Connect with us

Mississippi Today

Despite bribery charges, Mississippi prosecutor, other officials can remain in office

Published

on

mississippitoday.org – Caleb Bedillion, The Marshall Project – 2024-11-12 11:00:00

Sweeping corruption charges have rocked local government in Mississippi’s capital city, with potentially significant implications for the local legal system. 

During arraignments on Thursday, federal prosecutors charged Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and Jackson City Councilmember Aaron Banks with a string of bribery and corruption charges.

All three pleaded not guilty and were released pending trial.

The charges stem from an undercover sting operation in which FBI agents posed as real estate developers and allegedly provided bribes to win the support of local officials.

Former Jackson City Councilmember Angelique Lee and local businessman Sherik Marve’ Smith previously pleaded guilty to corruption charges as part of plea agreements. 

All three officials charged Thursday have influence over the local legal system in Mississippi’s largest city and county. Owens is the county’s prosecutor, with sweeping power over felony prosecutions in a county that has struggled with violent crime, a backlog of cases and a troubled jail. 

Lumumba appoints the Jackson police chief. Lumumba has fought against the creation of a state-controlled police force with jurisdiction within certain areas of the city, as well as a special state-controlled court for those areas. His beleaguered legal position may only strengthen the efforts of statewide leaders to exert more control over local policy within the state’s capital city.

Banks, as a councilmember, votes to confirm or reject Lumumba’s appointments, including police chief. The city council also sets the budget for city government departments, including the police department and the municipal court. The Jackson City Council can also impose other policies, including a controversial youth curfew policy that came earlier this year.

Can Owens, Lumumba and Banks remain in office while facing criminal charges?

Yes. While the Mississippi constitution forbids anyone who has been convicted of almost all felonies from holding elected office, nothing requires a person to resign or take a leave of absence from their job before a conviction. 

Owens on Thursday indicated no plans to resign. Instead, he said he would fight what he called a “flawed FBI investigation” and said, “I’m going to get back to protecting Hinds County and being the district attorney that you elected me to be.”

Owens’ predecessor, Robert Shuler Smith, faced multiple state criminal prosecutions during his tenure in elected office and never resigned. None of the charges brought against him by then-Attorney General Jim Hood ended in a conviction.

In 2016, then-state Rep. Nick Bain filed a bill that would have created a process to remove local officials from office following an indictment, but that bill never advanced. 

The state constitution allows people convicted of manslaughter and state or federal tax crimes to hold elected office. 

What happens if Owens resigns?

Owens was most recently elected in 2023 for a four-year term that began January 2024 and will run through the end of 2027. If he’s not convicted before then, he can complete the entire term and even qualify for reelection again. If he were to be convicted or plead guilty before the end of 2027, he would be removed from office.

On Thursday, U.S. District Court Judge Daniel P. Jordan set a trial date for Jan. 6, but delays in criminal cases are common.

If Owens resigns or is removed with more than six months remaining in his term, Gov. Tate Reeves will appoint someone to replace him until a special election can occur. Special elections to replace a district attorney generally occur as needed in November of each year. 

If Owens were to resign now, that means a gubernatorial appointee would serve as Hinds County’s district attorney for a year until a special election in 2025. Any qualifying candidate could run in the special election to fulfill the term, including the gubernatorial appointee. 

If Owens were to resign or be removed from office with less than six months remaining in his term, the governor would simply appoint someone to fulfill the term and the winner of the regularly scheduled general election would take office at the beginning of the next term. 

What would happen if Lumumba or Banks were to resign or be removed from office?

The current terms of both Lumumba and Bank conclude next year, with municipal general elections set for June and new terms beginning in July.

Lumumba said on Thursday that he will continue to run for reelection. Banks declined to answer questions about whether he intends to remain in office or to seek another term.

If either Lumumba or Banks were to resign with less than six months remaining in their term, state law requires that the Jackson City Council would replace either with interim appointments who would serve the remaining months of the terms.

If either man were to resign or be removed before the end of 2024, the City Council would have to order a special election to fill the vacant posts.

Can voters recall elected officials in Mississippi?

Mississippi does have an obscure and very roundabout recall process, but only for county officials, despite several unsuccessful efforts to expand the law. State Sen. Jeremy England, a Republican from the Gulf Coast, has filed some of those bills, and said he did not think a district attorney could be recalled under the current law, but they could have been recalled under a bill he has filed before. 

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

Mississippi Today

Gov. Reeves announces $110 million in economic development efforts

Published

on

mississippitoday.org – Taylor Vance – 2024-11-13 16:58:00

Republican Gov. Tate Reeves on Wednesday announced that state agencies are disbursing over $110 million toward economic development, infrastructure upgrades and workforce development around the state. 

The funding for the projects is coming from the state Legislature, the Appalachian Regional Commission, the Delta Regional Authority, the Southeast Crescent Regional Commission and the federal government. 

“We’ve secured billions in new private-sector investment and created thousands of jobs across the state,” Reeves said. “The funding we announced today will go a long way toward continuing Mississippi’s economic momentum and will help create more high-paying job opportunities for Mississippians across the state.” 

The bulk of the spending will go toward developing and improving industrial sites, which are often used to entice manufacturing companies to locate or expand operations in the state. If these sites have adequate infrastructure near them, companies are more likely to locate there.

Despite new investment in the state, Mississippi continues to grapple with one of the lowest rates in the nation of people who are actively seeking work or employed, at 53.9%. 

State Economist Corey Miller said at a legislative hearing last week that one of the reasons Mississippi is also experiencing a relatively low unemployment rate of 2.8% is because people have stopped looking for jobs. 

Reeves said on Wednesday that Mississippi may have a low percentage of people looking for jobs because the state has a relatively low cost of living and some families can afford to have only one income. 

“If an individual doesn’t want a job, the government ain’t going to force them to get a job,” Reeves said. “And that’s just a reality.” 

Still, the governor believes Mississippi can improve its labor force participation rate by improving education and providing people with better work skills. 

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

Continue Reading

Mississippi Today

Groups seek a new hearing on a Mississippi mail-in ballot lawsuit

Published

on

mississippitoday.org – Emily Wagster Pettus, Associated Press – 2024-11-13 15:20:00

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A federal appeals court panel incorrectly interpreted federal and state laws when it ruled that Mississippi cannot count mail-in ballots that are cast and postmarked by Election Day but arrive a few days later, two groups argue as they seek a new hearing.

Attorneys for Vet Voice Foundation and Mississippi Alliance for Retired Americans are asking the entire 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to reconsider the ruling that a portion of the court issued Oct. 25.

The ruling did not affect the counting of ballots for the Nov. 5 election because the three-judge panel noted that federal court precedents discourage court actions that change established procedures shortly before an election.

However, the case could affect voting across the U.S. if the Supreme Court ultimately issues a ruling.

The attorneys for Vet Voice Foundation and the Mississippi Alliance for Retired Americans argue in court papers filed Friday that the panel of judges “incorrectly suggested that post-election day ballot receipt deadlines are a recent invention.”

“In fact, the practice of counting ballots cast by election day but received afterward goes back to the Civil War, when many states permitted soldiers to vote in the field before sending their ballots to soldiers’ home precincts,” attorneys for the two groups wrote.

Many states have laws that allow counting of ballots that are cast by Election Day but received later, the attorneys wrote.

“Far from making any attempt to preempt these laws, Congress has acknowledged and approved of them for more than five decades,” they wrote.

The three-judge panel of the conservative appeals court reversed a July decision by U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr., who had dismissed challenges to Mississippi’s election law by the Republican National Committee, the Libertarian Party of Mississippi and others.

Richard Hasen, a professor at the University of California, Los Angeles School of Law, wrote on his election law blog that the ruling by the appeals court panel was a “bonkers opinion” and noted that “every other court to face these cases has rejected this argument.”

Republicans filed more than 100 lawsuits challenging various aspects of vote-casting after being chastised repeatedly by judges in 2020 for bringing complaints about how the election was run only after votes were tallied.

The list of states that allow mailed ballots to be counted if they are postmarked by Election Day includes swing states such as Nevada and states such as Colorado, Oregon and Utah that rely heavily on mail voting.

In July, a federal judge dismissed a similar lawsuit over counting mailed ballots in Nevada. The Republican National Committee has asked the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals to revive that case.

Guirola wrote that Mississippi’s law does not conflict with federal election laws. The suit challenging the Mississippi law argued that the state improperly extends the federal election and that, as a result, “timely, valid ballots are diluted by untimely, invalid ballots.”

Guirola disagreed, writing that “no ‘final selection’ is made after the federal election day under Mississippi’s law. All that occurs after election day is the delivery and counting of ballots cast on or before election day.”

Although the Mississippi challenge was led by Republicans and Libertarians, there is bipartisan support for the state’s practice. Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch is defending the state’s top election official, Secretary of State Michael Watson, in the lawsuit. Both are Republicans.


Associated Press reporters Kevin McGill in New Orleans and Mark Sherman in Washington contributed to this report.

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

Continue Reading

Mississippi Today

Surely, Shorty Mac would have an opinion on the LSU tiger controversy

Published

on

mississippitoday.org – Rick Cleveland – 2024-11-13 14:44:00

There’s been quite the controversy next door in Louisiana where, at Gov. Jeff Landry’s insistence, a live tiger was on display in Tiger Stadium last Saturday night at an LSU football game for the first time in eight years.

Rick Cleveland

Tiger or not, Alabama pummeled LSU 42-13. Since then, Landry has defended the renting a tiger named Omar Bradley from a Florida exotic zoo to put on display at the game.

Mike the Tiger — actually, this was was Mike VI — died in 2016, and LSU decided to end the practice of having a live tiger present at football game. It was part of the lore of Tiger Stadium and it could be intimidating for opposing players: a huge, growling Tiger parked right outside the visitor’s locker room. Usually, there was a microphone in the cage.

Take the case of the late, great Thomas “Shorty” McWilliams, Mississippi State superstar of the mid-1940s, who played as an 18-year-old freshman for the first time at Tiger Stadium on Oct. 21, 1944. Old as I am, I am too young to have ever seen McWilliams play, but I wish I had. My daddy told me he was the best player he ever saw, and he saw thousands in a life of following football. I know this: The man they called “Shorty Mac” was the only four-time All-SEC player in league history, and it’s difficult to imagine in today’s college football landscape there’ll ever be another one.

Thomas “Shorty” McWilliams Credit: Mississippi State athletics

What follows is the story, told firsthand by Shorty Mac, when he was interviewed in 1995 by the good folks at Communications Arts who were putting together exhibits for the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Museum. To set the stage, McWilliams was punting out of the end zone, near the visitor’s locker room at Tiger Stadium, in pregame warm-ups.

We’ll let Shorty Mac take it from there: “Unbeknownst to me, they rolled up Mike the Tiger in that cage right behind me. I didn’t know he was there and that 500-pound tiger roared. Oh, he roared at the top of his lungs. It scared me so bad. It scared the (bleep) out of me. I ruined myself. I had to play the whole game in those pants.”

You can watch and listen to McWilliams tell that and other stories on the football kiosk at the Mississippi Sports Hall of Fame Museum. Now then, here’s the rest of the story from that night in Baton Rouge. Shorty Mac apparently recovered nicely from that pregame scare. He scored both touchdowns in a 13-6 Mississippi State victory over Coach Bernie Moore’s Tigers, who included a young quarterback named Y.A. Tittle, later one of the great NFL stars of the 20th century. Afterward, Moore told reporters the only way to stop McWilliams “is to not schedule Mississippi State. He killed our defense.”

McWilliams was the game’s leading rusher and passer. Indeed, he led the SEC in scoring with 84 points as a freshman. McWilliams played the 1945 season at Army, then returned to State to play his final three seasons of college football. 

Back to the present: Gov. Landry, speaking Monday night, said he regretted that the live tiger was the only tiger who showed up for the Alabama game, which was every bit as one-sided as the final score indicates. As reported in The Athletic, Landry said, “I had more people come up to me saying they remembered Mike the Tiger more than some of the great plays in Tiger Stadium… It’s about tradition. At the end of the day, the woke people have tried to take tradition out of this country. It’s tradition that built this country.”

I won’t take a side in that controversy, but I sure would love to here what Shorty Mac would say.

Two more Shorty Mac vignettes before we close:

  • The late Dick Smith, a sports writer and later a newspaper owner, told me about one of Shorty’s games at Meridian High in 1943. “Meridian was playing Tupelo for the Big Eight Conference championship,” Smith said. “The first seven times Shorty touched the ball, he scored. Short runs, long runs, kick returns, didn’t matter. Every time he got the ball he scored. The eighth time he touched it, he ran 70 yards until he pulled his hamstring and went down on the two-yard line. By then, Meridian was so far ahead, they didn’t need him.”
  • The late Edward “Cookie” Epperson told me this one at Shorty Mac’s funeral in January 1997. Epperson was Shorty’s roommate at State and one of his best pals. Said Epperson: “Shorty was enjoying a hot shower after practice when a couple of players sneaked an opossum into the shower with him. That possum hissed and Shorty flew out of there. He didn’t bother to get his clothes or even a towel. He ran past the secretary and on outside. He never ran faster.”

Shorty Mac wasn’t afraid of the biggest, baddest linebackers, but he apparently did fear critters whether they roared or hissed.

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

Continue Reading

Trending