OurTupelo

This article was published in partnership with The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news organization covering the U.S. criminal justice system, Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting and NBC News. Sign up for The Marshall Project’s newsletter, or follow them on Facebook or Twitter. 

GRENADA, Mississippi — Robert Loggins wandered into a neighbor’s backyard and fell down, crying for help. A woman dialed 911, telling the operator, “Please hurry!” 

When police arrived at the home in this small town between Jackson and Memphis in November 2018, they found a Black man face down with his arms tucked beneath his body. One officer recognized Loggins, 26, who had battled both mental health and drug problems. 

Officers repeatedly asked Loggins to put his hands behind his back, police video shows. 

“Y’all going to kill me?” he asked. 

“Nobody’s going to kill you,” a policeman reassured him. 

In less than an hour, Loggins was dead, yet another fatality linked to police use of a dangerous restraint technique that the Justice Department condemned back in 1995. The agency, along with the International Chiefs of Police, warned law enforcement officials that keeping people restrained face down in what is known as the prone position increased the risk of death from asphyxia. 

“As soon as the suspect is handcuffed, get him off his stomach,” the report urged. If that’s not possible, that person “should be closely and continuously monitored.” 

The Justice Department also told officers never to use a hogtie — a form of prone restraint in which officers also attach wrists to ankles behind the person’s back. Many police departments have banned the practice because of its link to positional asphyxia. 

But as the story of the Loggins family shows, actually persuading law enforcement to stop using hogties and prone-position restraints has proved almost impossible in small-town Mississippi. 

At 5:45 a.m. on Sept. 17, 2005, deputies in Carroll County, a rural area southwest of Grenada, responded to a call about a fight and found Loggins’ mother, Debbie, grappling with another woman. 

Debbie, 5-foot-4 and 220 pounds, had the woman in a headlock, Don Gray, the sheriff at the time, told reporters. When deputies tried to intervene, she became “verbally and physically combative,” he said, hitting one of the officers with his own flashlight. 

Deputies initially placed her in handcuffs and leg shackles. 

“It still was not enough,” Gray said. “They were trying to reduce the amount of her kicking. They had difficulty getting her into the car because she was putting her legs up and blocking them.” 

That’s when deputies decided to hogtie her, binding her arms and legs together behind her back with an additional set of handcuffs, and placing her face down in the back seat of the squad car. 

Deputies said that she “continued to squirm, kick and twist even after being hogtied,” according to a 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decision in a lawsuit filed by her estate, claiming police violated her constitutional rights. 

During the trip to the jail, she became quiet and may have stopped breathing, but the deputy driving her didn’t realize that, the court said. When they arrived, the deputy went to get assistance from a jailer. They found she had no pulse. They began CPR and took her to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead at 7:37 a.m. 

Authorities did not respond to requests for comment, but in court filings responding to the estate’s lawsuit, they have said that the officers did nothing wrong. A lawyer for Carroll County said in the filings that the death “had little to do with the actions of the officers,” and a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit filed by her estate, saying the restraints deputies used were reasonable. 

Seth Stoughton, the co-author of the book “Evaluating Police Uses of Force” and an expert in law enforcement training, said officers erred in leaving her handcuffed in the prone position because of the danger of positional asphyxia, which occurs when a person is immobilized in a position that impairs breathing. 

“You may need to put someone into that position while they’re being handcuffed or while leg restraints are being applied, but you don’t keep them in that position afterward,” he said. “You definitely don’t hold them or transport them in that position.” 

Asked why hogtie deaths keep happening, Stoughton replied, “I wish I knew,” adding that the cases seldom draw administrative discipline, civil liability or criminal prosecution. 

In Mississippi in 2015, four police officers in Southaven, on the Tennessee border, pinned Troy Goode down, handcuffed him and called for an ambulance. He died after being kept hogtied in the prone position for 90 minutes. 

After the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that “hog-tying a drug-affected person in a state of drug-induced psychosis and placing him face down in a prone position for an extended period constitutes excessive force,” a lawsuit brought by Goode’s family was settled in July for an undisclosed amount. 

A joint investigation by NBC News and The Marshall Project identified at least 23 deaths involving hogtying or similar restraints across the country since 2010. At least 13 of those who died had mental illnesses or were in mental crisis. 

In the case of Debbie Loggins, the coroner’s chart suggested blood work should be done to rule out positional asphyxia, but no such test results are reflected in the autopsy report. The late pathologist who conducted the autopsy, Dr. Steven Hayne, made no mention of positional asphyxia in his findings. 

Hayne ruled out trauma, drugs and alcohol, concluding that Loggins died because of advanced heat stroke, despite the fact the sun hadn’t risen when she was arrested, the weather temperature was in the 70s, and officers transported her in an air-conditioned car. 

Instead, the pathologist — whose autopsies have been called into question — concluded her death was an accident, blaming her “excessive exertional activity.” 

As a child, Robert Loggins loved to draw and write poetry, said his sister, Jessica Hayes. 

His mother’s death when he was 13 years old devastated him, she said. “It gave him a different outlook on the world and the officers.” 

That tragedy was compounded by the death of his grandmother, who helped raise him. He began to struggle in school, family members say. 

He experienced mental and behavioral problems, receiving psychiatric treatment. Marijuana and meth became an unfortunate escape for Loggins, said his father, Robert Ford. 

Loggins began committing burglaries and other crimes to fund his habit. He was 17 when he was arrested in 2010 for stealing four tires and wheels from a Toyota Camry. The judge sentenced him to 10 years in prison. 

In 2015, the parole board gave Loggins a second chance. 

He married, and he and his wife had a son. He earned his GED, worked a couple of jobs and began putting himself through community college, where he began to learn welding, his father said. He also won some local renown, writing and recording his own rap music. 

But drugs reentered his life, his father said. He struggled to break the habit, enrolling in two different rehabilitation centers. 

In 2018, Ford visited his son in the Grenada County Jail; Loggins had been arrested for violating parole. 

“It’s kind of hard to talk about, but he was calling me, ‘Dad,’ and he was crying,” Ford recalled. “I told him, ‘Son, it’s going to be all right.’” 

When Loggins was freed several months later, Ford picked him up, and all Loggins could talk about was seeing his son in Oxford, about 50 miles north. Ford said he would be happy to drive him there at the end of the workweek. 

For Loggins, the weekend never came. 

The 911 call in the early morning hours of Nov. 29, 2018, recorded a neighbor saying, “Someone’s in the back of my house calling for help.” 

Five members of the Grenada Police Department responded, some of whom had known Loggins since he was young. 

In bodycam footage obtained by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting and The Marshall Project, officers repeatedly asked Loggins to put his hands behind his back. 

“My soul belongs to Jesus Christ,” he told them. 

“Take your hands from up under you,” one officer barked. 

“He’s my savior!” Loggins said. 

“Your ass belongs to us now,” an officer replied. 

When Loggins didn’t put his hands behind his back, police used a Taser eight times, according to Grenada police records. (Taser’s manufacturer warns that repeated blasts increase the risk of a heart attack.) 

“Give me a baton, give me a baton,” one officer said. 

Officers then grabbed Loggins. Albert Deane Tilley, who had worked in the department for little more than a year, in his first job in law enforcement, said Loggins bit him on the hand. Bodycam footage showed officers striking Loggins with a flashlight. 

After handcuffing the 5-foot-8, 190-pound man, officers carried him to a carport, where a report by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation claims “Loggins’ disorderly behavior” kept emergency personnel from conducting “a full medical assessment.” 

But bodycam footage paints a different picture. As officers carry Loggins, an EMT can be heard saying, “He looks fine to me.” 

Jail video shows that at 5:59 a.m., officers carried Loggins upside down into the lobby of the jail. They left him on the floor, handcuffed and in the prone position. 

He seemed in distress, rolling from side to side, shift supervisor Sgt. Edna Clark told the investigations bureau. “To me, he was trying to gasp for breath because he couldn’t breathe.” 

She said she asked officers to take Loggins to the hospital but was waved off.

After Tilley reportedly told the jailers that he needed his handcuffs back, at least four officers and jailers piled on top of Loggins at 6:04 a.m. to remove the cuffs from his wrists, video shows. When the officers got off Loggins more than three minutes later, he didn’t move. 

Clark noticed he was bleeding and called 911. The dispatcher replied that EMTs had previously checked him. 

“He’s bleeding from his mouth. He’s bleeding from his legs,” she told the dispatcher. “I’m not gonna take him.” 

At 6:14 a.m., Clark checked Loggins’ pulse and his breathing. She called 911 again. 

“This man has got no heartbeat, and he’s not breathing. I want them officers back over here. I want an ambulance,” she said. “Get them over here now.” 

A few minutes later, medical personnel arrived. They pounded on Loggins’ chest in hopes of reviving him, and when they couldn’t, they airlifted him to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He was 26 — seven years younger than his mother when she died. 

Five officers were placed on administrative leave with pay, but there were no criminal charges and no known disciplinary action. The investigations bureau interviewed the officers, who denied any wrongdoing as part of the probe.

Tilley told the bureau’s investigator, Mark Steed, that when the police first encountered Loggins, he was saying things that didn’t make sense, which made him believe Loggins was under the influence. 

Tilley and Steed sparred about whether Loggins was hit with a flashlight, according to the transcript in the bureau’s report. At first, Tilley denied using his flashlight to strike Loggins and said no one else did either. 

After being pressed to tell the truth, Tilley conceded he had seen Loggins being hit — in the elbow.

Tilley denied seeing any broken teeth, but photographs of Loggins after his death show his teeth were indeed broken. 

Asked if he put his knee on Loggins’ neck or head at the jail, Tilley replied, “Not to my recollection, no, sir. I don’t believe it was.” 

In the video, Tilley can be seen kneeling on Loggins, although it’s not entirely clear if the deputy is kneeling on his neck or upper back. Later, the officer can be seen sitting on Loggins. Tilley’s attorney would not comment on the matter. 

“What these officers seem to be saying is this man’s ability to breathe was less important to them than a pair of handcuffs,” said the lawyer for Loggins’ estate, Jacob Jordan of Tannehill, Carmean & McKenzie in Oxford. 

On Dec. 31, 2020, Loggins’ wife, Rika Jones, filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, accusing the officers of assault and the medical personnel and private jail operator of failing to provide him proper medical treatment. 

In responding to the suit, Tilley’s lawyer wrote that there is no proof the officer caused Loggins’ death or acted with excessive force, and that he is shielded by qualified immunity, a legal doctrine that says government workers can’t be held liable for what they do on the job, except in rare circumstances. 

Other officers also deny any wrongdoing. They are asking the judge to throw out the lawsuit, saying they are immune from such litigation because Loggins’ constitutional rights were never violated. 

“Loggins repeatedly failed to follow commands, would not display his hands, and even assaulted an officer,” they wrote in court filings. “The video shows only the use of force necessary to effectuate the arrest.” 

In its response, the private jail operator, Corrections Management Services, says that its staff acted in good faith, with Sgt. Clark advising police “multiple times that Loggins would not be accepted into the jail and that he needed medical attention.” Medical personnel have denied the suit’s allegations of failure to provide proper treatment. 

The state medical examiner ruled Loggins’ death an accident, just like his mother’s. 

The alleged culprit Methamphetamine toxicity. 

The chief medical examiner who conducted the autopsy, Dr. Mark LeVaughn, was placed on administrative leave last November as the result of an unspecified attorney general’s investigation. In January, he resigned. He could not be reached for comment. 

The autopsy makes no reference to the jailhouse video, which isn’t contained in the case file. 

After viewing the video as well as the autopsy report and photos at the request of the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, forensic pathologist Dr. Michael Baden concluded Loggins’ death was a homicide, saying the methamphetamine was not a fatal amount. 

“They killed him by piling on top of him,” he said. “He absolutely died from some kind of asphyxia.” 

After MCIR’s story on Loggins’ death appeared in April, with the video included, U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson and other Mississippi leaders asked U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland to have the Justice Department investigate. Loggins’ father said the FBI has interviewed him. (The FBI declined to comment.) 

This summer, Ford stood with other protesters outside the Grenada County Jail, calling for justice in his son’s case. If officers had taken Loggins into a cell to remove his handcuffs instead of piling on top of him while he was face down, “he would be alive today,” his dad said. “He didn’t deserve to die like that.” 

The post “Y’all going to kill me?” Years apart, mother and son die in police restraints appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The post Marshall Ramsey: Life Vest appeared first on Mississippi Today.

When the case that seeks to overturn Roe v. Wade and give states the option to ban abortion is argued before the U.S. Supreme Court on Wednesday, Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch will be at the counsel’s table.

But it will be Fitch’s appointed solicitor general, Scott Stewart, arguing the case.

Stewart, a California native, served in the U.S. Department of Justice defending many of then-President Donald Trump’s most controversial immigration policies. After Trump left office, Fitch named Stewart solicitor general of Mississippi in March 2021.

Michelle Williams, Fitch’s chief of staff, confirmed on Monday that Scott will argue the case, and Fitch “will be at the counsel’s table with him.”

The case began as a challenge to Mississippi’s 2018 law that bans abortions after 15 weeks. Early on, Fitch’s office filed documents with the Supreme Court saying Mississippi’s law could be upheld without completely overturning Roe v. Wade, the 1973 ruling that established a woman’s right to an abortion.

But sometime after Stewart came onboard at the Attorney General’s Office, Fitch’s argument was re-crafted to claim Roe v. Wade was wrongly decided and should be reversed by the nation’s high court.

Many prognosticators believe that the current makeup of the U.S. Supreme Court makes the Mississippi case the most serious challenge to Roe v. Wade since the early 1980s — making the state of Mississippi, its attorney general and solicitor general the focus of national attention this week.

READ MORE: U.S. Supreme Court schedules oral arguments for Mississippi abortion ban

Prior to Fitch winning the vacant attorney general’s office in 2019, Mississippi has not had the position of solicitor general. In a press release, Fitch said that 39 states, according to the National Association of Attorneys General, had the post of solicitor general to serve as “the lead advocate for appellate litigation.”

In 2020, soon after being sworn in, Fitch announced Kristi Haskins Johnson of Brandon — a former assistant U.S. attorney — as the solicitor general. But in March 2021, after Trump left office resulting in Stewart’s departure from the Justice Department, Fitch announced Stewart would assume the role as solicitor general.

State law does not address the issue of solicitor general, but Williams said Fitch has the option to create the post.

“I would note that there is nothing in statute providing specifically for employment of a chief of staff, but that is my title,” Williams said earlier this year.

Stewart was involved in the 2016 Trump presidential campaign, according to the Washington Post, and assumed a deputy attorney general post for the office of immigration litigation after Trump’s victory.

While working for Trump, who has advocated for the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Stewart has not previously been known as active in the anti-abortion movement, according to the Washington Post article. While at Princeton University, Stewart wrote about dialing down the rhetoric surrounding the controversial issue of abortion — “a calming of the waters on abortion,” the Post article revealed.

In 2017, according to various media reports, Stewart did argue one abortion case at DOJ. Stewart, defending a policy of the Trump administration, argued that a 17-year-old teenager who discovered she was pregnant while being held at a Texas facility as an unaccompanied minor immigrant could not receive the abortion she sought, even though she had received permission from the courts to obtain it.

The Trump administration would not allow her to leave the holding facility to obtain the abortion. Stewart argued the girl would have to return to her native land to receive the abortion.

U.S. District Judge Tanya Chutkan told Stewart, “I am astounded by that position,” and ordered that the girl be allowed to have the abortion in the United States. After that court ruling, the Trump administration later changed its stance on denying abortions for unaccompanied minor immigrants who had gone through the legal process to be approved for an abortion.

READ MORE: Gov. Reeves says individual choice for vaccines OK, but not for abortion

The post Former DOJ attorney under Trump will argue Mississippi’s case to Supreme Court to reverse Roe v. Wade appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Rep. Hester Jackson-McCray has received the National Foundation for Women Legislators’ Elected Women of Excellence Award for 2021.

The award “was created to identify women who have worked tirelessly, often breaking down barriers and overcoming obstacles that once seemed insurmountable, to serve their communities” according to NFWL.

“These pacesetters have engendered an environment where women can now serve in public office and fight for the issues they are passionate about,” said NFWL Director Jody Thomas.

Jackson-McCray was presented the award Nov. 9 at the Civil Rights Museum in Memphis. She said it was an honor and thanked her colleague state Rep. Latashia Jackson, who nominated her.

“I was honored that one of my colleagues would think so much of me to be nominated,” Jackson-McCray said.

READ MORE: Despite dramatic electoral and financial setbacks, Hester Jackson-McCray makes legislative history

Jackson-McCray is a proponent of voters’ rights, and this year filed for approval of a ballot initiative to amend the state Constitution to allow early voting in Mississippi. She is the co-chair of the Mississippi Early Voting Initiative.

Jackson-McCray, D-Horn Lake, a retired nurse and owner of a catering business, was elected to House District 40 in 2019, the first Black person elected to represent DeSoto County in Jackson since Reconstruction. She defeated an incumbent Republican by 14 votes.

NFWL said Jackson-McCray “is the definition of perseverance.” In 2009, dealing with health and financial issues but inspired by the election of President Obama, she ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Horn Lake. Four years later, she ran for a city alderman seat and lost. Three years later, she ran for the House of Representatives and lost, before running again in 2019 and beating the incumbent by 14 votes.

Her Republican House opponent contested the election. After a hearing in 2020, the supermajority Republican House voted unanimously to seat Democrat Jackson-McCray.

Mississippi’s 174-member Legislature is only about 16% female, and remains much whiter and more male than the state of Mississippi at large.

Jackson-McCray said she and other female elected leaders “just have to encourage other women that they can be in office, that they can serve in the Legislature.”

“I have been encouraged during the last elections in this area, we have seen several women running for office,” she said. “I hope we see more of that.”

The post Rep. Jackson-McCray receives national women legislators award appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Gov. Tate Reeves said on Sunday that he is against COVID-19 vaccine mandates, adding he believes “in individual liberties and freedoms and people can make decisions on what’s best for them.”

But when pressed on NBC’s “Meet the Press” on Sunday morning, Reeves said that while he believes in the right to control one’s body, other factors have to be taken into account when it comes to women and abortion.

“What I would submit to you, Chuck, is they absolutely ignore the fact that in getting an abortion is an actual killing of an innocent unborn child that is in that womb,” Reeves told NBC’s Chuck Todd on the national television show.

On Wednesday of this week, the U.S. Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the Mississippi case which many prognosticators believe could overturn Roe v. Wade, the nation’s long-standing legal precedent that guarantees a woman’s right to abortion.

The case centers around a Mississippi law, passed in 2018, that would make abortions after 15 weeks illegal. That law has been stayed by lower courts as it has gone through the federal appeals process.

Reeves, the first-term governor, has drawn criticism for his handling of the pandemic response in Mississippi, including his unwillingness to firmly state that Mississippians should get vaccinated — even as other Southern Republican governors have gone to great lengths to do so.

READ MORE: Mississippians get mixed pandemic messages from experts, governor

Some have equated recent rhetoric over vaccination mandates with debate on the legality of abortion, which was the focus of Reeves’ interview Sunday on “Meet the Press.”

“The difference between vaccine mandates and abortions is vaccines allow you to protect yourself. Abortions actually go in and kill other American babies,” Reeves said.

Todd, the “Meet the Press” host, countered that vaccines were “about protecting a larger community,” not just protecting one’s self. 

“You could certainly argue that, Chuck,” Reeves said. “… The fact is that during this very horrible and challenging time since I was sworn into office in January of 2020, Chuck, we’ve had 800,000 American lives lost because of COVID. And my heart aches for every single one of those individuals that have died because of COVID.”

Reeves continued: “But since Roe was enacted, 62 million American babies have been aborted, and therefore have been killed. And that’s why I think it’s very important that people like myself and others across this country stand up for those unborn children, because they don’t have the ability to stand up for themselves.”

READ MORE: Gov. Tate Reeves celebrates suspension of COVID-19 vaccine mandate

The post Gov. Tate Reeves says individual choice for vaccines OK, but not for abortion appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Mississippi Department of Transportation Director Brad White joins Mississippi Today’s “The Other Side” podcast to discuss the $3.3 billion earmarked for Mississippi highway work in the recently passed federal infrastructure bill. White says the money will help, but will still be tightly controlled by federal highway officials. He notes the state has a more than $4 billion list of needed projects.

The post Podcast: MDOT Director Brad White talks federal infrastructure package billions appeared first on Mississippi Today.

The state House of Representatives overwhelmingly passed legislation in 2008 to restore voting rights to all Mississippians convicted of felonies, except for those convicted of murder or rape.

The 2008 legislation later died in the Senate, where Phil Bryant presided as lieutenant governor. Current House Speaker Philip Gunn, then a sophomore legislator from Clinton, was among the few House members to vote against the 2008 bill.

Since 2008 there has not been any serious efforts by legislators to move Mississippi more toward the nation’s mainstream, where in more than 40 states voting rights for those convicted of felonies are restored automatically at some point after their sentence is completed.

In the upcoming 2022 session, House Judiciary B Chairman Nick Bain, a Republican from Corinth, has vowed to try to make the process of restoring voting rights for Mississippians with felony convictions “more consistent and fairer.”

What that effort looks like remains to be seen. Bain has stressed that at this point he is not trying to completely scrap Mississippi’s archaic felony voting ban.

The surest way to make whatever changes Bain decides to try to make would be to amend the 1890 Constitution to revise the language that disenfranchises people convicted of certain felonies.

“Obviously we can try to amend the Constitution, but that is a high burden,” said Bain, who held a legislative hearing in October on the issue.

Changes to the state Constitution require approval by two-thirds of the members of each chamber of the Legislature and voter approval.

The current language in the Constitution says to restore voting rights, approval is needed from two-thirds of the elected membership of both chambers of the Legislature. Voting rights also have been restored through gubernatorial pardons and by judicial expungements, though the process is burdensome and not allowed for all convicted of felonies.

The Legislature normally approves individual bills to restore voting rights one person at a time. Normally less than five people have their rights restored each year. In the 2021 session, the rights of just two people were restored.

But there seemed to be a consensus at Bain’s October hearing that rights could be restored to large swaths of people in one piece of legislation instead of restoring rights one person and one bill at a time.

Some said they believe the Legislature has the constitutional authority to restore rights to just those already convicted.

But Paloma Wu, a deputy director with the Mississippi Center for Justice, said she believes the Constitution is not clear on the issue and said legislators could restore voting rights for people convicted in the future and allow the courts to interpret the issue should a lawsuit be filed challenging the law.

Most all agreed, though, that to restore the rights to a large group of people would take two-thirds approval from members of both chambers just as it does to restore rights to an individual convicted of a felony. That process could prove difficult in a Legislature where in recent years, many members of the Republican majority have been reluctant to restore voting rights.

In a perfect world, Bain has said he believes it should be another entity, such as the judiciary, and not the Legislature that restores voting rights. It is not clear whether giving that authority to the courts could be done without a constitutional amendment.

There is no public polling on whether voters would support removing the lifetime ban on voting if the Legislature offered such a proposal to the electorate. In Florida, voters overwhelmingly approved an initiative removing the ban.

One of the problems with the current process in Mississippi, Bain has said, is that a person faces a lifetime ban on voting for a felony bad check writing conviction, for instance, but could vote while in prison if convicted of child pornography or of being a major drug dealer.

The current system of disenfranchisement for those convicted of certain felonies has its roots in the state’s Jim Crow-era.

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 Constitution were thought by the white political leaders as more likely to be committed by African Americans.

That provision is currently being challenged on constitutional grounds in the federal courts with two cases pending before the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. Attorneys have argued that the provision’s intent is the same as the poll tax, the literacy test and other Jim Crow-era provisions that sought to prevent African Americans from voting.

Another sure way to change the state’s felony suffrage ban is for the courts to strike it down.

The post Legislature could try to address felony voting ban for first time since 2008 appeared first on Mississippi Today.

An extensive report from the Commonwealth Fund has found deep-seated racial health disparities in all 50 states — with many more pronounced in Mississippi than anywhere else in the nation.

Across 24 measures graded in a Health Equity Scorecard, Mississippi ranked near the bottom or last when measuring health outcomes, health care access and health care quality for both its Black and white populations. Only one state, Oklahoma, had a lower overall health care rating for its Black population. 

The number of deaths in Mississippi from potentially preventable diseases, like diabetes, that are given effective and timely health care are much higher than the national average for both racial groups. However, in nearly all categories where disparities were measured, they were more pronounced for Mississippi’s Black population.

READ MORE: The full report from the Commonwealth Fund.

For example, Mississippi’s health system scores in the 8th percentile for Black residents, but much higher for white residents, in the 38th percentile. Compared to 38 states with large Black populations, Mississippi’s health system ranks 37th overall. 

Mississippi also performed poorly for insured and uninsured patients, showing that there are issues in health care delivery for those who have access on paper. There is one specific policy issue, however, that is partly responsible for the sheer breadth of the disparities in the state’s health care system: Medicaid expansion. 

“Improving people’s health care requires people to have health insurance coverage, and you’re not going to see a narrowing of disparities in states like Mississippi unless you provide health insurance coverage for everyone in the state,” said Sarah Collins, vice president for health care coverage and access at Commonwealth. “We’ve seen in other states that the disparities narrow in coverage once they expand Medicaid. So this would be a critical first step for Mississippi. It’s not the last step, but would be a critical first one.”

Mississippi is one of 12 states that haven’t expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Doing so would allow thousands of low-income Mississippians eligible for tax credits through the ACA marketplace. Without these tax credits, the few plans that are available on the state’s marketplace are too expensive for those that fall in this “coverage gap.”

The state’s top elected officials, most notably Gov. Tate Reeves and Speaker of the House Philip Gunn, oppose Medicaid expansion, and have long maintained that the state cannot afford the costs.

If Medicaid were expanded, the federal government would cover 90% of the health care costs related to expansion, while Mississippi would have to cover the remaining 10%. In September, one of Mississippi’s top economists released a study showing that the 10% state match would be more than covered by health care-related savings to the state and new tax revenue generated.

The post Mississippi among worst in racial health disparities, new report finds appeared first on Mississippi Today.

That three-week stretch of June 2020 — when Mississippi lawmakers worked to change the 127-year-old state flag, the last in the nation containing the Confederate battle emblem — was insane. There’s really no other way to put it.

For those of us who got to watch those historic days unfold up close, perhaps the most memorable moment was when dozens of coaches from Mississippi’s eight public universities gathered at the Capitol for a joint press conference to drive a final nail in the old flag’s coffin.

Longtime sports writer and Mississippi Today columnist Rick Cleveland wrote it this way at the time: 

All my professional life I have wondered what it would take for all the universities in Mississippi to agree on any matter under the sun. Just once.

And now I know: It’s the state flag of Mississippi — specifically, the need to get rid of the current flag.

Rick Cleveland, Mississippi Today

There was so much that we knew and heard at the time that we couldn’t report. We had to make several judgment calls a day about what information was most newsworthy at the moment. 

One story that we had to lose in the fray: The first meeting of Ole Miss head coach Lane Kiffin and Mississippi State head coach Mike Leach in their new jobs came at the state Capitol, where they would serve as lobbyists together.

As you might expect, things got weird.

Mississippi schools typically don’t get to hire big national names as their head football coaches. Ole Miss and Mississippi State both did it after the 2019 season.

Fans across the state eagerly awaited what Kiffin and Leach would bring to their respective schools — both possessed offensive masterminds, both had a knack for stealing national headlines with their witty banter off the field.

Most figured the first time they’d meet as Mississippi coaches was Thanksgiving 2020 on the field in Oxford for the annual, bitter rivalry. Not so.

The fact that lawmakers were on the verge of changing the state flag in June 2020 was nothing short of miraculous. As protests over racial inequality raged across the state and nation following the murder of George Floyd, Mississippi lawmakers had earnestly worked for a couple weeks in early June to whip the votes to change the flag.

For decades, earnest efforts at the Capitol to change the flag — led by Black lawmakers — had been ignored by powerful white lawmakers, who enjoyed large majorities in both the House and Senate. There was virtually no broad political will among most white lawmakers, even in the summer of 2020, to change the flag.

Further complicating things in June 2020: Leaders needed to secure more votes than normal because deadlines to pass general bills had long passed.

Starting on June 8, a bipartisan coalition of lawmakers — including Republican Speaker of the House Philip Gunn — had been unsuccessfully trying to whip enough votes to change the flag. Outside the building, pressure from Black organizers and activists, major corporations and other prominent groups like the Southeastern Conference and Mississippi Baptist Convention had reached its peak. 

The clock was ticking as leaders had just a few days before the scheduled end of the legislative session. 

Gunn, knowing the window of opportunity was closing, called University of Southern Mississippi President Rodney Bennett on June 23. All eight public universities had long stopped flying the state flag for moral reasons — a point of tension among some Republicans in the House and Senate in recent years.

“I knew those presidents could get to members (in the Legislature) better than anyone,” Gunn told Mississippi Today earlier this year. “If anyone could do it, it was them.”

So Bennett, at Gunn’s request, got all eight presidents to a meeting in the speaker’s office the very next morning on June 24 — an incredible feat considering it can be difficult to get all eight presidents in the same room even for their scheduled monthly college board meetings.

As the presidents sat in Gunn’s office that day, an idea was floated.

“Sports had already played a pretty big role in moving some lawmakers (to change the flag),” Gunn said. “It’s Mississippi. You know how sports are here. What more powerful way to convince people about this than sports?”

The presidents all agreed.

“From a press standpoint, the best thing we could come up with was to get the coaches involved,” said Rep. Trey Lamar, one of the speaker’s top lieutenants who was in the meeting with the university presidents. “So we told (the presidents) that and they all agreed, and they left that meeting with the understanding that we are leaving here, and we are calling our coaches and we are going to put it together. Within hours, you know, word had gotten back to us what was going to happen the next day. They were all coming back.”

The next day, on June 25, dozens of coaches from the state’s eight public universities would come to the Capitol to publicly lobby to change the flag.

Kiffin, the new Ole Miss coach, was in California on June 24 when he got a call from his boss Keith Carter, the university’s athletics director. They were sending a plane, and he’d need to be on it that night.

The new Ole Miss coach, who hadn’t spent much time in Mississippi since COVID-19 cancelled spring practice in 2020, landed in Jackson on June 25 around 3 a.m. and checked into a hotel near the Jackson-Evers International Airport.

A pretty robust morning of lobbying was planned for June 25. Dozens of coaches from the public universities would do two main things: Meet individually with lawmakers who were still privately saying they would not vote to change the flag, and collectively hold a press conference that would be broadcast across the state and nation to lobby to change the flag.

The thinking was that any legislative holdouts would cave to the pressure of sports figures who were privately and publicly asking them to make the change.

But early that morning, there was a problem. The Ole Miss athletics department group flying down that morning from Oxford was delayed, and Kiffin, who had gotten about three hours of sleep after arriving to town, had nothing to wear except the hoodie, T-shirt, shorts and flip-flops he arrived in.

That attire doesn’t quite meet the Capitol dress code, particularly when Kiffin would draw perhaps the most camera time of any coach there.

So Sidney Allen Jr., a Butler Snow lobbyist and Ole Miss alumnus, scrambled to solve Kiffin’s clothing dilemma. Allen called his friend Luke Abney, who owns The Rogue, a fine men’s clothing store in Jackson’s Highland Village. Abney told Allen he would open the store early on June 25 to get a suit quickly tailored as best they could.

Abney’s staff opened his store early, and Kiffin got there around 8:30 a.m. and stripped down to be fitted for a suit.

That light blue suit and tan shoes Kiffin wore in front of all those cameras? He bought them minutes before getting to the Capitol that day.

“After we got him all dressed up, he left his other clothes here — the T-shirt, shorts, hoodie, visor, everything,” Abney said. “He told us he’d be back to pick it all up. He came back after he did his thing at the Capitol, he took pictures with everybody here, talked with us for about 30 minutes. He couldn’t have been nicer. It was fun as an Ole Miss guy to get to meet him, but it was really cool that he was in town to be a leader in changing the flag. It was a proud moment.”

Inside the Capitol on June 25, the coaches were not only doing the press conference, which the world saw; they were meeting with lawmakers behind closed doors.

Staffers for Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann ordered a nice breakfast spread for their expected visitors. The coaches in Hosemann’s office that morning would be treated with a true Southern delicacy: chicken biscuits from Chick-Fil-A.

Mike Leach, the Mississippi State coach, is apparently a fan.

When Leach, who flew to Jackson for the day from his home in Florida, made his way into Hosemann’s office, he didn’t immediately shake hands or greet anyone. Instead, he walked around to everyone who had a biscuit, grabbed them off their plates and stuffed them into his pockets.

Everyone in the office looked at each other in amazement, and Leach greeted Hosemann after a few seconds and began telling the staff some funny stories.

The coaches’ day at the Capitol was an incredible success. 

Ole Miss men’s basketball coach Kermit Davis, Jr,, and Mississippi State women’s basketball coach Nikki McCray-Penson delivered eloquent speeches in the Capitol rotunda that centered on one single message: “Change the Mississippi flag. Now. Let’s move ahead.”

Just behind the podium stood Kiffin, in his brand new suit, and Leach, with pockets filled with biscuit crumbs. Jackson television station WAPT captured the hilarious moment when Leach, seeing Kiffin for the first time, pulled Kiffin’s mask off his face and popped it.

That mask that Kiffin wore? It was a Mississippi National Guard Association mask. Allen, the lobbyist, had to go get it from Senate Pro Tem Dean Kirby’s office because — you guessed it — Kiffin didn’t have one when he landed from California.

The suit, the biscuits and the mask fun aside, Kiffin and Leach scrambling to get to Jackson that day proved to be a critical moment in Mississippi history.

Two non-native Mississippi head coaches, men who would recruit and compete against each other, who are expected to hate each other, came together to make a difference for the state.

“This is very important to (the student-athletes),” Kiffin said at the Capitol that day. “Anything we can do to help support them, and I think it has a lot to do with the future of the state programs. You’re going to deal with kids leaving the state or not wanting to come because of this… It’s important for the rivalry for people to see us (Kiffin and Leach) coming together for one united cause. That’s very important.” 

“The purpose of a state flag is to unify the state. Right now, this flag doesn’t do that,” Leach said that day. “To me, it’s really quite simple. Why do you have a state flag? To unify all the people in the state. If your flag doesn’t do that, change it. Does your flag bring business to the state or keep business out? If it doesn’t bring it in, change it. Does it draw athletes and people to the state, or not? If it doesn’t, change it. It’s as simple as that. On that very practical level, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened a long time ago.”

Three days later, lawmakers cast the final vote to change the state flag. Many people deserve credit for that final outcome, but the coaches coming to the Capitol that day certainly moved the needle with several lawmakers who had previously resisted making that vote.

Kiffin and Leach, two Mississippi outsiders, played an unexpectedly large role in that.

If only Jackson State had hired Deion Sanders just a couple months earlier so he could’ve gotten in on the fun.

READ MORE: Kiffin and Leach have made the Egg Bowl… a lovey-dovey affair?

The post Lane Kiffin and Mike Leach went to the Mississippi Capitol to lobby. Things got weird. appeared first on Mississippi Today.