It feels good to get it done,” Cain said in an interview with Mississippi Today. “It’s just the time to do it.”
Cell blocks at Parchman, located in the scalding fields of the Delta, are made out of concrete. A U.S. Department of Justice report about poor conditions at Parchman said temperatures inside the prison sometimes reach up to 145 degrees. With air conditioning, Cain said, the goal is to get temperatures to a comfortable 78 degrees.
Multiple courts have ruled incarceration in extremely hot or cold temperatures is unconstitutional, said Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson for the Prison Policy Initiative. But despite court rulings, there isn’t a national standard for managing extreme temperatures in jails, she said.
A 2019 report by the Prison Policy Initiative found 13 southern states including Mississippi lacked central air in their prisons. Years later, most southern states still lack air conditioning in their prisons, Bertram said.
It’s often older prisons like Parchman that are least likely to have air conditioning throughout their facilities, she said, and that is often because infrastructure needs have piled up. However, there are some newer facilities that don’t have air conditioning.
“States are choosing not to provide this, often or not,” Bertram said.
Eastern Mississippi Correctional Facility, which is privately operated for MDOC, has a central air conditioning system, including in all housing units, contractor Management and Training Corporation said in a statement.
Cain said the Parchman air conditioning project is $650,000 from MDOC’s budget. He also expects to use American Rescue Plan Act funds.
The state prisons commissioner also sees adding air conditioning as a way to address issues raised by the federal government and attract people to work in the state’s prison system.
In an April 2022 investigation report, the Department of Justice listed high temperatures as one of many issues that exist at Parchman. The report talks about extreme heat in restrictive housing units,which is also known as solitary confinement.
One of the report’s examples about conditions in restrictive housing is about a man who had been on death row for about 20 years and had no indication of mental health issues. In February 2021, he began expressing suicidal ideation and the week before his death by suicide, he had been seeking relief from excessive heat in his unit.
An investigation report found temperatures that week reached 124.5 degrees, and temperature logs from MDOC for the same timeframe showed temperatures between 95 and 145.1 degrees, according to the report.
“Incarcerated persons in prolonged restrictive housing in egregious conditions at Parchman can and do suffer mental harm, and this harm is evidenced by self-injurious behavior,” the DOJ report states.
People with chronic medical conditions such as heart disease, mental illness, poor blood circulation and obesity are more vulnerable to extreme heat, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Certain medications and old age can also affect a person’s ability to regulate their body temperature.
Heat-related illnesses are preventable, according to the CDC, but if untreated they can result in potentially fatal conditions such as heat stroke and dehydration.
One of the remedies the Justice Department recommended to fix constitutional violations is to ensure sanitary and safe conditions, including proper temperature regulation, in restrictive housing. Air conditioning isn’t specified as a specific remedy.
In addition to addressing extreme temperatures at Parchman, Cain said installing air conditioning can help recruit people to work in the prison system and promote a safer environment.
Adequate staffing is another recommendation by the Justice Department to allow for better supervision, safety and protection from harm.
The Department of Corrections is looking to hire 600 people, Cain said.
Correctional officers and case managers received a 10% pay increase earlier this month, with a starting pay of about $17 an hour or $35,500 with benefits. When he first became commissioner in 2020, starting pay was $14 an hour.
“We’re going to have to work to get there,” Cain said about completing air conditioning installation, staff recruitment and other ongoing projects through the corrections department.
Is there any legislation currently that puts existing rights and liberties in jeopardy?
Answer:
Some local governments in Mississippi have passed resolutions to protect LGBTQ+ rights, and recently proposed legislation attempting to restrict transgender people’s rights died in committee during the 2022 legislative session. However, there is concern about the lack of legislation that explicitly prohibits discrimination based on gender and sexual identity.
A Timeline:
View the timeline and historic details below for a brief history of state legislation.
In 1802, Mississippi adopted a code that made sodomy a criminal offense. In 1890, when Mississippi created its new state constitution, it included the sodomy law. This law remains on Mississippi’s books but was invalidated by the federal law enacted from the Lawrence v. Texas case. However, after Roe v. Wade was overturned, U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas included in his opinion that the Supreme Court should reconsider the validity of Lawrence v. Texas.
A state law prohibited same-sex couples from being able to adopt. It was only on March 31, 2016, that Chief United States District Judge Daniel P. Jordan III issued a preliminary injunction striking down Mississippi’s ban on same-sex couples adopting, ruling that the law violates the Equal Protection Clause.
This injunction followed the 2015 landmark decision of Obergefell v. Hodges, in which same-sex marriage was federally legalized and protected. In a swift response, the Mississippi Legislature in 2016 passed House Bill 1523 (H.B. 1523), also called the Religious Liberty Accommodations Act or Protecting Freedom of Conscience from Government Discrimination Act.
H.B. 1523 states “The sincerely held religious beliefs or moral convictions protected by this act are the belief or conviction that:
(a) Marriage is or should be recognized as the union of one man and one woman; (b) Sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage; and (c) Male (man) or female (woman) refer to an individual’s immutable biological sex as objectively determined by anatomy and genetics at time of birth.”
This piece of legislation was a roundabout attempt to enable discrimination of LGBTQ+ citizens to continue under a thin veneer of expression of religious freedom.
After the passing of H.B. 1523, many state and local city governments, such as Minnesota, New York, Vermont and Washington banned government employees from non-essential publicly funded travel to Mississippi. The bans were intended to illustrate the widespread dissent with Mississippi’s law.
No provision of Mississippi law explicitly addresses gender identity-based discrimination. State non-discrimination laws extend to categories of “race, religious principles, color, sex, national origin, ancestry and handicap.” Miss. Code Ann. §§ 43-33-723 (2001); 25-9-103 (2001).
According to the Human Rights Campaign, no provision of Mississippi law addresses discrimination based on sexual orientation or addresses gender identity-based discrimination.
Various resolutions passed by local city governments protect LGBTQ+ rights. Hattiesburg, Oxford, Bay St. Louis, and Jackson are among the few cities that have all passed non-discrimination resolutions to support LGBTQ+ residents.
Mississippi has not prohibited the use of the gay or transgender panic defense as a legal strategy. This legal strategy is employed by lawyers who try to excuse their defendant’s crimes, such as murder or assault, by claiming that the victim being gay or trans caused the defendant to react violently.
While Mississippi does not protect people’s sexual orientation or gender identity in its existing hate crime law,the federal Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act allows the federal government to prosecute hate crimes, including those based on sexual orientation and gender identity.
Recently, “Real You Act of 2022,” which died in committee,was introduced by Sen. Chad McMahan, R-Guntown, to limit some people from changing their name and gender. This piece of legislation is aimed at curtailing transgender rights, as it would disallow incarcerated individuals from petitioning the court to legally change their name or update their gender marker during their sentence. The bill also makes it impossible for minors to change their gender marker if they so desire.
Another stressor for Mississippi LGBTQ+ minors is that they are not protected by state law against conversion therapy, where minors could be subjected to harmful practices in an attempt to change their sexual orientation.
