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Jacqueline Jackson, 55, loved everything about the computer classes she took at Margaret Walker Alexander Library.

She said she signed up because she realized how many tasks, such as sending emails and signing documents, require a computer. 

“Everything is a computer,” she said. 

“That’s the fastest way to get something done, as well.”

Jackson was behind on her technology knowledge, and doesn’t have a laptop or desktop computer at home. Still, thanks to the classes at the library, Jackson learned new skills such as Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel and even how to make a flyer.

The new knowledge helps her to better navigate in today’s high-tech environment.

“It was actually easier than I thought it was going to be,” she said.

Margaret Walker Alexander Library which is part of the Jackson Hinds Library System, offers free individual computer classes for all of its users.

The classes are one-on-one, and students can schedule them between 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Mondays, Wednesdays or Fridays depending on their availability. People of all ages and skill levels can apply, and the library provides practice laptops.

Students can learn about internet safety, cybersecurity, software and hardware, and more.

The classes are mainly taught by circulation assistant Isrrael Ontiveros. He has a lifelong love for technology. He has an associate degree in information technology, a master’s in linguistics and is currently working toward a Comptia Security+ certification that is awarded for advanced cybersecurity knowledge.

“We live in a society where technology is advancing, and now technology is demanding more from everybody,” Ontiveros said.

He said that the combination of being patient and thorough with his students contributes to their success in learning.

“They come back and they commend me and thank me for staying with them for so long, ”Ontiveros said.

Jackson had to take a break from the class for personal reasons, but plans to start again soon. Her advice to others who want to take the class is, “just try to be a little bit open and try it.”

Muddy waters and descent into a whirlpool. 

That’s the dangerous image that Joesph Patri Brown uses to describe his experience in the Mississippi justice system. The 57-year-old inmate, who has been on death row for over 30 years, said most people don’t know how to stay calm and resist being pulled deeper, but it’s something he’s come to learn. 

“I had to hold my breath and hope I survived,” Brown said from the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman through video conference for the release of his memoir.  

Brown has used writing as a way to provide a glimpse into his life and those of 34 others on death row as he asserts his innocence and appeals his conviction. 

Short stories, poetry and think pieces he’s written while incarcerated have been collected in a book called “The Image They Had Painted,” which was released in January through Publication Studio Guelph in collaboration with The GOAT PoL. 

Through his writing, Brown critiques the system that imprisoned him and sentenced him to die, calling it a form of murder rather than justice. In recorded interviews before publication, Brown said he considers the book many things: resistance, resilience, a testimonial and an educational tool. 

A person falling into a whirlpool is on the book’s cover, and its back cover shows a person climbing out of the swirling waters. The book can be read from front to back or back to front. 

Brown, identified in court records as Joseph Patrick Brown, was convicted and sentenced to death for the 1992 shooting death of a Natchez convenience store clerk, Martha Day.

“Where is Someone,” a piece from the book, travels back to March 12, 1994, when Brown was sentenced to death. He wrote that it was a blur as he looked back at his crying family members in the courtroom. When he was in the Adams County jail awaiting transport to prison, thoughts raced through his head and he considered taking his own life. 

“I’m all alone. I don’t have anyone. No one is coming. I’m sinking deeper into a much darker place when an idea comes to me,” he wrote. 

“ … You never know what you might do when you reach a certain level of despair.”

Failed appeals and hopes for reprieve

Born and raised in Natchez, Brown served time in youth detention and did previous stints at Parchman. He began using drugs when he was young, and he shared that addiction with Rachel Walker, his then-girlfriend. Court records say drug addiction led to the hold-up of the Charter Food Store and Day’s death. Walker testified that she saw him go inside and heard gun shots before he returned with a cash register and a gun. She said Brown told her to keep quiet.

He has maintained his innocence. State and federal appeals that have been rejected raised issues with ineffective assistance of counsel during trial and post-conviction. Among the issues his attorneys raised was what they considered thin evidence linking him to the crime and dependence on witnesses –  Walker and a jailhouse detainee named Larry Bernard, according to court records – whom his attorneys argued were not credible. 

Brown has been waiting several years for a federal judge to rule on his habeas petition. Every time an officer hands out legal mail inside the unit, he hopes to receive news about the ruling, but it hasn’t come. 

“Depending on how this ruling goes when they get back to me, I’ll be alive and free or I’ll be dead,” he wrote in an April 2025 piece. 

Mississippi Today was unable to locate Day’s family for comment. 

As he waits for the court to rule, Brown has continued to write and work on publishing his book. 

He appeared at a Jan. 22 virtual book launch through video, appearing from the chest up and with a blurred background. Another death row prisoner squeezed Brown’s shoulders, causing him to smile. Occasionally, others passed behind him and a television flickered. 

Brown’s video calls lasted for 30 minutes, so he called back several times to continue answering questions or reading passages from the book. 

Brown said he included “had” in the book’s title because it highlights the image the state has imposed on death row inmates – that they are violent, can’t be trusted, need to be confined up to 24 hours a day in a cell and locked down seven days a week year-round.  

His writing puts a different face to the state’s portrayal. 

“I have shown that I can live inside of this world and keep my humanity,” he said.

Brown said he is around men who are thoughtful and talented. Some are also writers and artists. They may offer a hug and they look out for him. 

From his piece “There Are More,” Brown remembers his first day on death row and how he thought he was the only one because the others had been executed. The guards put him in a cell without sheets or toilet paper, and they didn’t give them to him when he asked for them. Then came the booming voice of a man in a nearby cell who “started raising hell” to get the items to Brown. 

Later, when he met the man during yard time, Brown thanked him. 

Some things have changed on death row, including more time for the men to spend out of their cells and the ability for them to have video visits. Brown gives credit to the current prison administration for the improvements. 

Brown read a few of his poems including “Americanism,” which incorporates the history of the Transatlantic slave trade and the Trail of Tears and connects it to the country’s use of the death penalty. The poem ends with the lines: 

You strap me to a death table, laying me out the way Rome did Christ,

forcing into me this history of Americanism, you take my life.

My final words, will forever be: F— you, you funky motherf—ers

Even decades in a cage, I lived free.

In addition to writing, Brown talked about the editing and design process. 

‘We produced what was inside of my mind’

Alison Turner, who previously lived in Mississippi, has worked with incarcerated writers and served as Brown’s book editor. She said other prison writers sometimes see revisions as an attack or a critique of who they are, but Brown leaned into feedback. 

Brown considers Turner a mentor. He said from edits, he saw his voice and purpose of writing evolve, going beyond writing for himself to writing for everyone who was around him and writing in a way that humanized the experiences and living conditions of death row. Turner is now an assistant professor and oral history curator at the University of South Dakota. 

At times, Brown said he was stubborn about what he wanted for the book, but he said his collaborators helped bring to life what he was trying to convey in his writing. 

“We produced what was inside of my mind in a way I wanted it done,” he said. 

Brown’s other published work can be found in several places, including a monthly column called Chronicles of Parchman through Rooted Magazine. He has published writing with The GOAT PoL, an online platform that houses writing from around the world. 

Brown continues to speak out about the death penalty and works with organizations including HumanS Remain, a nonprofit that supports Mississippi death row inmates through education and advocacy. The organization’s website publishes journal entries for several death row men and Lisa Jo Chamberlin, the only woman sentenced to death in Mississippi. 

At the book launch, Brown’s nephew asked him how he finds balance between love and hate for the state of Missisisppi. He also wanted to know what his uncle looks forward to. 

“I hate what this state does to me … I just want to go home,” Brown said. “I want to be home, I want to be around my loved ones. I want to do all these things.”

“The Image They Had Painted” is available for purchase at https://publicationstudio.biz/books/the-image-they-had-painted

Mississippi’s Black voters recently won a victory that puts them on the brink of having greater sway over who sits on the state’s Supreme Court.

But that win may be short-lived.

In the coming months, the U.S. Supreme Court will rule on a case that could weaken or overturn key parts of the Voting Rights Act — a Civil Rights-era law that protects the power of racial minorities to elect candidates of their choice.

If the law is upended, it could radically alter the country’s voting maps, a shift that would be felt heavily in Mississippi and unwind decades of progress for Black voters across the U.S.

Last year, a federal judge found that the current voting map used to elect Mississippi Supreme Court justices illegally diminishes Black voting power in violation of the Voting Rights Act.

U.S. District Court Judge Sharion Aycock then ordered Mississippi lawmakers to redraw one of the three districts that are used to elect the state’s nine Supreme Court justices. In their ongoing legislative session, lawmakers have taken preliminary steps to comply. 

Mississippi has the highest Black population share of any state, at about 37%, but just one of the nine justices is Black. There have only ever been four Black justices on the Mississippi Supreme Court in the state’s history, and none of them have ever served at the same time.

That electoral history is “bleak,” according to Aycock, who heard arguments over the matter in a non-jury trial last year in northern Mississippi. A George W. Bush appointee, Ayock concluded in her decision that “Black candidates who desire to run for the Mississippi Supreme Court face a grim likelihood of success.”

The Voting Rights Act requires otherwise, Aycock ruled. The act, first passed in 1965, has been a bedrock legal guarantee of political equality and full democratic inclusion for Black Americans and other racial minorities.

The pending U.S. Supreme Court decision in Louisiana v. Callais could weaken or even eliminate Section 2, a key part of the Voting Rights Act. This section is critical to lawsuits that challenge racial discrimination in election maps and that Aycock relied on to support her ruling. The case, brought by a group of self-identified “non-African American” voters against Louisiana’s congressional map, could put into doubt legal rulings across the country that have required districts that favor racial minorities. 

Lawmakers are responding to Aycock’s order, but slowly. 

Powerful committee heads overseeing the process say they want to see if a decision in the Callais case comes before legislators adjourn for the year in early April. A decision could come at any point before the end of the Supreme Court’s term in June, and many legal observers said after the oral arguments in October that they expect the court to severely limit the Voting Rights Act.

That leaves Mississippi’s Black voters in a legal quagmire, holding out hope for the prospect of greater influence over the state’s high court while fearing a national unwinding of Black political power and representation. 

“It’s unsettling for people of color here in the state of Mississippi to be waiting for them to push their pencil to draw lines,” said Rep. Kabir Karriem, a Democrat who chairs the Legislative Black Caucus in the Mississippi House of Representatives. “It’s long overdue, but with the (U.S.) Supreme Court holding us in the balance, we don’t know what to expect.”

Mississippi’s voting districts under scrutiny

The Mississippi Supreme Court, like all state-level high courts, potentially wields significant power. In Mississippi, that power has risen and fallen throughout the decades, as has the court’s commitment to upholding the Constitutional promise of racial equality.

In recent years, the state Supreme Court has struck down the process to put citizen-led initiatives on the ballot and made it harder for death row prisoners to appeal their cases. It has also pushed modest reforms of the state’s beleaguered public defense system and imposed requirements intended to make money bail less burdensome. 

Mississippi is among only six states to elect Supreme Court justices from district-level elections rather than statewide elections or gubernatorial appointments.

That’s an arrangement that, at least on paper, could improve the standing of Black voters in Supreme Court elections. While Black voters make up a sizable bloc, they aren’t a majority of the state, and voting patterns remain highly polarized by race in the state. No Black candidate has won a statewide election since Reconstruction

Even so, the districts used in Supreme Court elections weaken the influence of Black voters, according to a 2022 lawsuit filed by a coalition of Black voters. 

The current districts were drawn in 1987, an unusually long time compared to the other states that use judicial voting districts for state supreme court seats. There are three districts, each of which sends three justices to the court. Black voters currently make up just shy of a majority in one of the three districts, with the Black-majority Delta region split between two different districts. 

When the lawsuit was filed, there were two justices on the court who had won elections with Black support. 

But by the time Aycock ruled last August, there was only one. A white justice who had historically been elected with the support of Black voters — and who often dissented from the court’s conservative majority — was defeated in 2024 by a white Republican state senator. 

That left Leslie King as the lone justice on the court with a history of Black electoral support. King is only the fourth Black justice to sit on the court since the 1985 appointment of Reuben Anderson by the governor. To stress the hardship Black candidates face in judicial elections, plaintiffs in the suit emphasized that all four Black justices in the state’s history first reached the high court through gubernatorial appointments, not by winning elections. 

“A Black candidate has never won without possessing the incumbency advantage,” Aycock noted, describing that fact as “critical” to her ruling. 

Aycock not only ordered the Mississippi Legislature to give Black voters greater power in one of the three Supreme Court voting districts. She also indicated that she’s likely to order special elections for at least some of the court’s seats, though she delayed that decision until she reviews a new map.

That would follow court-ordered special elections last year that boosted Black representation in both chambers of the Legislature, following a different voting rights lawsuit.

The Voting Rights Act’s fate

At the heart of the Callais challenge to the current legal landscape is a claim that states cannot intentionally draw voting districts to achieve a certain racial composition — such as a district that favors Black voters — even when done to remedy a disadvantage faced by minority voters in electing their favored candidates. 

If the Supreme Court sides with plaintiffs, it could unravel many wins for Black representation, both old and new. Republicans in Mississippi could eventually redraw the state’s congressional map and eliminate its majority-Black district, currently held by Bennie Thompson, a Democrat, and at least one leading Republican considering a run for governor has floated that possibility.

But the fallout from a Callais decision that guts the Voting Rights Act would reach far beyond Congress, said Kareem Crayton, a lawyer and scholar who helps lead efforts around voting law and race for the Brennan Center for Justice, a policy think tank and advocacy center.  

“Most of the claims that are brought are not congressional,” Crayton said. “A lion’s share of Section 2 litigation that has succeeded has been at the local and state levels.”

That means disruptions to current redistricting law would be deeply felt at the levels of government many people interact with the most, at a time when there’s already great strain on many of the country’s political institutions.

“This matters to real people,” Crayton said. “If all of those settled understandings about who is responsible to you, who is accountable to you, are thrown into doubt, that’s not good for our democratic system.”

Legislative, legal wrangling ahead

Since state legislators gaveled into session in January, the state House and Senate have each passed placeholder bills, but these bills don’t yet contain revised voting lines.

Despite Aycock’s order, Mississippi lawmakers may choose not to enact a new map at all if the U.S. Supreme Court revises the legal landscape around redistricting, said Rep. Kevin Horan, a Republican, who chairs one of the committees that initiated a possible redistricting bill.

However, Horan told The Marshall Project-Jackson and Bolts that as of now, he intends to comply with Aycock’s order and plans to advance a new Supreme Court map, “if the Senate will agree.” 

State Sen. Brice Wiggins, a Republican from Pascagoula, similarly advised senators recently that redistricting may be necessary if the nation’s high court doesn’t rule soon.

Horan said legislative staffers are working on maps, but declined to discuss the details.

If no decision comes from the high court within the next few weeks and legislators do adopt new maps, then the Callais ruling, when it comes, is certain to prompt a volley of legal filings and arguments.

An appeal of Aycock’s order is already pending before the 5th U.S. Circuit of Appeals, which put the appeal on hold until the Callais decision is handed down. The 5th Circuit might take the appeal up again or it could send the case back down to the district court for Aycock to reconsider her ruling. 

Depending on the details of the Callais opinion, civil rights attorneys favoring redistricting might find themselves arguing to salvage Aycock’s opinion on new legal grounds, to preserve a newly adopted map, to petition a court to draw its own map or to push forward special elections.

For Karriem, who leads a Black caucus with 58 members, the stakes aren’t primarily procedural or technical. They aren’t even about grand theories of law and interpretation.

For him, this is a dire moment.

Black communities are bracing, Karriem said, for “devastation.” 

This article was produced in collaboration with The Marshall Project-Jackson, a nonprofit news team covering Mississippi’s criminal justice systems, and Bolts, a nonprofit publication that covers criminal justice and voting rights in local governments.

The state fire marshal is investigating a long-troubled unit at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, which could result in the unit’s closure if conditions don’t improve.

Mississippi Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney confirmed to Mississippi Today that deputies with the state fire marshal’s office, a division of his agency, were at Parchman’s Unit 29 on Thursday. The probe comes after prisoners in Unit 29 had to endure freezing temperatures without heat last month after a winter storm knocked out power, and officials struggled to fix the problem.

“They had no heat at all and had inmates in there,” Chaney said.

When asked what specific issues deputies were investigating, Chaney cited the winter storm response, fire code violations and “other problems.” Chaney said investigators have been formally looking into the issues “for at least 10 days,” but declined to say whether the probe is part of a broader investigation into Parchman, a prison in rural Sunflower County that has about 1,900 prisoners.

A prisoner in Parchman’s Unit 29, who asked not to be named for fear of retribution, told Mississippi Today that he saw two fire marshal officers with computer tablets recording throughout his building. A prisoner down the hall from him was told by a warden to pack up his belongings to transfer to another unit, the man said.

Unit 29 has been the subject of scrutiny from state and federal officials for years, with poor conditions and violence prompting outcry and litigation.

At the end of December 2020, riots broke out in Units 29 and 30, prompting the Mississippi Highway Patrol and multiple sheriff’s deputies to be called. Cellphone video from the inside showed fights and fires. By the time law enforcement quelled the violence, at least five prisoners were dead at Parchman and other correctional facilities. 

Pictures and footage have also emerged of run-down living areas cited in a 2022 Justice Department report finding that conditions at Parchman are unconstitutional . 

Gov. Tate Reeves vowed in his first State of the State address to shut Unit 29 down, but to date, it has remained open, with plans by Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain to make renovations and bring closed parts back online. 

Mark Lampton, a senior attorney with the Mississippi Insurance Department, told Mississippi Today deputies were at Unit 29 “gathering the facts and deciding” whether closing the unit would be justified, he said.

“So yes, it could happen, but we’re not saying anything is going to happen until we have all the facts,” he said.

Lampton said the fire marshal’s office had already found that Parchman violated fire codes, and the agency sent prison officials a letter asking if they’ve corrected the problem or have a plan for doing so in the future.

“My understanding is that there’s been no response,” Lampton said. “We try to go through a process and give people a chance, but we end up having to close a building down.”

A Mississippi Department of Corrections spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In an interview, House Corrections Committee Chairwoman Becky Currie, a Republican from Brookhaven, called for Unit 29 to be closed.

“Unit 29 has been uninhabitable for years. This is nothing new. There are holes in the ceiling. When it rains, water comes in. It’s got black mold. It had no heat during the ice storm and inmates had to build fires to stay warm. There was no fire alarm in the building that went off,” Currie said. “Now that we have a building that has had a fire in it, it’s past time that this building be shut down.”

In January, after temperatures plunged below freezing in an ice storm, Cain said a tree limb fell on a power line and took out power at the facility. Currie said prison officials told her they failed to check the generators at the prison before the ice storm.

Mississippi Today also obtained text messages from a Parchman guard, who wrote: “Most of their stuff doesn’t work. What does work is rigged up. They don’t have a maintenance team that actually knows what they are doing.”

The prisoner who spoke with Mississippi Today said he awoke during the storm to the lights flickering. He said that later, a fire was set down the hall from his cell. He said prisoners were trying to get the attention of correctional officers after the power went out.

Chaney said his agency has the “statutory authority” to close Unit 29 down, but would do so only as a last resort. He said he would prefer to work with the attorney general’s office and Cain to fix the unit, but a potential conflict with the corrections commissioner was also a concern.

“Once we pull the trigger on closing that unit down, let’s say that we’ve said you’ve got to close it down and the commissioner says no,” Chaney said. “Then you’ve got a real problem.”

Chaney did not offer a timeline for the investigation into Unit 29, but said it is ongoing.

As of 2024, Unit 29 housed about 700 people, according to records from the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

Mississippi Today reporters Mina Corpuz and Leonardo Bevilacqua contributed to this report.

Claims filed from damages caused by Winter Storm Fern have tallied over $107 million in losses, the Mississippi Insurance Department said Thursday.

“I expect that number to continue to climb as reporting continues,” Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney said in a press release.

That total comes from over 12,000 claims filed in the state after the late January storm. More than 10,000 of those are for residential property, and 55% of the filed claims have been closed, amounting to over $60 million in payments, the department said.

At its peak, the number of power outages in the state totaled over 180,000. The actual count, though, is likely much higher as it didn’t include outages from city-run utilities such as in Holly Springs, according to Chris Brown, the Northern District public service commissioner. At least 30 people have died in connection with the storm, state emergency officials said.

In terms of overall damages to the state, which would include impacts to roads and government buildings, the number is likely at least $400 million, state senators estimated earlier this month.

On Feb. 18, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency announced that 18 counties were eligible for federal grants to support debris removal and repair public facilities. The state is still waiting to hear if it will be eligible for federal individual assistance, which would assist affected residents with direct payments.

A bill that would create a disaster recovery loan program passed in the Senate and is being discussed in the House State Affairs and Appropriations committees. Another proposal, which would lend money from the state to utilities affected by the storm, passed the House on Wednesday. Lawmakers are also reviewing a bill that would send $20 million to the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency to support its disaster response.

The insurance department said anyone needing assistance with filing a claim can call its consumer services division at 1-800-562-2957 or 601-359-2453, or email consumer@mid.ms.gov. The department also offered the following advice around filing claims:

• Prepare to file an insurance claim by gathering all relevant policy numbers.
• File your claim as soon as possible. Your policy may require that you make the notification within a
  certain time period.
• Be aware that if a widespread disaster has occurred, the company may set up special procedures.
• Be sure you cooperate fully with the insurance company. Ask what documents, forms and data you will
  need to file a claim. Keep a record of all conversations with insurance companies, creditors or relief
  agencies.
• If your home is damaged to the extent you can’t live there, ask your insurance company if you have
  coverage for additional living expenses.
• Take photographs/video of the damage. Inventory your home for damaged or lost items before your
  adjustor arrives. This will speed up your claim process.
• Make the repairs necessary to prevent further damage to your property (cover broken windows, leaking
  roofs and damaged walls).
• Don’t have permanent repairs made until your insurance company has inspected the property and you
  have reached an agreement on the cost of repairs. Be prepared to provide the claims adjuster with
  records of any improvements you made before the damage.
• Maintain any damaged personal property for the adjuster to inspect.
• Ask the adjuster for an itemized explanation of the claim settlement offer.
• Be patient and assist claims adjusters assigned to your case. Small losses may be settled quickly;
  extensive claims will take longer.
• Save all receipts, including those from the temporary repairs covered by your insurance policy.

Officials in Washington County have been unable to locate more than 100 pieces of DNA evidence tied to a rape and manslaughter appeal, despite a judge ordering them to do so in mid-September. 

Instead, they say an assistant district attorney of Mississippi’s 4th Circuit Court District, which includes Greenville, was the last person to possess the evidence. Officials in the district attorney’s office say that’s not true.

Regardless of blame, the evidence is key to whether King Brown Jr., who was convicted in 2005, will remain incarcerated in the Marshall County Correctional Facility. He has been incarcerated for more than 20 years.

In affidavits filed Feb. 18 in Washington County Circuit Court, employees of the circuit clerk’s office described receiving verbal confirmation in September of some of the evidence being at the county district attorney’s office. In their affidavits, Washington County Circuit Clerk Barbara Esters-Parker and two deputies said an employee of the district attorney’s office previously acknowledged being the last to see and possess some of the evidence.

But an unsigned statement from the district attorney’s office sent Tuesday to Mississippi Today says no one at the district attorney’s office “has ever possessed, viewed or handled any of the exhibits and/or physical evidence” since the 2005 trial.

The DNA evidence, ranging from a sexual assault kit to fingernail scrapings, is tied to the 2002 killing of R.W., a 6 year-old girl in Greenville. She was found dead in a garbage bin that belonged to her grandmother’s neighbors — the family of King Brown Jr., who was convicted in 2005 of raping and killing R.W. 

Jacob Howard and Adnan Sultan, Brown’s attorneys who are appealing his convictions, have argued that if the DNA evidence is lost, their client’s charges should be dismissed and his convictions vacated. Howard and Sultan declined to comment on the latest court filings.

On Sept. 16, Circuit Judge Richard Smith ordered the circuit court employees to ship the evidence to Bode Technology for modern DNA testing.

Instead of DNA evidence, the prosecution’s case against Brown had hinged on microscopic hair comparison, which has since been discredited in FBI guidance for having “no scientific support” and low accuracy in identifying perpetrators.

In her recent affidavit, Esters-Parker wrote that on Sept. 19, a district attorney’s office employee named Carla confirmed by phone that Assistant District Attorney Austin Frye, the lead prosecutor on Brown’s case, had a box labeled “King Brown.” Esters-Parker and two deputies were aware of a box with evidence that had been stored in a black garbage can in the Youth Court Storage Room as recently as Aug. 29, 2023.

In a separate affidavit, Deputy Circuit Court Clerk Cynthia Lakes said Frye denied he had the box of evidence when she and another deputy clerk arrived to pick it up the following Monday. The box was open and contained documents, but none of the bags of evidence Carla had described, Lakes’ statement read.

Lakes also wrote about Frye and District Attorney Dewayne Richardson visiting the evidence overflow room in July, and that Richardson said one of her colleagues directed him to the evidence. Lakes wrote that Richardson later misidentified LaTonya Tucker as the deputy clerk who assisted him and then said he couldn’t remember the circuit court employee’s name.

The circuit clerk staff, with the help of maintenance workers, searched the youth court storage spaces two more times, but to no avail.

The statement to Mississippi Today from the district attorney’s office tells a different story: The circuit clerk’s office confirmed in writing that they had the evidence from Brown’s trial. Then, when Richardson stopped by alone, a deputy clerk confirmed that the office had the evidence, the statement read. According to the statement, neither Richardson nor any of his staff “viewed nor possessed nor handled” the evidence.

The district attorney’s office would welcome a hearing and investigation into the lost evidence, the statement notes. But as of Wednesday, neither the presiding judge nor the district attorney’s office has filed additional orders or motions.

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 every generation, a song, a slogan or a slang comes along that becomes more like a cultural anthem. I am a proverbial lover of a myriad genre of music. Being a musician/organist/arranger/singer/recording artist for almost 70 years, I am always enthralled when something new catches my attention.

Whether it’s gospel, classical, blues, a love ballad, traditional, transposition, hymns or freedom songs, I am supportive of artists who can take lyrics and make them come alive through the gift of heartfelt music.

For the past several months, the chart topping rendition of “Boots on the Ground – Where Them Fans At?” by Douglas Furtick, under the stage name 803Fresh has taken different cultures by storm, myself included.

I am sure I am “preaching to the choir,” but allow me to share some historical context.

Historically and traditionally, this familiar term was a recent addition to English, gaining traction during the Vietnam War in 1955 and resurging during the wars in Iraq in March 2003 and Afghanistan in October 2001. It refers to active ground troops in a military campaign, physically present and fighting in a war zone.

Back in the Day during the Civil Rights Movement, the definition was expanded to take on a different connotation. It became more and more familiar in relation to a call to action to march to the courthouses to try to register and to vote, as well as a call to other communities that help was needed. As an example, when a community called for help on a given day to march or to protest racism, selective buying campaigns, discrimination in obtaining the right to not only register, but to vote, the call was sent that help was needed – “Boots on the Ground.”

Winter, spring, summer or fall, all they had to do was call and we would be there. Whether it was in Meridian, Vicksburg, Canton, Carthage, Port Gibson, Fayette, Biloxi, Natchez, Alabama, Georgia, we borrowed cars, rented buses to go because our fellow activists needed help.

Where them fans at is more than a catch phrase. It has a certain kind of cadence that brings out our inherent ability to be able to move to the rhythm. We also used fans – old church fans, fans from the local funeral homes, fans from the “dime” store –  to keep us cool as we marched in 100-degree weather.

As I look at the landscape of America today and how rapidly the national political machine is putting into place laws, unqualified heads of departments, executive orders to roll back many of the gains that we have struggled all our lives to gain, I worry that if we don’t put those “Boots on the Ground,” we will witness in our generation up close and personal more accelerated poverty, soup lines, blatant denial of health care and much more to come that we can’t even conceptualize.

As we witness the dehumanization of tearing families apart, food rotting in warehouses, mass job loss, a critical lack and loss of health care, erratic decisions, open season on snatching men, women, boys and girls who have been in this country for years, a lack of decency in this administration, I am very troubled.

How willing are we to put our “Boots on the Ground” to recommit going to the polls and voting in every election? It was in my lifetime that I could NOT vote.

A few months ago, I heard a report that over 8 million African Americans did not vote in 2024. How can that be? Did we forget so soon that in many of our lifetimes, many in MY generation were killed for trying to get the right to vote? How can we forget the lynchings, the bombings, the burnings, the shootings, the assassinations, the jailing the beatings and many other atrocities that our people faced?

I cannot count the calls that I have had since November 2024, asking me,“Ms. Flonzie, what happened?” My answer was and still is a simple one: First stop crying and remember we were warned of all the things that could happen. Having said that, we are witnessing “promises made, promises being kept.” Now what?

During this Black History Month celebration, please allow me to encourage the readers who may have lost hope to remember the struggle and sufferings of Wharlest Jackson, George Metcalfe, Vernon Dahmer, George Raymond, Armelia Boynton, John Lewis, the four little girls in Birmingham, Viola Liuzzo, the Rev. James Reed, Dr. Martin Luther King, Medgar Evers, Emmett Till, Annie Devine, the Rev. Jessie Jackson, Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney and thousands more and then lace up those boots and march to the polls. 

And, oh yes, don’t forget them fans It’s hot out here, in more ways than one.

You will need them!!!

Bio: Flonzie Brown Wright is the first African American female elected to public office in the state of Mississippi. On Nov. 5, 1968, she won the position of election commissioner in Madison County. She is president and CEO of FBW & Associates, Inc., a marketing consulting firm and is the founder of the Flonzie B. Wright Scholarship Foundation, a foundation which has provided more than $50,000 in scholarship dollars to students and other enhancements to encourage students to stay in school. 

A judge left a Hinds County courtroom nearly four years ago dissatisfied after accepting a guilty plea from Mississippi’s disgraced former welfare director John Davis for his part in a sprawling scheme to misspend money intended to help some of the state’s poorest residents.

“Even with the questions that have been asked, this court is still not understanding what actually took place and more importantly, what would’ve caused you to perform these particular acts,” Hinds County Circuit Judge Adrienne Wooten said to Davis by the end of his plea hearing in September 2022.

Davis finished his seventh day of testimony Wednesday in a federal criminal trial of his alleged co-conspirator, former pro wrestler, Ted “Teddy” DiBiase Jr. 

Davis agreed to aid the government in its prosecution of other alleged members of the sprawling welfare fraud scheme. He had been described as a star witness for the prosecution against DiBiase, to whom Davis had pushed $3 million in welfare contracts. 

Jurors rubbed their faces, closed their eyes and rocked back and forth in their chairs Wednesday as the former welfare director’s tale unraveled. One yawned. 

On Tuesday, Davis testified he and DiBiase took their legitimate work – a leadership development training program called Law of 16 – all the way up to Congress. By Wednesday, Davis admitted he ordered nonprofit organizations to pay DiBiase $250,000 up front and, after seeing no work product, ordered them to award the ex-WWE wrestler an additional $1 million.

When asked if it was inappropriate to make cash advance payments, Davis responded, “If it’s not legal, it’s inappropriate.”

To elicit this testimony from Davis, Assistant U.S. Attorney John Meynardie had to ask Davis specific yes or no questions – a process Meynardie noted was done “rather tediously.” 

Davis was repeatedly interrupted by objections from DiBiase’s defense, and those objections were often followed by long discussions at the judge’s bench muffled by blaring white noise. 

DiBiase’s case is the only to reach a criminal trial in a scandal in which officials frittered away tens of millions of dollars from a federal welfare grant. Seven people, including Davis, have pleaded guilty.

DiBiase is facing 13 criminal counts including conspiracy, wire fraud, theft of federal funds and money laundering.

On Tuesday, the defense introduced a large whiteboard, asking Davis – who was chosen to lead the welfare agency by then-Gov. Phil Bryant in 2016 – to help create an organizational chart of the state’s welfare delivery system during his tenure, with the governor on top, followed by MDHS and its various officers, nonprofit organizations and other agency contractors.

From black string tied underneath the whiteboard, the defense hung a card labeled “independent contractors” – a category intended to represent DiBiase. His lawyers meant for it to show the jury how far removed DiBiase was from the people accountable for welfare spending.

Over several days of testimony, prosecutors made Davis answer why he used affectionate language in text messages with DiBiase (the defense noted he talked like that with other employees) and whether he planned to retire to a compound with DiBiase’s family. During defense questioning, the former director told of how he conducted his work with DiBiase in plain view of state and federal officials and repeatedly agreed he’d always “tried to do the right thing.”

Citing contradictions, DiBiase’s lawyer Eric Herschmann tried to argue that the prosecution had elicited false testimony from Davis. The attorney took issue with a previous line of questioning by the prosecution that asserted Davis had “hidden” DiBiase’s contracts from MDHS’s lawyers and alleged that the prosecution had withheld evidence from the jury. 

U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves considered the argument, but he ultimately brushed it aside. 

“It’s literally all over the place with this particular witness,” the judge said, referencing Davis, without jurors present Wednesday.

Davis’ apparent waffling could be summed up by testimony from the next witness to take the stand Wednesday.

“This guy had two separate personalities,” said Weylan Shannon Lott, who goes by his middle name and was hired by Davis under the title of director of leadership and employee development.

Lott, a retired National Guard member, met Davis before he took the helm of DHS, when Lott was a graduate student and Davis was an adjunct professor at Belhaven University. Lott testified he observed an unsettling shift in Davis’ demeanor after he became director of the agency.

Some jurors laughed at Lott’s quippy testimony. He recalled when DiBiase was hired – not as an employee of DHS, but a high-paid contractor for a separate nonprofit grantee of the department – under a nebulous title along the lines of “director of sustainable change.”

After Davis left the agency in 2019, Lott said he never saw DiBiase in the office again. 

“The only sustainable change I ever saw was the day those two walked out of the building,” Lott said. 

Lott, who told prosecutors he had over 25 years of experience “leading soldiers,” was critical of DiBiase’s Law of 16 program. 

“This was very, very elementary-at-best, training level stuff,” he said. “Stuff that with a good Google search in about 30 minutes you could put together. It was not deep. It was not emotionally stimulating that would cause change to action within any organization.”

But Davis was the “chief cheerleader” of the Law of 16, Lott said, to the point that if someone didn’t take it as seriously as the director wanted, he’d order them out of the room. Davis even fired one employee for checking his phone during one of the sessions, WLBT reported.

“He knew better than to pull that with me,” Lott said. 

That is, until Lott said he questioned Davis’ desire to remodel the executive floor of MDHS’s offices in the City Centre building in downtown Jackson. He said Davis sent him to meet with a construction company that wanted $250,000 up front. 

When Lott attempted to tell Davis he did not think this was legal, he said Davis shouted at him: “‘Why are you and all your military buddies always accusing me of doing something illegal?’” 

Correction, 2/26/2026: This story has been updated to show that John Davis is among the seven people who have pleaded guilty to charges related to welfare spending.

MORE TRIAL COVERAGE:

DAY 8: In trial of ex-wrestler, Mississippi’s former welfare director testifies about appeasing politicians, trying ‘my very best’

Defense for ex-wrestler seeks mistrial in welfare fraud case

DAY 7: Trump faith initiative drove decision to hire wrestler, ex-welfare chief testifies in fraud trial

DAY 6: Wrestler carried out welfare-funded workshops in broad daylight, defense testimony asserts

DAY 5: Welfare director texted wrestler who was his high-paid aide about ‘money bags,’ testimony shows

DAY 4: Feds ask disgraced former welfare director ‘million-dollar question’: Why? Loneliness and love

DAY 3: Wrestler’s multimillion dollar ‘self-help curriculum’ helped crack open a wider welfare scandal

DAY 2: Opening statements in welfare scandal trial paint former director as villain who doled out millions over infatuation

DAY 1: 83 witnesses could enter the ring in Mississippi welfare scandal trial

TRIAL PREVIEW: Ex-WWE wrestler faces feds in first – and potentially only – criminal trial in Mississippi welfare scandal

A controversial flood control project that would transform Jackson’s waterfront is set to move forward after decades of debate over how the project would impact an ecosystem stretching into Louisiana, local officials announced Thursday.

The Rankin Hinds Pearl River Flood and Drainage Control District said the assistant secretary of the Army for Civil Works, Adam Telle, selected a proposal to dam and lower the banks of the river near Jackson. “Alternative D1” was one of a few proposals the public weighed in on during U.S. Army Corps of Engineers comment sessions last summer.

The flood control district’s board, comprised of elected officials from Rankin and Hinds counties, is the project’s local government sponsor. The board and the Corps are the agencies in charge of designing and proposing the project. As of Thursday morning, neither the Corps nor Telle had announced the project selection.

During a press conference Thursday, Pearl Mayor Jake Windham said the agencies still need to finalize an environmental assessment and then “get a final decision, hopefully this summer.”

“After that, we will begin the intensive design and engineering process to get us ready for construction,” Windham said.

The Corps in 2022 dedicated $221 million from the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act for this project, which would only cover a portion of the estimated cost of $873 million to $918 million. The federal government is supposed to pay for 65%, with the rest coming from state and local governments.

Keith Turner, attorney for the flood control district, said he thinks the Corps’ estimate of the project cost is too high. He said he hopes to have a design agreement with the Corps in the next four weeks, and to begin construction by the end of the year or by early 2027.

The news would conclude a decades-long journey among Jackson metro officials to address flooding from the Pearl River, which caused record destruction in 1979. More recently, a 2020 event flooded over 200 structures in Jackson and Flowood, and was the third-highest crest in history.

Since the 1979 flood, which caused over $200 million in damages (the event would cause over $1.2 billion in damages today, the Corps estimates) local officials have worked with the Corps on a number of solutions. In 2011, the late oil businessman and developer John McGowan proposed a flood control and recreational development plan known as “One Lake,” which the local flood control board supported until the Corps rejected the idea in 2024 because of its high cost. Before that, McGowan proposed a “Two Lakes” solution in 1996. Alternative D1 is a scaled-back version of One Lake.

Ever since McGowan presented the idea, opponents — including environmental groups such as Healthy Gulf, Audubon Delta and the Sierra Club, as well as officials from downstream places such as Monticello and Slidell, Louisiana — have panned the idea for its potential to disrupt downstream flow and destroy valuable habitat.

Jackson-area officials on Thursday celebrated the project’s potential to reconnect Jackson with the Pearl River, opening up an array of recreational and economic development opportunities. In additional to providing flood control, the plan would include new riverfront development, parks and trails, its website says.

Jackson Mayor John Horhn said critics of the proposal are “not listening to the science.”

“They’re not listening to the fact that the Corps has vetted this project for more than 25 years,” said Horhn, adding he thinks the development will be the “most transformative project we have seen in the Jackson Metropolitan area, probably in its history.”

Two protesters showed up at the event, shouting that officials were lying about the project’s impacts. Both were detained by Pearl police officers.

What the last Corps study said

Last year, the Corps narrowed a list of proposals to “Alternative D1” and “Alternative E1.” Both proposals included an array of measures: building new levees, elevating the most flood-prone structures, offering voluntary buyouts, and excavating the stream’s banks to widen and lower the river.

E1 would not have included a dam, though. That difference made it a cheaper option than D1, but it also meant it didn’t have the recreational benefits that would come with turning that section of the Pearl River into a lake.

Downstream communities fear the dam would disrupt the Pearl River’s flow once it reaches them, harming both economic and recreational use of the stream. In response, the Corps said last year that neither alternative would impact the Pearl River’s flow once it reaches Monticello, about 80 miles south of Jackson.

The agency admitted that both alternatives would “likely adversely affect” several endangered or threatened species along the Pearl River, including three different types of turtles. D1, though, would affect a wider range of species, including the Gulf sturgeon.

The 2025 study estimated both D1 and E1 would remove 740 acres of forested wetlands. D1 would also remove about 230 acres of riverine habitat, the study said. The Corps’ proposal includes a mitigation plan to compensate for any wetland or habitat losses.

Critics have also asked why the agency didn’t more seriously consider another option from its study, “Alternative A1.” A1 would have only included the nonstructural measures, meaning no excavation or dam. But the Corps’ study limited A1’s scope, for instance including just one levee in the proposal versus the four in D1 and E1. In doing so, the agency limited the benefits associated with A1, those critics argued.

Moreover, A1 would have cost up to $22 million, the agency estimated. D1 and E1 would cost up to $960 million and $788 million, respectively. The state and local governments would be on the hook for 35% of those costs. For D1, that would mean needing to raise between $306 million and $321 million through state appropriations and local taxes.

Should the project go through, the flood control district would expand to include more homes, mainly in northeast Jackson and Flowood, said Turner, the board attorney. Those homes would then be subject to taxes to help fund the flood control project. For many, though, reduced flood insurance costs would offset those taxes, Turner added.

Candice Wilder, Mississippi Today’s higher education reporter, is among 10 journalists selected for the Ida B. Wells Society’s 2026 investigative reporting fellowship program. 

The six-month fellowship includes a series of training sessions on topics such as public records, data evaluation, web research and fact-checking. The program includes in-person training in Atlanta led by top investigative journalists.

“The higher education beat not only has implications for the lives of students enrolled at colleges and universities across Mississippi — tens of thousands of them at the public universities alone — but it also touches on the state’s workforce and economic future. Candice is on track to learn tools and methods to deepen and enrich her reporting on such an important beat,” said Marquita Brown, Mississippi Today’s education editor. “I look forward to seeing how she puts that learning and those resources to use in her reporting. ”

Wilder, an Ohio native, joined the Mississippi Today team in April 2025 and works in partnership with Open Campus. 

Wilder is a member of Open Campus’s Local Network, a group of newsrooms in 18 places where the nonprofit news organization has helped put reporters on the higher education beat full time. Open Campus and Mississippi Today have partnered together on higher education coverage since 2021.

The Ida B. Wells Society is named in honor of the muckraking Black journalist and activist who was born into slavery in Holly Springs. The journalism organization launched in 2015 with the mission to increase and retain journalists of color in investigative reporting, and its membership is open to journalists of all races and backgrounds.