Mississippi Today
Some imprisoned in Mississippi remain jailed long after parole eligibility
Transformation. Redemption. Forgiveness. Remorse.
A group of women who have served decades in Mississippi prisons use those words to describe how they have changed during incarceration and why the Parole Board should see that as evidence they can be released.
But โdishearteningโ is another word. They use it to describe the cycle of seeking parole. The Parole Board holds a hearing, it rejects their petitions and they have to wait years for another opportunity.ย
โI’ve taken accountability for my actions, sought to make reparations by living a life devoted to giving to others,โ said Evelyn Smith, in a recording of her story in a campaign advocating for the release of her and four other women.
โStatistically and realistically, I pose no threat to society,โ said the 80-year-old, who was most recently denied parole in 2022 and whose next hearing is in 2027. โI often ponder what is being accomplished by my continued incarceration.โ
Smith is one of the Mississippi Five โ women convicted of murder and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole that has never come. Collectively, they have been incarcerated for over 175 years and denied parole nearly 50 times.ย
The others are Loretta Pierre and Lisa Crevitt, 59; Linda Ross, 61 and Anita Krecic, 65.
Parole denials, which include setoffs between hearings and for the duration of a person’s sentence, account for over a third of all parole outcomes, according to a Mississippi Today analysis of parole data between 2013 and 2023.
Within the 10-year period, the highest number of setoffs was about 4,100 in 2016. Between 2017 and 2023, there have been roughly 2,000 setoffs each year.
Belk told Mississippi Today the board looks for evidence of rehabilitation during parole hearings, but it is also exercising more scrutiny in processes and preparing people for release in a meaningful way, contributing to the parole grant’s decrease.
Between 2013 and 2021, the average setoff between parole hearings was seven months, and in 2022, that increased to nearly 15 months. Belk has said the board has been using more two- and five-year setoff periods.
In a decade, the longest setoff handed down was for 10 years in 2021.
Belk said the longest setoff decided during his time on the board was eight years for Krecic, who has been eligible for parole since 1997 and has been denied 10 times. She was convicted of murder because she was with her boyfriend who fatally shot a state trooper on the Gulf Coast. He has since been executed.
Among those who received a five-year setoff was Smith, who has been incarcerated for over 30 years. Belk had told Mississippi Today’s Jerry Mitchell she was โunparole-ableโ because she didn’t understand the heinousness of her crime โ the stabbing death of a Brookhaven woman and the transport of her body out of state.
In a recorded interview through the Free the Five campaign, Smith said she took on jobs, mentored younger women, kept a nearly spotless institutional record on her path to become โa person worthy of (a second chance)โ and redeemable in the eyes of the parole board.
โWhen is it enough?’
Pauline Rogers, co-founder of Jackson nonprofit Reaching and Educating for Community Hope Foundation, advocates for efforts to help people released from prison and reduce recidivism.
She’s seen the Mississippi Five and other incarcerated people take steps to change and demonstrate they are ready for release and have plans to keep them from returning to prison, only for them to be denied. At a certain point, Rogers said there is nothing more they can do to rehabilitate.
โIf you perpetually punish them for something โฆ How long do you punish them?โ she asked. โWhen is it enough?โ
Belk told Mississippi Today the board looks for evidence of rehabilitation during parole hearings, but it is also exercising more scrutiny in processes and preparing people for release in a meaningful way, contributing to the parole grant’s decrease.
It found what it saw as evidence when it released ouble murderer James Williams III, amid pushback from the family of his victims, lawmakers and members of law enforcement.
In prison, Williams earned a GED and a bachelor’s in Christian ministry and completed other educational rehabilitation programs, which signaled to the board that he was ready for release. After a DUI arrest months after his release, the board revoked his parole and sent him back to prison, where he remains.
Homicide remains the most common primary conviction for those denied parole โ nearly 6% of all denial outcomes, according to MDOC data.
The chance for parole release for anyone, regardless of charges, has narrowed as the board’s grant rate has declined. Within a year of a new chairman, Jeffery Belk, and members joining the board, the parole grant fell from around two-thirds before 2021 to about a third in 2022.
Since last year, the parole grant rate has returned to above 50%. Since 2022, the board has paroled over 6,000 people.
Rogers sees issues with how parole is handled in Mississippi, including how the state doesn’t seem to give people a constitutional right to parole โ leaving power in the hands of the board, including how to make decisions.
โThe Parole Board has become judge, jury and executioner,โ she said.
Seeming to support Rogers’ point, Julia Norman, the newest member of the board, said during her February 2023 Senate confirmation hearing that if someone was convicted of a violent crime and received a sentence shorter than the board thinks the person should have received, the board might deny release so the person can โfinish that sentence off.โ
Those convicted after 2014 are supposed to be reviewed for parole if they are not released at their initial parole date, which would be a one-year setoff, according to state law. Those convicted before that can be set off for longer than a year.
Belk said setoffs aren’t a definitive โnoโ because people have been paroled after trying multiple times to be released.
Of women with life sentences granted parole between 1989 and 2022, Barbara Wilson was denied parole 12 times before her release in 2022 after 37 years, according to records compiled by parole advocate Mitzi Magleby.
โNo chance of being paroled’
To make sure someone is ready for parole, Belk said the board might vote for a setoff to give the person time to complete a GED or a program like alcohol and drug treatment, which both have limited spaces in any given prison.
He and Steve Pickett, the former Parole Board chairman from 2013 to 2021, said when the board has felt unsure about whether someone was prepared for release, they ordered a setoff to see how the person would react.
Sometimes the person comes back before the board and shows improvement. Others don’t handle the rejection well and act out, sometimes landing them with a rules violation report, which can count against them in future parole hearings, Belk said.
In the past, Belk said there were people in prison for violent offenses with continuously bad behavior in prison who were receiving six-month setoffs, which he doesn’t see as a sign that the person can follow rules if released.
He said it was difficult for the board to continue to have to see those โwho had no chance of being paroledโ and to see victims and families relive and retell how the crime affected their lives each time the person had a parole hearing.
So the board decided to extend its setoff periods to two to five years for those with violent offenses to see if the extra time would help and to provide some relief for victims and families, Belk said.
He said this contributed to the parole rate’s decrease.
Beverly Warnock is executive director of Parents of Murdered Children, a national group based in Ohio that advocates for parents and other survivors, including in parole hearings.
Since 1990, the organization has worked with families to oppose parole of thousands of people convicted of murder across the country through its Parole Block Program. Through circulating petitions, the organization has helped keep more than 1,850 people in prison for a longer sentence after they became eligible for parole, Warnock said.
She said she believes the petitions send a message to the parole boards and show them that people have safety concerns if someone is released.
โIt gave (families) the strong feeling of relief that the murderer would not get out,โ Warnock said. โ… They feel like they’re doing justice for their loved ones.โ
To date no petitions have come from Missisisppi, she said, but that may because the organization doesn’t have a presence in the state. The nearest chapter is in Alabama.
Study and Struggle
Members of the Mississippi Five have participated in a political educational program hosted by Study and Struggle, a collaborative that focuses on prison abolition.
The campaign is using art to share the women’s stories and having conversations about parole and decarceration.
A collective of artists working with Study and Struggle turned oral history interviews with the women into zines that blend text, photos and drawings. The collaboration also included the Mississippi Five themselves, who provided feedback.
Jaime Dear, a Chicago area-based artist who worked on the zine about Krecic and helped design the others, said art is an effective way to communicate and a way to connect.
โ(The zines) are for everyone to read,โ Dear said. โThe five should have their stories illustrated lovingly.โ
Corey Devon Arthur, an artist and writer incarcerated in New York, created the color group photo of the women at the top of the Study and Struggle website that hosts information about the campaign and parole. An artist named Phan drew portraits for each of the Mississippi Five.
Loretta Pierre, who has been denied parole 14 times, was 20 years old and pregnant with her only child when she was charged with the murder of her ex-boyfriend’s new girlfriend.
She is now a grandmother to three children she has not met in person, Pierre said in her oral history interview with Study and Struggle.
Linda Ross, 61, has had seven parole denials. She pleaded guilty and was convicted for the murder of a man in Pike County, the McComb Enterprise Journal reported.
In her oral history interview, Ross said she was misdiagnosed at some point as mentally disabled and psychotic, but said she didn’t accept the evaluation as final and has overcome many challenges since.
During incarceration, she has earned a GED and is enrolled at Mississippi Valley State University through a prison education partnership.
She said she looks forward to returning home to be with her elderly mother and live out her senior years.
โI believe I have not only transformed my mind but have risen above resentments by using this opportunity to choose forgiveness,โ Ross said.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Is Ole Miss this good? Are Mississippi State, Southern Miss this bad?
After 13 hours of watching college football Saturday โ and enduring seemingly 21,989 TV timeouts โ this bleary-eyed correspondent is left with more questions than answers.
For instance, is Ole Miss, the nation’s fifth-ranked team, really this good? (Honestly, I think the Rebels are.)
Are Mississippi State and Southern Miss this bad? (The season is still a puppy, but, boy, those are two teams that really need for something good to happen. Soon.)
Through three games, Lane Kiffin’s offense averages nearly 700 yards per game, nearly nine yards per play and exactly 56 points per game. Granted, the Rebels have not played a really good football team yet, but these eyes see no weaknesses, glaring or otherwise. Apparently, Wake Forest doesn’t either because the Demon Deacons are paying Ole Miss $750,000 to not play the return game in Oxford next year.
As for Mississippi State, there was nothing holy about Toledo. The Rockets earned a $1.2 million paycheck and dominated the Bulldogs in every phase of the game in a 41-17 victory that was ever bit as one-sided as it sounds. The pertinent question seems not so much how can a 10.5-point underdog win by 24 points on the road, but why was Toledo ever a double-digit underdog in the first place?
Toledo plays in the Mid-American Conference, where the league’s best teams are nearly always competitive with Power 5 conference teams. We saw it a week ago when Northern Illinois won at Notre Dame. That was a week after Notre Dame won on the road at Texas A&M and a week before the Irish crushed Purdue 66-7. That same Saturday, Bowling Green led for much of the game before losing at Penn State. Last year, Toledo lost to Illinois by three points in its opener before winning 11 regular season games and the MAC regular season title.ย
My point: Toledo is a well-coached, veteran team, used to success, and no doubt came to Starkville expecting to win. What the Rockets couldn’t have expected was to dominate. But Toledo led 14-0 early, 28-3 at halftime and 35-3 in the third quarter. It could have been worse than the final 41-17.
For State, the worst part is that the Bulldogs were dominated at the line of scrimmage on both sides of the ball. There was nothing fluke-y about it. Twenty of Toledo’s 73 offensive plays gained 10 for more yards. On the flip side, Toledo defenders combined for five sacks, six tackles for losses. State ran the ball 27 times for a paltry 66 yards.
That’s particularly sobering when you realize that the Bulldogs’ remaining schedule includes five of the nation’s top seven ranked teams. After Florida, in Starkville, this Saturday, State’s next two games are against the nation’s top two teams, Texas and Georgia, both on the road.
Meanwhile, Ole Miss continued its early season demolition of inferior competition. After clubbing Furman and Middle Tennessee State by a combined 128-3, the Rebels faced their first Power 5 competition and first road game of the season. The Rebels made it look easy. The first possession of the game pretty much set the tone: 75 yards and five plays in 87 seconds, touchdown Ole Miss. It was almost like a dummy drill. Before the first quarter was over, Ole Miss would score three touchdowns, and it easily could have been four.
Jaxson Dart has now completed 73 of 88 passes for 1,172 yards. That’s 83 percent. He throws lasers.
Ole Miss now plays a good Sun Belt team Georgia Southern, at home, before beginning conference play the following week against Kentucky. Road games at South Carolina and LSU follow that. The Rebels will be favored in all.
At Hattiesburg, Southern Miss started fast, taking a 14-0 lead over a talented South Florida team that had played Alabama on even terms for three and a half quarters the previous week. After USM’s quick start, reality set in. South Florida scored the next 28 points en route to a dominant, 49-24 victory. Most disheartening of all for USM: The Golden Eagles’ defensive front was supposed to be the strength of the team, but South Florida gashed USM for 369 yards rushing. Southern Miss now goes on the road to face Rich Rodriguez’s Jacksonville State team, which won nine games and the New Orleans Bowl last year.
Elsewhere:
- Previously No. 1 Georgia, for once, looked human in a 13-12 win at Kentucky.
- Previously No. 2 Texas lost Quinn Ewers but used Arch Manning’s five-touchdown performance to trounce UTSA 56-7 and move up to No. 1 ahead of Georgia. To this observer of three generations of quarterbacks named Manning, the athletic, 19-year-old Arch, whose performance included a 67-yard touchdown run, looked far more like his grandfather Archie than either of his famous quarterbacking uncles Peyton and Eli.
- No. 4 Alabama went on the road to blast Wisconsin 42-10.
- No. 16 LSU outlasted South Carolina 36-33 in a game marred by officiating that was sketchy at best.
- Vanderbilt fell from the unbeaten ranks, dropping a 36-32 decision to Georgia State of the Sun Belt Conference.
- Jackson State trounced Southern University 33-15 for its fifth straight victory over the Jaguars before a crowd of just over 32,000 at Veterans Memorial Stadium.
- Colorado bounced back with a 28-9 victory over Colorado State. Former Jackson State coach Deion Sanders had his son, Shadeur, throwing the ball and padding his stats with a 19-point lead with under two minutes to play. CBS announcers, understandably, were both incredulous and critical. Alas, sportsmanship will never be Deion’s long suit.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1963
Sept. 15, 1963
Members of the Ku Klux Klan planted a bomb inside the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed four young girls, Denise McNair, 11, and Addie Mae Collins, Cynthia Wesley and Carole Robertson, all 14. Collins’ younger sister, Sarah, was blinded by the blast, which also injured 22 others.
That same day, police shot and killed 16-year-old Johnny Robinson after a group of kids reportedly threw rocks. Virgil Ware, 13, was shot to death while riding on the handlebars of his brother’s bicycle. (The teens who killed him got no jail time.)
The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. sent a telegram to President Lyndon B. Johnson, โDear Mr. President, I shudder to think what our nation has become when Sunday school children โฆ are killed in church by racist bombs.โ
Days later, he told a crowd of 8,000 at the girls’ funeral service, โThe innocent blood of these little girls may well serve as the redemptive force that will bring new light to the city.โ
The bombing became a turning point in generating broader sympathy for the civil rights movement. On the same day of the bombing, James Bevel and Diane Nash began the Alabama Project, which later grew into the Selma Voting Rights Movement.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Will Trump or Harris match record-setting voter turnout of 2020?
One of Vice President Kamala Harris’ most devastating zingers in last week‘s debate with former President Donald Trump was when she looked at him and said he โwas fired by 81 million people โฆ Clearly he is having a difficult time processing that.โ
Harris was correct about the 2020 election. That year more people voted against Trump than against any candidate in the history of the nation.
On the other hand, Trump is correct when he says he received more votes in that election than any incumbent president in the nation’s history. The only problem with that is that in that 2020 election, Joe Biden garnered more votes than any candidate had ever received.
Biden defeated Trump by about 7 million votes.
Turnout of the eligible voting-age population in 2020 was 66.7% โ the highest since 1900, according to Fair Vote, a national nonprofit promoting various voting reforms.
In Mississippi, the turnout compared to past elections in the state was high, but well below the national average. According to Fair Vote, the turnout in Mississippi in the 2020 election was 60.2%. And by the way, in the 2020 election, Trump received more votes โ 756,764 โ than any presidential candidate in Mississippi’s history. In 2008, incumbent U.S. Sen. Thad Cochran garnered 766,111 in his reelection bid against Democrat Erik Fleming.
This perhaps is an appropriate time to mention one of our funniest age-old political jokes: that the outcome of a particularly close election will depend on turnout.
All elections, of course, do depend on turnout. A candidate’s most basic mission is to get his or her voters to the polls. The only problem is that generally speaking, when a candidate drives up his or her voter turnout it also spikes on the other side.
That, in part, is why elections often turn so negative. It is part of the effort to depress the opponent’s turnout.
The question this election cycle is will people turn out to vote at as high a rate as is in 2020?
Will Trump garner as many votes as he did in 2020 โ more than 74 million โ the second most in the nation’s history? Canย Harris in 2024 match what Biden did in 2020 โ more than 81 million votes?
In other words, will voter interest or enthusiasm be as high on each side as it was in 2020? A drop on either side most likely will portend the winner of the November election.
There you go โย the old joke again.
In Mississippi, turnout was high in 2020 but much lower than the national average.
But there is a reason to believe that turnout might be higher in Mississippi this November. The two Democrats winning the most votes in federal elections in Mississippi history were Black candidates: Mike Espy in his unsuccessful U.S. Senate bid against Republican incumbent Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith in 2020 and President Barack Obama in 2012. Espy captured 578,619 votes in losing to Hyde-Smith by 10% in 2020. In his successful reelection in 2012, Obama received 562,949 in Mississippi, or about 11.5% less than Republican Mitt Romney.
Minnesota generally is the state with the highest turnout, hovering near 80% โ almost 20% higher than the turnout in Mississippi.
If Mississippians come out to vote at the same level as Minnesotans in 2024, that would mean almost 260,000 more people would vote in 2024 than in 2020.
That could be enough votes to give the Democratic presidential nominee a victory in Mississippi for the first time since 1976.
Of course, that victory would only occur if Harris could ensure those extra votes were mostly her supporters.
After all, it’s all about the turnout.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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