OurTupelo

Marcus Taylor has been incarcerated for 10 years, serving a sentence that should have ended five years ago. 

In 2015, a judge sentenced the husband and father to 15 years in prison for conspiring to sell an opioid combination pain-relief medication – a schedule III controlled substance. But he spent eight years in jail before anyone realized the maximum sentence for his crime by law was five years. In May, the Mississippi Court of Appeals recognized that Taylor was serving a sentence 10 years longer than the legal maximum, but refused to order his release despite making note of the mistake, arguing that the issue was raised too late.

Taylor, now 43, was indicted in 2014 on two counts of conspiracy to sell controlled substances, and one count of business burglary for breaking and entering a drugstore to steal them. In February 2015, he took what he thought was an advantageous deal: he pleaded guilty to the first count, and the two others were dismissed. But the plea petition was riddled with mistakes. It erroneously said the maximum sentence for conspiracy to sell schedule III controlled substances was 20 years – not five years.  And no one in the court, including his lawyer, realized his sentence was 10 years longer than the legal maximum.

It’s only after he challenged his sentence in 2023, demanding eligibility for parole, that the problem surfaced. The Choctaw County Circuit Court denied Taylor’s motion for post-conviction relief, because he filed it past the three-year deadline of his conviction. 

After investigating the issue for over a year, the appellate court ruled on May 6 this year that Taylor was indeed serving a sentence 10 years longer than authorized by law – meaning he should have been released in 2020. Yet, in a five-five decision, the court of appeals decided Taylor should still serve the rest of his wrongful sentence – because he didn’t file his request in time.

The court invoked a 2023 ruling by the Mississippi Supreme Court in Howell v. State of Mississippi, which put an end to the fundamental rights exception – an exemption to the three-year time limit to file a post-conviction relief claim, made to ensure individuals don’t stay unconstitutionally incarcerated.

The Mississippi Court of Appeals is obligated to follow the Supreme Court precedent, said Matthew Steffey, professor at the Mississippi College School of Law.

“This is the expected outcome of Howell, that there are going to be meritorious claims that are shut down for these technical limits,” he said. “That’s why many people, including dissenters on the Court of Appeals, believe it’s wrong.”

Indeed, despite this Supreme Court ruling, half the judges were ready to grant Taylor relief.

“All Mississippians have the right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, and to incarcerate Taylor beyond the time authorized by law infringes upon that fundamental right,” Judge David Neil McCarty wrote in a dissenting opinion. 

But if the result is tied in a Court of Appeals, common practice calls for the court to confirm the original decision, Steffey said.

On June 2, Taylor filed a motion for rehearing, asking the Court of Appeals to reconsider its application of Howell, saying his incarceration is a deprivation of his constitutional rights. But the Court of Appeals could still refuse to rehear the case.

In case of an unfavorable ruling, Taylor’s lawyer, Damon Stevenson, said they were ready to take the case to the Mississippi Supreme Court. If it agrees to examine Taylor’s case, the Supreme Court could clarify how the law should be applied in cases like Taylor’s.

“I do think one has to reinterpret Mississippi Supreme Court precedent to give Mr. Taylor relief, and that’s more a job for the Supreme Court than the court of appeals,” Steffey said. 

Many hope Taylor’s case and potential release could set a precedent and protect others in the same situation. Mississippi courts have refused to grant relief to incarcerated people serving expired sentences in the past, even before Howell. 

“We could get a clear law in the state of Mississippi that says there are certain rights that are not abridged by time: at any point that injustice is recognized, the court can step in and right it,” Stevenson said.

The escalation of the case has led the Capital Post-Conviction Counsel to step in. On June 4, it filed an amicus brief – additional information and legal arguments given to the court to assist them in their decision, in support of Taylor’s motion for rehearing. Although the state office normally assists individuals sentenced to death in Mississippi, it has expertise in helping people file post-conviction petitions, just like Taylor.

The attorney general’s office, which represents the state of Mississippi in the case, rapidly opposed the counsel’s intervention, demanding that the Court reject its brief. The AG’s office argued that the Capital Post-Conviction Counsel’s involvement was “neither necessary nor appropriate,” and that it had filed the brief too late.

To Stevenson, the attorney general’s office’s immediate opposition shows a broader pattern of combativeness against defendants, at the expense of fairness and justice.

“At this point, it’s our position that Mr. Taylor has actually moved from being a defendant to a victim,” Stevenson said. “The attorney general’s office has to take an honest look at this case and say, ‘Do we really want to be on the side of fighting for people to stay incarcerated who legally do not belong in a prison cell?’”

Defendants’ rights are often overlooked although they are an essential part of a fair judicial process, because severity sells electorally, and ultimately, judges are elected public officials, Steffey said.

“Judges campaign promising to be fair, or to be tough and fair, or to be tough, all of which sends a signal that they are part of the crime fighting community,” Steffey said. “You hear a lot about justice for victims, very little about justice for the accused.”

While the Court of Appeals still hasn’t decided whether to rehear Taylor’s case or not, his children are growing up without him. And his wife, Kimberly Brown Taylor, is raising them alone.

When she started dating Taylor in 2008, Brown Taylor already had a baby, Joshua, who is 19 now. Taylor treated him like his own, she said. They still write each other letters. With Taylor, she had another son, Blakeland, who is 13 and has not seen his father since he got incarcerated when he was just a baby. 

“It has been kind of hard on me as a single parent,” Brown Taylor said. “ I haven’t slept at night at all since he’s been gone.” 

When Taylor was incarcerated, Brown Taylor found herself having to assume the financial and personal charge of raising two kids. She went back to college and studied accounting. She worked two jobs until she became an accountant. Just like everyone else, she had no idea his sentence was above the legal maximum. She’s angry about the time lost and worried about Taylor’s mental health. 

“For someone to sit in there past that time, I guess the extra five years, that can mess with someone mentally,” she said. “He could have been there, being that father to my son, giving me relief, giving my son the loving that he needed.”

Brown Taylor says she keeps Blakeland and Joshua informed about their dad’s case everyday, but they still don’t understand why he can’t come home. Blakeland feels like a part of his childhood was stripped away. He said he wishes his father could watch his basketball games and participate in school father-son events with him. 

“I just feel like my dad should be at home. It’s eating me alive,” Blakeland said.

Taylor might very well serve the five remaining years of his original sentence, if the Court of Appeals or the Mississippi Supreme Court don’t rule in his favor. His lawyer argues he has far served his time, and should be brought back into the community.

“When people make mistakes, it is totally acceptable to ask them to pay their debt to society,” Stevenson said. “However, their debt should not be greater than what is allowed by law.”

Time passes and incomprehension grows in the Taylor family. It gets a little harder everyday to understand why Taylor remains incarcerated. 

“God gives all of us chances after chances after chances. So why can’t they or whomever allow Marcus to have a chance?” Brown Taylor said.

Mississippi Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson on Wednesday evening threw his cowboy hat into the ring for governor in 2027.

“Gipson for Governor!” he posted on social media. “Mississippi knows Andy Gipson won’t back down from our conservative principles, because when it comes to getting things done, Andy Gipson is Mississippi’s proven conservative leader.”

Republican Gipson, 48, is a former state lawmaker, a lawyer, Baptist minister and, coming in July with the release of his first album, “Songs of Faith,” recording artist. He served 10 years in the Mississippi state House District 77 seat representing Simpson and Rankin counties. He has served as commissioner of agriculture and commerce since 2018, and since then has been known for his ever-present cowboy hat.

As chairman of the Judiciary B Committee in the state House, Gipson was known for shepherding numerous gun-rights bills through the Legislature, making Mississippi one of the most permissive states for owning and carrying a gun and earning him recognition and awards from the National Rifle Association and other groups.

“Whether leading the charge for Life in protecting the unborn, in standing for our Second Amendment rights, or in defending our freedoms against Joe Biden’s oppressive federal mandates, Andy Gipson was always there in the fight,” Gipson wrote Wednesday evening. “He’s always been in the fight with President Donald J. Trump, and he’s still in the fight for the Future of Mississippi.”

READ MORE: Will Tate Reeves back Shad White for Mississippi governor?

Gipson is an early avowed entrant into what could become a crowded Republican primary for governor in 2027, with current Gov. Tate Reeves term limited in his second and final term. Jockeying and fundraising for Mississippi’s 2027 statewide elections is entering full swing, with politicians eyeing open seats for governor, lieutenant governor and potentially others through a domino effect.

Besides Gipson, other Republicans considering a run for governor in bright-red Mississippi include Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, State Auditor Shad White, Attorney General Lynn Fitch, former U.S. Rep. Gregg Harper, former House Speaker Philip Gunn and billionaire businessman Tommy Duff.

Gipson in his post wrote: “Born, raised and educated 100 percent right here in Mississippi, Andy Gipson loves our Magnolia State. He’s visited all 82 counties and has traveled the United States — and the World — to promote our beloved State and our People … As we look to the future there’s no doubt Andy Gipson is Mississippi’s Proven Conservative Leader, and Mississippi’s best choice for Governor in 2027.”

A week after Pentagon leaders announced their intention to possibly rename the USNS Medgar Evers, christened for  the World War II veteran and civil rights leader, his family urged the Department of Defense and the Navy to reverse their position.

The ship is one of eight vessels named after activists – among them Cesar Chavez, Harvey Milk, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Harriet Tubman – that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants to rebrand in a large offensive against “wokeness” and diversity, equity and inclusion in the military to reestablish the “warrior ethos.”

This could be the second time Evers’ name is erased. Although President Donald Trump called Medgar Evers a “great American hero” at the 2017 opening of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum, his name was removed last March from a site on the Arlington National Cemetery Website, which featured a section honoring Black Americans who fought in the nation’s wars.

“Renaming the USNS Medgar Evers is not only malicious — it is despicable,” said Evers’ daughter, Reena Evers-Everette. “As my mother said, ‘This is an injustice to a man who fought for his country both at home and abroad.’”

Evers was among the continuing wave of U.S. soldiers who arrived on the beaches of Normandy after the D-Day invasion in 1944. He enlisted in the U.S. Army at 17 and served in the Red Ball Express, a convoy run largely by African-American soldiers that transported equipment from Normandy beaches to Allied forces in inland France. He earned several military medals for his service.

After fighting the Nazis in World War II, he returned home to fight racism again in the form of Jim Crow, which barred Black Mississippians from restaurants, restrooms and voting booths.

In 1954, he became the Mississippi NAACP’s first field secretary and played a major part in the development of the organization. He led protests and boycotts for voting rights and desegregation of public schools, parks and Mississippi beaches. A target of white supremacists in Mississippi, he was murdered in 1963 by a member of the segregationist White Citizen’s Council and Ku Klux Klan.

In 2009, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus – a former Mississippi governor – announced the naming of a dry cargo ship after Evers. On Nov. 12, 2011, the USNS Medgar Evers was christened by Evers’ widow, Myrlie Evers.

“I will not have to go to bed again wondering whether anyone will remember who Medgar Evers is,” she said at the ceremony.

Mabus said he named the ship after Evers because the Lewis and Clark ships are named for pioneers and explorers, “those who have pushed past boundaries, and Medgar Evers was just such a civil rights pioneer.”

Since its launch, the ship has traveled around the world and has taken part in NATO exercises.

By attempting to remove the names of activists who fought with courage and honor for the citizens of their country, the secretary of Defense sacrifices military values to a revisionist definition of patriotism, Evers-Everette said.

“The USNS Medgar Evers was not named to make a political statement,” she said. “It was named to reflect a deeper truth: that freedom is not free — and some Americans have paid dearly for it.”

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

In America, the military does not enforce our domestic laws. America does not use the military to suppress peaceful protests, even if we disagree with the protests. We have always known that tyrants use the military against their own people. 

The use and misuse of federal military forces to enforce laws and basic order are deeply, and darkly, rooted in Mississippi and Southern history. The deployment of California National Guard troops by President Trump to “address the lawlessness” in Los Angeles is redolent of another century.

In fact, the last time such a deployment occurred, bypassing the state governor, was last century, in 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson activated the Alabama National Guard without the cooperation of Alabama’s segregationist governor, George Wallace. LBJ did so with good reason. Not only were state law enforcement officers not protecting peaceful protesters, they were the ones inflicting horrendous violence on the 600 protesters crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge at Selma, resulting in a massive number of injuries and four deaths.

In America, federal troops, including “federalized” troops, are not used in domestic law enforcement by law (with very few exceptions). This dates back to the post-Civil War era in the South, when federal troops were used to enforce the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because local sheriffs and police officers would not protect the newly freed African Americans. 

Mississippians, and most Southerners, hated the presence of federal troops in the South, and in 1878, a deal with the devil was made by President Rutherford Hayes to withdraw troops and to pass the Posse Comitatus Act. The deal effectively threw federal troops out of the South and allowed the white supremacists to suppress Black and Republican votes. One good result of the deal was the Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents the use of armed forces to enforce domestic laws unless expressly authorized by Congress or the U.S. Constitution. Posse comitatus is a $50 Latin phrase lawyers use to talk about a sheriff who mobilizes citizens to suppress lawlessness in the jurisdiction. 

Even though 1878 is when the prohibition of the use of U.S. military to enforce civilian laws was codified, it is an American principle that echoed through history back to the Founders. Why? The Founders had direct experience of British troops enforcing oppressive laws without mercy or appeal.

In a conversation with ABC News, Steven Levitsky, one of the authors of “How Democracies Die,” has stated that in the large majority of cases, autocrats justify appropriating military power to use against citizens by claiming “there’s an enemy within that’s more dangerous than our external enemies and that justifies the use of extra-constitutional measures.” 

There are limited, narrow exceptions to the prohibition of the use of military forces for law enforcement. A law from 1807, the Insurrection Act, allows the president to use military and National Guard forces to stop an invasion, threat of invasion or a rebellion. But the U.S. has not been invaded despite the Trump administration’s attempt to characterize illegal immigration as an invasion. Federal judges, including judges appointed by President Trump, have stated the U.S. is not being invaded. No invasion means that the president may not invoke the Insurrection Act.

As recounted so well in the book An American Insurrection: The Battle for Oxford, Mississippi, 1962 by William Doyle, President Kennedy federalized the Mississippi National Guard in response to violence occasioned by the enrollment of James Meredith, an African American, in the University of Mississippi. Kennedy ultimately deployed the Army’s 503^rd Military Police battalion, the 82d Airborne and the Oxford-based National Guard Troop E to quell a riot that resulted when Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett and state leaders pointedly withdrew state and local police and abandoned the Ole Miss campus to rioters. That riot resulted in two deaths and injuries to over 160 federal officers, including 28 federal marshals who sustained gunshot wounds. Kennedy was justified in using the military. 

There is no invasion, no rebellion in California. Legal, peaceful protests are not reasons for the deployment of federal troops. If law enforcement in the state of California is being overwhelmed, the state can send in reinforcements from other cities, from the state Highway Patrol, or the governor can decide to use California National Guard. None of this was warranted.

The reason this must matter to Mississippians, and all Americans, is that our Founders had a reason to fear presidents who deploy federal troops against American citizens. If a president can wield military force against U.S. citizens on a flimsy or politicized excuse, he can suppress speech, lawful assembly and a host of other constitutional rights with impunity. Every dictator, every authoritarian, has not become so until he has gained control of the citizenry with the military. 

Some people might like the outcome in California, the suppression of the protesters, some of whom became violent. If that is so, you might consider how you would feel if a different president were using the military in Mississippi in a similar way, say perhaps Obama, Biden, Clinton, even George W. Bush. It should not matter which party is in power; in America, we don’t allow the military to enforce the law against citizens, even citizens with whom we disagree.

From a national and homeland security standpoint, there is another argument against using the National Guard for political reasons. The National Guard is made up of men and women who have day jobs, own their own businesses or punch a time clock, and they work to keep food on the table for their families. You can think of this valuable resource like a gas tank. Once you use it up, it is gone.

We need our National Guard for natural disasters and emergencies. California needs its National Guard for major fires, earthquakes and other emergencies. It should not be wasted on deployments that can be and were being handled locally. And the Marine Corps is needed to protect us from China and Russia. It is a misuse of the Marine Corps to have them on the streets of Los Angeles.

But the compelling argument is that presidents cannot and should not be trusted with the power of deploying the military against its citizenry without real constitutional justification. My wife is a retired school teacher who taught her students George Orwell’s Animal Farm, an incisive parody of Stalinist Russia. She would ask her students “at which point did the farm animals irreversibly lose control of the farm?” The answer? When the autocratic pigs grew the puppies into attack dogs to control the farm animals.

Jamie Barnett is a native Mississippian and a retired rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, having served 32 years. He served as chief of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau of the Federal Communications Bureau. He is currently an adjunct professor of national security in the Center for Intelligence and Security Studies at the University of Mississippi. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s alone and are not expressions of the views of any of the organizations with which he is associated.

After Jackson’s Ward 1 Councilman Ashby Foote unofficially won reelection by 10 votes in a too-close-to-call race last Tuesday, election commissioners had to wait five days to see if any additional mail-in absentee ballots postmarked by election day would arrive.

On Wednesday, they met at a former downtown fire station, where they counted one such vote. It went to Foote.

“I think this was a huge change election and I’m excited to be part of the leadership that will move the city in hopefully a much more constructive direction to improve quality of life and improve the city’s prospects going forward,” Foote said.

After last week’s tally, Foote also received one additional affidavit vote, which cancelled out one of his absentee votes that was thrown out due a redistricting error that led the resident to vote in the wrong ward. Foote’s two opponents also picked up three affidavit votes each.

Winning 1,739 out of 5,186 ballots, or just 34% of the vote, Foote shared a nearly equal percentage of support with his two opponents, independent candidate Grace Greene, 1,731 and Democratic nominee Jasmine Barnes, 1,716. The final, official tally still needs to be certified with the state.

Greene, who came in second, received just eight fewer votes than Foote.

“It’s a good lesson for everyone that voting matters and your vote matters and sometimes democracy can be messy,” Greene said. “So thank you for all the support I got as a first time candidate.”

The competitive race signified the changing demographics of the ward, historically considered a “white, Republican bastion” but which is now home to more Black residents than white.

“I think that I had support across all demographics and so honestly that just means a lot that people were willing to just believe in me and the vision that I have for Ward 1 and Jackson,” Barnes said after votes were counted Wednesday. “I’m very humbled.”

Next, Hinds County Election Commission will certify the vote, which opens up a 12-day window for candidates to request to examine the ballots themselves. 

Candidates have time still to challenge the election results in court, but even if that happened, Foote would still be sworn into office on July 1. 

Foote acknowledged on election night that he did not win the vote of a majority of Ward 1 residents. But in local races in Mississippi, general elections do not feature runoffs, meaning candidates may win by only a plurality of votes.

Addressing the two-thirds of Ward 1 residents who did not vote for him, Foote said, “I need to work with them and please them and I look forward to the opportunity to do that, to serve their needs, and serve the broader needs of Ward 1, whether its infrastructure, roads, safer cities, gating, you name it.”

Foote, founder of a financial services company, was first elected in a 2014 special election and has often represented the voice of opposition to the mayor on the council. He was previously elected as a Republican but ran as an independent in this race to encourage Jacksonians to vote in the Democratic primary, which typically determines the next mayor.

Reporter Allen Siegler and JXN Editor Anna Wolfe contributed to this report.

With the U.S. Open returning to diabolical Oakmont, Jackson’s Mr. Golf, Randy Watkins, returns to Crooked Letter to discuss what golfers will face. Watkins, who once played in the US. Open at famed Winged Foot, knows a thing or two about high rough, slick greens and fairways only slightly wider than hallways. The Clevelands and Watkins also discuss the college baseball phenomenon also known as Murray State.

Stream all episodes here.

Mississippi hospitals will lose at least $500 million if the Department of Health and Human Services head obeys a memo President Donald Trump issued Friday, according to Richard Roberson, CEO of the Mississippi Hospital Association.

Trump’s memo instructs U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to gut a program that helps states finance public health care, calling it a “gimmick.”

A presidential memorandum, while not as strong as an executive order, has significant power over government agencies and officials. Trump’s memo comes as the president’s mega-bill, involving deep cuts to Medicaid, moves through the U.S. Senate. 

The finance mechanism in question is called a state directed payment, which allows states to beef up Medicaid reimbursement rates, which are typically the lowest among insurance payors. Historically, the mechanism has increased health care quality and access for Medicaid beneficiaries and has reimbursed hospitals at competitive rates for treating these patients, but has faced backlash from critics, with some calling it “a legalized form of money laundering.”

The Mississippi Hospital Access Program (MHAP) is one such program. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves announced it weeks before his reelection in 2023 as a plan to help financially-struggling hospitals remain open. 

The governor’s office did not respond to Mississippi Today’s request for comment about Trump’s memo by the time of publication. 

“These State Directed Payments have rapidly accelerated, quadrupling in magnitude over the last 4 years and reaching $110 billion in 2024 alone,” Trump wrote in the memo. “This trajectory threatens the Federal Treasury and Medicaid’s long-term stability, and the imbalance between Medicaid and Medicare patients threatens to jeopardize access to care for our seniors.”

Hospital leaders, however, say that without these payments, or time to phase them out and replace them with viable solutions, rural and struggling hospitals face a level of instability that might be insurmountable. 

“They can’t budget from year to year or every six months based on whims that are coming out of Washington or Jackson,” Roberson said. “And so just having some stability so that the models under which they get paid don’t change allows them to know where they can pivot to as they’re making decisions.”

Many experts agree there should be more transparency around managed care organizations, the insurance companies that contract with Medicaid and that use state directed payments. But they also say a thoughtful and data-driven approach is necessary to progressive reform. 

“I am certainly a fan, and have been for decades, of more transparency around payment arrangements,” said Joan Alker, executive director of Georgetown University’s Center for Children and Families. “This is not the right way to go about it, to be rushing through language that nobody understands in the middle of the night when it has life and death implications.”

HATTIESBURG — Sitting in Moore’s Bicycle Shop in Hattiesburg less than three weeks after his 35-year-old daughter died of an overdose, Jonathan Aultman wondered aloud what he was supposed to do next. 

It wasn’t grief that made the mourning father from Sumrall feel lost. It was the prospect of Mississippi wasting an opportunity to prevent more tragedies like his family’s. 

Chelsea Aultman Sadler struggled with addiction for most of her life, starting when she was prescribed opioid painkillers after a surgery. The pills’ manufacturers falsely told her and other Americans that their products were safe and nonaddictive, all while drug companies flooded towns with prescriptions.

Her father was frustrated by the plan – or lack thereof – his local and state elected officials put together to spend the money paid by companies for their roles in the thousands of deadly overdoses they catalyzed in Mississippi. The state is expected to receive $370 million of the nearly $50 billion in settlement funds the corporations have committed to states so far. 

While addiction researchers and the lawyers who negotiated the settlements have said it’s important for all the money to go toward preventing more drug deaths, the settlements themselves allow for up to 30% to be spent on other uses.

Attorney General Lynn Fitch and the Legislature, the decision-makers for Mississippi’s settlements, have maximized that portion. Fitch developed a contract that allows towns, cities and counties to spend about $56 million on any expense – regardless of whether it addresses the opioid epidemic. In 2021, she said in a letter to localities this was done to “free local governments up to use your funds as you see fit.”

It’s a setup that’s allowed the three local governments in the Hattiesburg area — Forrest County, Lamar County and the city of Hattiesburg — to take different approaches using their settlement shares, which public records indicate have totaled just under $750,000 as of late May. 

Some of this money went to a criminal justice diversion program and a series of sheriff’s department expenses, including pole surveillance cameras and a handheld X-ray device, a public records request revealed. Another chunk is set to go to a new local mental health facility. 

And a third portion of the shares remains unspent and without a plan.

Some local officials Mississippi Today spoke to hadn’t yet considered what to do with the money that’s been trickling in since 2022. They had a variety of justifications for their spending decisions, often citing small amounts of money they received relative to the cost to address addiction. 

That late May afternoon inside the Hardy Street bike shop, Aultman and four other Hattiesburg area parents who also lost children to drug deaths learned about the plans – and the inaction – from Mississippi Today. 

They expressed concern that elected officials hadn’t sought the voices of people in their shoes and worried these funds could be used in ways that wouldn’t prevent more deaths.

“From sitting in this chair, where do I go next?” Aultman asked, sitting next to a framed photo of his daughter. “Other than taking my pictures and going to the AG’s office and saying, ‘I’d like some accountability.’” 

“This is very, very new and very, very fresh for me, and doesn’t sound like y’all are going to be doing right by this big pot of money you just got handed to you.”

Michelle Williams, chief of staff for the Mississippi attorney general, said that while Fitch would love for all the settlement dollars to be spent on addressing the overdose epidemic, the state’s top lawyer followed the requirements of the settlement when creating the agreement.

Since James Moore, the bike shop owner, lost his son to an overdose in 2015, he’s publicly advocated for policy changes that will prevent more parents from losing their children. He raises a flag at half-staff in front of his shop every time there’s an overdose death in the Hattiesburg area. It’s purple, the color for overdose awareness.

He’s raised it at least 65 times since Mississippi local governments have been receiving opioid settlement checks. 

Moore said he watches local news every night, and he’s never heard a word about Forrest, Lamar or Hattiesburg settlement shares. Knowing the dollars had been coming in for years as residents continued to die “really drives me crazy,” he said. 

Surveillance cameras, gun flashlights and an X-ray device

Over the next 14 years, the three Hattiesburg governments are expected to receive about $2.6 million from the national opioid settlements – about 5% of the local shares being sent to Mississippi cities and counties.

From October 2022 to May 2025, the city of Hattiesburg, Forrest County and Lamar County have received a total of $748,505, according to public records and administrators. Of that, $200,000 has been allocated.

The only locality to spend any of its share is Forrest County, which is responsible for most of the money. Pharmaceutical companies distributed over 85 pills per Forrest County resident each year from 2006 to 2019 – the second highest rate of any county in Mississippi, according to the Washington Post.

In November, the county’s supervisors awarded $100,000 to the local drug court, a program aimed at diverting people who’ve been arrested for nonviolent drug charges away from jail and to addiction treatment. Board meeting minutes say the funds are for court staff, addiction treatment and transportation.

In February, the supervisors considered Forrest County Sheriff Charlie Sims’ request for about $190,000 for items he said would help his department “in responding to narcotics violations.”

The county granted him $100,000, and Sims told Mississippi Today he’s prioritizing the first few items — a handheld X-ray device, a drug identification machine, pole surveillance cameras, a vehicle tracking device and weapon accessories like gun flashlights. Sims said his department has purchased the first three.

Many of the items listed may not have qualified as appropriate spending if the local government agreement had said all funds must be spent addressing addiction. But, unlike most states, Mississippi’s agreement doesn’t mandate that. 

Sims said the biggest drug problem his department focuses on is cracking down on fentanyl distribution, and these devices will help. He said he may look to use future funds for items like naloxone, an opioid overdose-reversing medication. 

Sims said his department has enough naloxone now. 

Roderick Woullard, a Forrest County supervisor, said the county recently put over $500,000 of other county funds toward a new regional crisis stabilization unit, a facility that provides short-term, urgent psychiatric care. It shows the county’s commitment to treating substance use disorder beyond the opioid settlements, he said.

Gentry Mordica, another Forrest County supervisor, said the board has public meetings and no one from the recovery community had brought ideas about how to spend these funds. Mordica said that to his knowledge, the board hasn’t publicly announced receiving the money. 

The remaining amount, about $550,000, is unallocated.

Lamar County and the city of Hattiesburg are behind Forrest County. Neither have allocated any of their settlement money.

Hattiesburg received just over $50,000 – a small portion of its over $160 million annual budget. 

In June, after Mississippi Today filed a public records request about Hattiesburg’s opioid settlements, Mayor Toby Barker contacted Moore, the Hattiesburg bike shop owner and recovery advocate. Barker asked Moore to form a committee to advise how Hattiesburg should spend the money. 

Barker said the city hasn’t spent any of its money because payments have been small and infrequent. He hopes the opioid settlement committee includes those who have recovered from substance use disorder, families who’ve lost loved ones to overdoses, addiction treatment clinicians, law enforcement officers and others.

“I want to see Hattiesburg make a focused investment on where it can do some good,” he said. 

Lamar County administrator Joseph Waits said his supervisors plan to use their settlement dollars to help build the new regional crisis stabilization unit. The county made that decision without public participation because supervisors didn’t expect it to make up a lot of the county’s annual budget of tens of millions of dollars, he said. 

Waits and Mordica, the Forrest supervisor, said that while the Mississippi Attorney General’s office has repeatedly told local governments that these funds can be spent like any other public dollar, their counties were intent on using their funds to address the opioid crisis. 

“We’re concerned about it (the crisis),” Mordica said.

‘We don’t want it to happen to you and your children’

In Moore’s Bicycle Shop, Jonathan Aultman was joined by his wife, Shelby Aultman. While the weeks since her daughter’s death have been an “emotional roller coaster,” she said, she’s spent time thinking about how much joy Chelsea brought to everyone who surrounded her, even as she suffered from addiction. 

The last public post on Chelsea’s Facebook page is a love note to her mom. At the celebration of life just a week earlier, on the Sumrall shores of the Bouie River, Shelby Aultman recalled Chelsea’s 7-year-old daughter Lily calling out to her mom as double rainbows appeared above their heads.

“Lily going, ‘I love you forever. I love you from the ocean deep. I love you from the sky high, no matter what,’” Aultman said. 

She believes her daughter always wanted to maintain longterm recovery, and additional resources, like those that could be purchased with local opioid settlement dollars, may have helped her do that. Aultman suggested ideas like therapy services for those whose addiction stems from trauma and education for parents about helping children with addiction. 

Even if local governments can spend their shares on other purposes, she thinks ending this crisis should take precedence. 

“This has happened to us. And we don’t want it to happen to you and your children.” 

United Healthcare Medicare Advantage plans are no longer in-network at North Mississippi Health Services after the health system terminated its contract for the health insurance plans, which largely provide coverage to elderly patients, on June 1.

The decision came after over a year of negotiations between the Tupelo-based system, which operates eight hospitals and over 70 primary and specialty care clinics in North Mississippi, and United Healthcare, the nation’s most profitable health insurance company. 

About 17,000 United Healthcare Medicare Advantage members live in North Mississippi Health Services’ 24-county service area, the vast majority of whom are existing patients, according to Wally Davis, the health system’s vice president of payor strategy and partnerships.

Other United Healthcare plans, including commercial and employer-sponsored, Marketplace, Medicaid and CHIP plans, will remain in-network. The change will apply to Medicaid-required Dual Special Needs Medicare Advantage plans. 

North Mississippi Health Services alerted patients that it planned to terminate its agreement for United Healthcare Medicare Advantage plans in February, but had until the end of May to negotiate with the company and reach a final decision. 

The health care system terminated its agreement with United Healthcare because Medicare Advantage inpatient claims were frequently delayed or denied, Davis told Mississippi Today.

The problem has worsened since the health care system first raised the issue with United Healthcare last year, he said. Last month, 42% of inpatient claims at North Mississippi Medical Center-Tupelo were initially denied, up from 17% in February 2024. The hospital is the only Level II trauma center in North Mississippi.

The overturn rate, or the percentage of claims ultimately approved by the insurance company, has remained at about 85% since last year. 

“We continued conversations about the core problem, which has been the denial percentage itself, but we never really received a clearly defined response from United as to why those denials were occurring,” Davis said. 

United Healthcare proposed a range of options and solutions aimed at keeping the health system in its Medicare Advantage network, including extending the existing contract to continue negotiations, said Tracy Carr, a spokesperson for the company.

“Unfortunately, NMHS refused,” Carr said. “Our priority now is providing the people we serve with the care they need, either through continuity of care or by helping them transition to another provider, as appropriate.”

Patients with United Healthcare Group Retiree Medicare Advantage plans will be able to continue receiving services at North Mississippi Health Services locations because these plans offer out-of-network benefits. Patients’ share of the cost will be the same as if they were part of the network for some or all services, said Carr.

Medicare is the federal health insurance program for people 65 and older and with certain disabilities. Medicare Advantage is a type of Medicare plan run by private insurance companies that contract with the government. The plans often offer additional benefits, including dental, vision and prescription drug coverage, that aren’t included in traditional Medicare plans.

In Mississippi, 44% of Medicare recipients are covered by Medicare Advantage plans.

United Healthcare members who are in the middle of treatment with a North Mississippi Health Services provider for a serious or complex condition may be eligible to continue receiving covered services for a period of time, Carr said.

Davis encourages patients to contact Medicare to discuss options for changing their Medicare Advantage enrollment, including utilizing a special enrollment period.

Medicare’s open enrollment period occurs from Oct. 15 to Dec. 7. There is an additional open enrollment period for people who are already enrolled in Medicare Advantage Plans from Jan. 1 to March 31. 

Thirty candidates have filed paperwork to compete in special elections for the state Legislature this year, and 10 of the 14 races will be contested.

The deadline for candidates to submit papers to political parties was 5 p.m. on Monday, and party leaders have until Friday to verify the candidates’ qualifications.

Party primaries will take place Aug. 5, and the general election will be Nov. 4.

Even though voters just participated in statewide elections in 2023, a panel of three federal judges determined that portions of the map lawmakers used in that election diluted Black voting strength. The panel ordered the state to redraw certain areas of the map.

The candidates who filed to run by Monday’s deadline are:

Senate District 1: DeSoto and Tate counties:

• Chris Hannah, Democrat 
• Michael McLendon, Republican (incumbent) 
• Jon Stevenson, Republican 

Senate District 2: DeSoto and Tunica counties: 

• Kelly Andress, Democrat
• Charlie Hoots, Republican
• Theresa Isom, Democrat 
• Robert Walker, Democrat 

Senate District 11: Coahoma, DeSoto, Quitman, Tate and Tunica counties: 

• Abe Hudson, Jr., Democrat 
• Reginald Jackson, Democrat (incumbent) 
• Kendall Prewett, Republican 

Senate District 19: DeSoto County: 

• Dianne Black, Democrat 
• Kevin Blackwell, Republican (incumbent) 

Senate District 34: Covington, Jasper and Jones counties: 

• Juan Barnett, Democrat (incumbent) 

Senate District 41: Covington, Lamar, Marion, Walthall counties: 

• Joey Fillingane, Republican (incumbent)

Senate District 42: Forrest, Greene, Jones and Wayne counties 

• Donald Hartness, Republican
• Randy Robinson, Republican 
• Robin Robinson, Republican (incumbent)

Senate District 44: Forrest, Lamar and Perry counties   

• Chris Johnson, Republican (incumbent)
• Christopher Lott, Republican 
• Shakita Taylor, Democrat 

Senate District 45: Forrest and Lamar counties 

• Johnny DuPree, Democrat 
• Anna Rush, Republican 

House District 16: Chickasaw, Lee, Monroe and Pontotoc counties: 

• Brady Davis, Democrat 
• Rep. Rickey Thompson, Democrat (incumbent) 

House District 22: Chickasaw, Clay and Monroe counties 

• Justin Crosby, Democrat 
• Jon Lancaster, Republican (incumbent)

House District 36: Clay, Lowndes, Monroe, and Oktibbeha counties: 

• Karl Gibbs, Democrat (incumbent) 

House District 39: Lowndes and Monroe counties: 

• Dana McLean, Republican (incumbent)

House District 41: Lowndes County: 

• Pierre Beard, Sr., Democrat 
• Kabir Karriem, Democrat (incumbent)