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Felony jail time could await law enforcement officers who sexually abuse detainees, parolees under House bill

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1 year ago

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Mississippi law enforcement officers who sexually abuse those detained or on supervised release could face up to five years in prison under a bill pending in the Legislature.

For more than a year, the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today and The New York Times have investigated and exposed allegations of sexual assault and abuse involving sheriffs and deputies across the state.

Under Mississippi law, it is a crime for officers to have sex with those behind bars, but the law does nothing to prohibit officers from sexually exploiting those they arrest or detain.

To close that loophole, state Rep. Dana McLean, R-Columbus, has introduced HB1540, which has been referred to the House Judiciary B Committee. “Someone in a position of trust should be held to a higher standard,” she said.

Jill Collen Jefferson, president of JULIAN, a civil rights and international human rights law firm, said she knows of “many instances when women have ‘consented’ to sleeping with law enforcement officials because they were threatened with charges or fines. To me, this bill is a cold look in the mirror for the state, and I hope that it signals a migration toward acceptance of women’s rights across Mississippi and the nation, accompanied by a reining in of law enforcement.”

Shawanda Canady says she was handcuffed and sexually abused by an officer who is now the chief at the Lexington Police Department, now under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

In a sworn statement, Canady said police rushed into her home in Goodman on Sept. 10, 2018, while she was talking to her grandmother on the cellphone.

Police arrested Canady’s partner and took him to the patrol car, she said, and that then-Officer Charles Henderson cuffed her hands behind her back and held her captive for more than an hour.

“The streets have been talking about how you have a fat cat and I would like to know what it’s like,” she quoted him as saying. “If I asked you to have sex, is it because you want to have sex with me or because you don’t want to go to jail?”

Then Henderson digitally penetrated her and asked if she had a condom, she said.

She moved closer to her cellphone in hopes of speaking to her grandmother, only for Henderson to grab the phone, she said.

“I told him I would wake my kids up if he didn’t let me go,” she said. “Henderson then threatened to call DHS [the Department of Human Services].”

In about 15 minutes, her aunt arrived, she said, and Henderson released her.

Afterward, Canady said she complained to the city council.

A couple of months later, she said Henderson came up to her, shone a flashlight in her face and said, “So, we can buy new cars but not pay fines. Do we need to have another session like we did last time?”

She said he then put handcuffs on her and said, “If you keep running your mouth, I’m going to take you to Greenwood so you will never see the light of day again.”

She said she spent the next three weeks in jail.

Lexington City Attorney Katherine Riley said Chief Henderson was “never charged with a crime against Ms. Canady.” She said the Goodman city attorney told her to press charges, but she never did.

Jefferson replied that when Canady tried to press charges, the Holmes County Justice Court rejected her filing.

Justice Court Clerk Dedra Edwards responded that no one is disallowed from filing, but that if the charge is already filed in municipal court, it can’t be filed, too, in justice court because that would constitute double jeopardy.

Jefferson said Canady tried multiple times to press charges, but the city would not do so.

Riley said video evidence conflicted with Canady’s story about the alleged incident at her car.

Asked what that video evidence was, she replied, “I have not seen the video and have only heard that it was a video from across the street that showed he did not approach the vehicle as she described. But I cannot verify that information.”

Jefferson said there is “no video evidence of what Henderson did to Ms. Canady in her home, and we know of no video evidence outside of that.”

In a sworn statement, former Officer Maytrice Shields said male officers at the Lexington Police Department used their power to coerce women they detained to have sex.

They threatened to ticket or arrest women who refused to have sex with them, and they would toss tickets in return for sexual favors, she said. The police station would be littered, she said, with “dirty clothes and underwear, among other things.”

Shields said Chief Henderson began “an inappropriate consensual relationship” after hiring her in December 2022. A sexually harassing atmosphere pervaded the department with some officers joking “about using pink cuffs and sodomizing each other,” she said.

A month later, when she informed Henderson that she wanted to end the relationship, he responded by suspending her. When she tried to turn in her camera, she said he snatched her arm, and when she pulled her arm away, he pushed her and choked her.

She never returned to the station.

Riley said the Holmes County Sheriff’s Office investigated Shields’ allegation of choking and “determined that the charge was unfounded by the witnesses that were present. … None of the witnesses saw her being choked, specifically the witness behind the dispatcher desk who saw the entire interaction.”

Jefferson responded that the sheriff’s office never really investigated what happened with Shields and what she witnessed.

Former Deputy Kendrick Slaughter said Noxubee County Sheriff Terry Grassaree asked him to tell two women under arrest that, if they would have sex together, their charges would be dropped.

Grassaree faces an April 8 trial in U.S. District Court on allegations he lied to FBI agents when they questioned him about whether he requested sexually explicit photographs or videos from Elizabeth Layne Reed, who was jailed for four years without a trial.

A new federal indictment accuses him of trying to destroy digital evidence on the cellphone that deputies gave Reed. After receiving nude photographs she took inside the jail, he reportedly wrote back, “Body looks perfect.”

In 2019, Reed told investigators that she had been coerced into having sex with two deputies who offered her a cellphone in exchange for her compliance. Instead of punishing the deputies, she claimed in a lawsuit against the county, Grassaree demanded she send him explicit pictures and videos of herself.

“It made me terrified to trust anybody,” she told the Times and Mississippi Today. “Women in jail and prison need to be protected.”

Sheriff Eddie Scott sits for a portrait in his office in West Point, Miss., on June 29, 2023. Credit: Rory Doyle for The New York Times

A few months after Eddie Scott became sheriff of Clay County in 2012, a woman accused him of coercing her into a sexual relationship after she was arrested.

Promising to use his influence in their rural community to keep her out of prison, she said, the lawman drove her to a hog farm to have sex in his patrol car on at least five occasions, and she provided copies of love letters Scott wrote her in prison as proof.

The revelations could have led to an internal investigation, a criminal inquiry or a public reckoning for the newly installed sheriff. Instead, powerful officials in Clay County took no action.

And the allegations didn’t end there.

Amber Jones of West Point said Scott repeatedly took her from the jail to an apartment, where he coerced her to have sex during her eight-month stay in 2017 and 2018. “I felt like I was worthless, like I didn’t have any control over my own body,” she said in a 2022 interview. “There was nothing I could do to stop it.”

In sworn testimony, Scott declined to say whether he had ever had sex with her, citing his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination.

He also took the Fifth when asked if he tried to have a “threesome” with Jones and another female trusty from the jail.

Jones said the nightmare for her didn’t end when she left jail. She said the sheriff coerced her to send nude photos through Snapchat, the disappearing-photo app.

The sheriff denied these were nude photos. He said they were only “body shots” of Jones’ tattoos he has since turned over to the FBI.

After Jones posted on Facebook what she said had happened to her, she was arrested twice on drug charges after she said drugs were planted in her car. A recording of a purported drug dealer appears to corroborate her story.

After Mississippi Today and The Times ran the story on Scott on July 19, the sheriff created a Facebook post where he called the article “completely slanted, one sided and a story without any basis in fact. The article did not mention the fact that in late 2021, I reported these allegations to the local District Attorney’s Office, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigations [sic] and requested the allegations be investigated. The article fails to mention that the investigating agencies declined to do anything based on a lack of credible evidence.”

District Attorney Scott Colom said Sheriff Scott contacted one of his investigators about Jones’ allegations and asked if the office could investigate.

The prosecutor said the investigator told the sheriff, “No, we don’t have the capability. Ask MBI to investigate.”

Bailey Martin, spokeswoman for the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, said the agency found no record of the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation investigating Sheriff Scott.

Former Parole Board Chairman Steve Pickett, who also served as a deputy sheriff and justice court judge, noted that the new bill extends beyond those in custody to include others who can be sexually abused, such as those still on probation, parole or other supervised release.

A lot of sentences in Mississippi include lengthy probation periods, he said.

“Folks confuse confinement with jail, but if you have a 10-year probation you are serving, you can be revoked at any time,” he said. “Unfortunately, some bad apples hold positions of power and have control over people who typically have no voice or access to an attorney. They remain vulnerable to those with the power to take their freedom.”

Last year, McClean pushed for a bill to repeal the spousal exception in the rape statute. It became law.

She hopes to do the same thing with this bill on officers. “The fact that it’s not criminal has got to be shored up,” she said. “These cases are falling through the cracks.”

Ilyssa Daly contributed to this report, which was produced in partnership with the Pulitzer Center.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

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Mississippi Today

Trump order threatens funding for Miss. colleges, cultural centers

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15 hours ago

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April 7, 2025

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mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-07 16:00:00

by Candice Wilder, Mississippi Today
April 7, 2025

For nearly three decades, a little-known federal agency has provided millions of dollars in support and funding to Mississippi’s colleges and universities museums, to libraries and to cultural institutions, including the Margaret Walker and COFO Civil Rights Center at Jackson State University. 

In 2011, the state’s largest historically Black university’s cultural center and museum, received a $48,000 grant from the Institute of Museum and Libraries Services. The grant paid for staff to travel and learn about the historical preservation work from larger museums and institutions across the country. 

“That grant was my professional development,” Robert Luckett, director of the cultural center said. “It was so important and has been foundational for all of the work we’ve done at Jackson State for the last fifteen, sixteen years.” 

But, Jackson State isn’t the only Mississippi college that has benefitted from funds from IMLS, and the federal agency has flowed millions of dollars in grants to the state.

In 2022, Mississippi State University received a $74,000 grant to fund its Office of Museum Services and a $50,000 grant from the American Rescue Plan for Museums and Libraries to train and hire students from underserved communities to assist with biological collection and conservation. That same year, Northwest Mississippi Community College received $33,000 from the agency to support a series of community engagement discussions for students around racial injustice, mental health and stress in the post COVID-19 pandemic. 

In 2020, Hinds Community College Utica’s campus received a $101,000 grant from IMLS’s Museums Grants for African American History and Culture to establish an oral history project for Black rural Mississippians and provided technology and equipment to record stories for residents who couldn’t make it to the campus museum. The federal agency also awarded $500,000 to the University of Mississippi through its Save America’s Treasures program and in 2010 a $450,000 grant to its Modern Political Archives to preserve and digitize 3,800 audio and visual recordings. 

The Margaret Walker Center, which houses oral histories, manuscripts, book collections and history archives of Black Mississippians, and operates as the Black Studies Institute for Jackson State University, has been a cornerstone of cultural development for students. 

Now, with an executive order from President Donald Trump, which led the federal agency’s nearly 70 employees to be placed on administrative leave last week, the future of the Margaret Walker Center’s work remains unclear.

The move to shut down IMLS comes weeks after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to scale down six other federal agencies to “the minimum presence,” according to The Washington Post. 

The agency’s funding, which is less than one percent of the federal budget, has dolled out millions of dollars to museums, libraries and institutions. But, in states like Mississippi, where access to traditional resources and support for cultural institutions may be near to none or nonexistent, the agency’s funding has been essential in providing tools to do important work, Luckett said. 

Out of the eight full-time staff members at the cultural center, two staff and a graduate fellow who works to digitize the historical archives is funded by subgrants of IMLS through the Smithsonian Institute, another national cultural institution facing cuts by the Trump administration. These jobs on the digital humanities staff could be in jeopardy. 

Robert Luckett, director of the Margaret Walker Center at Jackson State University.

Earlier this year, Luckett said his team applied for another grant from IMLS to pay for their renovation project of Ayer Hall, the oldest building on Jackson State University’s campus and home to the Margaret Walker Center. The grant funding will provide support for staff to move its collections into a safe environment. 

Luckett said the cultural center was supposed to be notified in June if they receive the grant. But, with the changes to the agency, he’s unsure of what comes next. 

“We don’t have the funding to do this,” Luckett said. “We’ll be back to square one.” 

Other cultural institutions and organizations across the state such as the Mississippi Humanities Council, which currently has 35 open subgrants to various state colleges and universities, were reeling after hearing a major defunding announcement. 

In a late night email, the organization learned their grant through the National Endowment of Humanities had been terminated.  The national organization has provided more than 400 grants in Mississippi, including colleges in the state. 

Sweeping cuts at IMLS and the National Endowment of Humanities threaten the future of established museum and library programs at local colleges from panels, literary festivals, history tours, youth education workshops and other public programs. 

“In [Mississippi] our greatest strength is our history and culture,” Stuart Rockoff, executive director of the Mississippi Humanities Council, said. “Our grants and our programs have helped highlight that especially in smaller towns and rural areas of our state.” 

The state’s cultural organization doled out various grants to Mississippi’s public universities and colleges, including a $8,400 grant to the Margaret Walker Center last year, which held a panel discussion on local activism in reflection to Mississippi’s civil rights movement history. 

Luckett said protecting the state’s historical collections and providing access to them are key components for the curriculum for students at Jackson State University  to engage in scholarship and research. 

“These skills are not politicized,” Luckett said. “These are important learning tools for any student of any discipline.” 

While it’s easy to ignore the federal agency being closed, the outside impact that such a small agency has on the country is remarkable, Luckett added. 

“These are public servants doing these jobs, who are committed and who aren’t willing to get rich,” Luckett said. “This assault on IMLS is something we should all be worried about.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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Mississippi lawmakers end 2025 session unable to agree (or even meet about) state budget: Legislative recap

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19 hours ago

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April 7, 2025

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mississippitoday.org – @GeoffPender – 2025-04-07 11:50:00

by Geoff Pender, Mississippi Today
April 7, 2025

Infighting between Mississippi’s Republican House and Senate legislative leaders reached DEFCON 4 as the 2025 legislative session sputtered to a close last week.

Lawmakers gaveled out unable to set a $7 billion state budget — their main job — or to even agree to negotiate. Gov. Tate Reeves will force them back into session sometime before the end of the fiscal year June 30. At a press conference last week, the governor assured he would do so but did not give a timetable, other than saying he plans to give lawmakers some time to cool off.

The crowning achievement of the 2025 session was passage of a tax overhaul bill a majority of legislators accidentally voted for because of errors in its math. House leaders and the governor nevertheless celebrated passage of the measure, which will phase out the state individual income tax over about 14 years, more quickly trim the sales tax on some groceries to 5% raise the tax on gasoline by 9 cents a gallon, then have automatic gas tax increases thereafter based on the cost of road construction.

The error in the Senate bill accidentally removed safeguards that chamber’s leadership wanted to ensure the income tax would be phased out only if the state sees robust economic growth and controls spending.

The rope-a-dope the House used with the Senate errors to pass the measure also stripped a safeguard House leaders had wanted: a 1.5 cents on the dollar increase in the state’s sales tax, which would have brought it to 8.5%. House leaders said such an increase was needed to offset cutting more than $2 billion from the state’s $7 billion general fund revenue by eliminating the income tax, and to ensure local governments would be kept whole.

Reeves was nonplussed about the flaws in the bill he signed into law (at one point denying there were errors in it) and called it “One big, beautiful bill,” borrowing a phrase from President Donald Trump.

https://youtu.be/8ovOtFj0vFE

Quote of the Week

“Quite frankly, I think it’s chicken shit what they did.” — Gov. Tate Reeves, at a press conference last week when asked his thoughts about the Senate rejecting his nomination of Cory Custer, Reeves’ deputy chief of staff, to serve as four-year term on the board of Mississippi Public Broadcasting.

Full Legislative Coverage

What happened (or didn’t) in the rancorous 2025 Mississippi Legislative session?

Mississippi Today’s political team unpacks the just ended — for now — legislative session, that crashed at the end with GOP lawmakers unable to pass a budget after much infighting among Republican leaders. The crowning achievement of the session, a tax overhaul bill, was passed by accident and full of major errors and omissions. Listen to the podcast.

Gov. Tate Reeves, legislative leaders tout tax cut, but for some, it could be a tax increase

Many of those retirees who do not pay an income tax under state law and other Mississippians as well will face a tax increase under this newly passed legislation touted by Reeves and others. Read the column.

Trump administration slashes education funding. Mississippi leaders and schools panic

Mississippi schools and the state education system are set to lose over $137 million in federal funds after the U.S. Department of Education halted access to pandemic-era grant money, state leaders said this week. Read the story.

Gov. Tate Reeves says he’ll call Mississippi lawmakers back in special session after they failed to set budget

Gov. Tate Reeves on Thursday said he will call lawmakers into a special session to adopt a budget before state agencies run out of money later in the summer and hinted he might force legislators to consider other measures.  Read the story.

GOP-controlled Senate rejects governor’s pick for public broadcasting board. Reeves calls it ‘chicken s–t’

The Senate on Wednesday roundly rejected the nomination of Cory Custer, Reeves’ deputy chief of staff, to serve a four-year term on the board of directors of Mississippi Public Broadcasting, the statewide public radio and television network. Reeves reacted to the Senate’s vote on Thursday, calling it “chicken shit.” Read the story.

Early voting proposal killed on last day of Mississippi legislative session

Mississippi will remain one of only three states without no-excuse early voting or no-excuse absentee voting.  Read the story.

Mississippi Legislature ends 2025 session without setting a budget over GOP infighting 

The House on Wednesday voted to end what had become a futile legislative session without passing a budget to fund state government, for the first time in 16 years. The Senate is expected to do the same on Thursday.  Read the story.

Mississippi Legislature approves DEI ban after heated debate

Mississippi lawmakers have reached an agreement to ban diversity, equity and inclusion programs and a list of “divisive concepts” from public schools across the state education system, following the lead of numerous other Republican-controlled states and President Donald Trump’s administration.   Read the story.

Fear and loathing: Legislative session crashes with lawmakers unable to set a budget because of Republican infighting

Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and other Senate leaders on Saturday excoriated the Republican House leadership, after the House didn’t show up for what was supposed to be “conference weekend” to haggle out a $7 billion budget. Read the story.

‘We’ll go another year’ without relief: Pharmacy benefit manager reform likely dead

Hotly contested legislation that aimed to increase the transparency and regulation of pharmacy benefit managers appeared dead in the water Tuesday after a lawmaker challenged the bill for a rule violation. Read the story.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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On this day in 1909, Matthew Henson reached the North Pole

Published

2 days ago

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April 6, 2025

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mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-06 07:00:00

by Jerry Mitchell, Mississippi Today
April 6, 2025

April 6, 1909

Matthew Henson arrived ahead of the Admiral Peary Expedition to plant the American flag at the North Pole.

Matthew Henson reached the North Pole, planting the American flag. Traveling with the Admiral Peary Expedition, Henson reportedly reached the North Pole almost 45 minutes before Peary and the rest of the men. 

“As I stood there on top of the world and I thought of the hundreds of men who had lost their lives in the effort to reach it, I felt profoundly grateful that I had the honor of representing my race,” he said. 

While some would later dispute whether the expedition had actually reached the North Pole, Henson’s journey seems no less amazing. 

Born in Maryland to sharecropping parents who survived attacks by the KKK, he grew up working, becoming a cabin boy and sailing around the world. 

After returning, he became a salesman at a clothing store in Washington, D.C., where he waited on a customer named Robert Peary. Pearywas so impressed with Henson and his tales of the sea that he hired him as his personal valet. 

Henson joined Peary on a trip to Nicaragua. Impressed with Henson’s seamanship, Peary made Henson his “first man” on the expeditions that followed to the Arctic. When the expedition returned, Peary drew praise from the world while Henson’s contributions were ignored. 

Over time, his work came to be recognized. In 1937, he became the first African-American life member of The Explorers Club. Seven years later, he received the Peary Polar Expedition Medal and was received at the White House by President Truman and later President Eisenhower. 

“There can be no vision to the (person) the horizon of whose vision is limited by the bounds of self,” he said. “But the great things of the world, the great accomplishments of the world, have been achieved by (people with) … high ideals and … great visions. The path is not easy, the climb is rugged and hard, but the glory at the end is worthwhile.” 

Henson died in 1955, and his body was re-interred with full military honors at Arlington National Cemetery. The U.S. Postal Service featured him on a stamp, and the U.S. Navy named a Pathfinder class ship after him. In 2000, the National Geographic Society awarded him the Hubbard Medal.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

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