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AG Lynn Fitch appeals ruling that prevents lifetime ban on voting

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The office of Attorney General Lynn Fitch is asking the full U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to overturn an earlier decision that Mississippi’s lifetime ban on voting for people convicted of felonies is unconstitutional.

In a surprise decision, a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals ruled earlier this month that Mississippi provisions preventing some people convicted of felonies from voting is cruel and unusual punishment.

Now Fitch, through a motion filed by Justin Matheny, an attorney in her office, is appealing to the entire 5th Circuit, which could result in consideration by as many as 20 judges.

Matheny argues in the motion that the felony ban on voting incorporated in the Mississippi Constitution “is a nonpunitive voting regulation … Even if disenfranchisement were a punishment, it is not cruel and unusual.”

Fitch’s court filing points out that in past rulings the U.S. Supreme Court has affirmed the authority of states to permanently disenfranchise people convicted of felonies.

The ruling by the three-judge panel finding Mississippi’s felony voting ban unconstitutional was a 2-1 decision. While there is court precedent allowing lifetime voting bans, the majority opinion of the three-judge panel said the nation is evolving on the issue just as it did on allowing minors to be executed, which is now prohibited.

The majority said Mississippi is among about 10 states still imposing a lifetime ban.

The majority said, “By severing former offenders from the body politic forever, Section 241 (the lifetime ban provision of the state Constitution) ensures that they will never be fully rehabilitated, continues to punish them beyond the terms their culpability requires and serves no protective function to society. It is thus a cruel and unusual punishment.”

The case eventually could be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court. If so, it would be the second case dealing with felony suffrage in Mississippi to go before the Supreme court this year.

In June the U.S. Supreme Court refused to hear another case seeking to find Mississippi’s lifetime felony voting ban unconstitutional. That case sought to have the felony voting ban declared unconstitutional because it was originally adopted as part of the 1890 Constitution in an attempt to prevent Black Mississippians from voting.

The framers at the time admitted they placed the lifetime ban in the Mississippi Constitution as a tool to keep African Americans from voting. Those crimes placed in the constitution where conviction costs a person the right to vote are bribery, theft, arson, obtaining money or goods under false pretense, perjury, forgery, embezzlement, bigamy and burglary.

Under the original language of the constitution, a person could be convicted of cattle rustling and lose the right to vote, but those convicted of murder or rape would still be able to vote — even while incarcerated. Murder and rape now also are exclusionary.

In the 5th Circuit ruling, the majority pointed out that the state constitution granted the Legislature the authority to restore voting rights, presumably, to ensure that white Mississippians were not permanently banned from voting. In modern times, the Legislature usually restores voting rights to a handful (usually no more than five people) each session.

The lawsuit that was addressed by the three-judge panel was filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP and others on behalf of Mississippians who have lost their voting rights.

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

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1847

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-01-27 07:00:00

Jan. 27, 1847

Adam Crosswhite Credit: Wikipedia

More than 100 citizens of Marshall, Michigan, helped Adam Crosswhite, his wife, Sarah, and their children, who had escaped slavery, to flee to Canada rather than be captured by bounty hunters. 

Three years earlier, Crosswhite and his family had fled a Kentucky plantation after learning one of his four children was going to be sold. They traveled on the Underground Railroad through Indiana and Illinois before winding up in Michigan. 

At 4 a.m., bounty hunters broke into the home of Crosswhite and his family, telling them they were being taken back to Kentucky. Before that could happen, hordes of citizens intervened. When the bounty hunters offered to take the children only, the couple refused. The sheriff’s office then arrived and arrested the bounty hunters for trespassing, enabling the Crosswhite family to escape to Canada. 

Later, the slaveholder sued seven Black and white Marshall citizens who intervened and won $1,926, which with court costs totalled nearly $6,000 (more than $211,000 today). 

Citizens of the town rallied, raised the money and adopted a resolution that said, “We will never voluntarily separate ourselves from the slave population in the country, for they are our fathers and mothers, and sisters and our brothers, their interest is our interest, their wrongs and their sufferings are ours, the injuries inflicted on them are alike inflicted on us; therefore it is our duty to aid and assist them in their attempts to regain their liberty.” 

An abolitionist journal at the time, The Signal of Liberty, wrote, “If the slaveholder has the right to seize a fugitive from slavery in a free State, let him appeal to the proper tribunals to maintain that right, instead of midnight seizure, backed by a display of bowie knives and seven shooters.”

After the Civil War ended, Crosswhite and his family returned to Marshall. A monument now marks the place where they made their courageous stand.

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

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Mississippi Today

Podcast: House Education Chairman Roberson talks ‘school choice,’ K-12 funding, consolidation and finding ‘things that work’

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mississippitoday.org – Geoff Pender and Michael Goldberg – 2025-01-27 06:30:00

House Education Chairman Rob Roberson, a Republican from Starkville, outlines for Mississippi Today’s Geoff Pender and Michael Goldberg some of the top issues his committee will tackle this legislative session.

READ MORE: As lawmakers look to cut taxes, Mississippi mayors and county leaders outline infrastructure needs

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

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1870

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2025-01-26 07:00:00

Jan. 26, 1870

Drawing depicts the 1867-68 Virginia Constitutional Convention. Credit: Leslie's Illustrated Weekly, Feb. 15, 1868.

Virginia was readmitted to the Union after the state passed a new constitution that allowed Black men to vote and ratified the 14th and 15th Amendments. The readmission came five years after Black men first pushed to vote. 

A month after the Civil War ended, hundreds of Black men showed up at polling places in Norfolk to vote. Most were turned away, but federal poll workers in one precinct did allow them to cast ballots. 

“Some historians think that was the first instance of blacks voting in the South,” The Washington Post wrote. “Even in the North, most places didn’t allow blacks to vote.” 

Black men showed up in droves to serve on the constitutional convention. One of them, John Brown, who had been enslaved and had seen his wife and daughter sold, sent out a replica of the ballot with the reminder, “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” He won, defeating two white candidates. 

Brown joined the 104 delegates, nearly a fourth of them Black men, in drafting the new constitution. That cleared the way not only for Black voting, but for Virginia’s senators and representatives to take their seats in Congress. 

But hope of continued progress began to fade by the end of the year when the Legislature began to create its first Jim Crow laws, starting with separate schools for Black and white students. Other Jim Crow laws followed in Virginia and other states to enforce racism on almost every aspect of life, including separate restrooms, separate drinking fountains, separate restaurants, separate seating at movie theaters, separate waiting rooms, separate places in the hospital and when death came, separate cemeteries.

Following Mississippi’s lead, Virginia adopted a new constitution in 1902 that helped to disenfranchise 90% of Black Virginians who voted. States continued to adopt Jim Crow statutes until 1964 when the Civil Rights Act became the law of the land.

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

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