Mississippi Today
Trial ends in federal lawsuit that seeks more Black justices on Mississippi Supreme Court
A federal judge will decide in the coming months whether Black Mississippians have a fair chance to elect candidates to the Mississippi Supreme Court and whether the Legislature should redraw districts give those Black voters more power.
Attorneys representing citizens and politicians from the Jackson Metro Area and the Delta capped off a nearly two-week long trial bench trial in Oxford on Thursday before U.S. District Judge Sharion Aycock
Aycock will eventually make a determination whether the current district lines used to elect justices to the state’s highest court violate the federal Voting Rights Act.
Mississippi law establishes three Supreme Court districts, commonly referred to as the Northern, Central and Southern districts. Voters elect three justices from each to make up the nine-member court. These districts have not been redrawn since 1987.
About 38% of Mississippi residents are Black. Yet eight of the current justices are white, only one is Black. Four Black justices have served on the Mississippi Supreme Court in the state’s history, and never more than one at a time.
The plaintiffs in the case, which include Democratic state Sen. Derrick Simmons of Greenville and Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Ty Pinkins, argue this underrepresentation exists because the current lines fragment Black votes in the state.
“The plaintiffs merely seek to alter the lines so that Black voters get a fair shot,” Ari Savitzky, an ACLU attorney who is representing the plaintiffs, said during closing arguments on Thursday.
The main district at issue in the case is the current Central District, which comprises a portion of the majority-Black Delta and the capital’s Metro Area. Currently, two white justices, Kenny Griffis and James Kitchens, and one Black justice, Leslie King, represent the district.
But the three-member State Board of Election Commissioners, composed of three Republican statewide officials, argued roughly 51% of the Central District’s voting-age population is Black, and if a majority of eligible Black voters exist in the area, then it should create an equal playing field for Black candidates to get elected.
“If the district lines aren’t denying them equality, this case is over,” Michael Wallace, an attorney representing the state, said.
All four Black Mississippians who have been elected to the Supreme Court were first appointed to the post by governors and then later won election to the post as incumbents. They all have come from the Central District.
In 2020, Court of Appeals Judge Latrice Westbrooks attempted to become the first Black Mississippian to be elected to the Supreme Court without first being appointed to a vacant seat by a governor. She lost a close election to Griffis, who was running for the post for the first time after being appointed to a vacant slot on the court by then-Gov. Phil Bryant.
Before Westbrooks, Democratic state Rep. Earle Banks of Jackson in 2012 also attempted to become the first Black Mississippian to win a Supreme Court seat without first obtaining a gubernatorial appointment, but he was defeated by Chief Justice Bill Waller, Jr, who is white.
Wallace argued that these elections were outliers because the 2020 election happened during the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, and Waller won because he was a well-liked incumbent who attracted broad support across racial groups.
The three Supreme Court districts are also the same districts used to elect the three-member Public Service and Transportation commissions.
To bolster the state’s claim, Wallace pointed to the 2023 statewide election where DeKeither Stamps won a seat on the Central District Public Service Commission and Willie Simmons won a seat on the Transportation Commission. Both are Black.
“Black power is working pretty well in this district,” Wallace said.
The trial’s conclusion comes on the heels of a three-judge panel last month ordering legislators to redraw some legislative districts to replace ones where Black voting power is currently diluted. That ruling came in a lawsuit that is separate from the suit over judicial districts.
Aycock was not one of the judges who presided over the lawsuit on legislative districts. But she joked with attorneys at the end of the judicial redistricting trial that she wishes the case before her involved a three-judge panel to help her reach a final decision in a weighty case that has the potential to reshape the state’s highest court.
The parties will have 30 days to submit final court papers to Aycock, and she will deliver a final opinion after those submissions. After the ruling, an aggrieved party could appeal to the New Orleans-based U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
If the federal courts rule in favor of the plaintiffs and determine the districts should be redrawn, state lawmakers would be tasked with creating the new districts. If the Legislature cannot agree on new maps, Aycock would likely be tasked with drawing the maps.
The current Central District line stretches East to West across the central part of the state. Plaintiffs argue that the district should be redrawn to closely mirror the state’s 2nd Congressional District, which runs North to South and includes all of the Delta, Hinds County and most of southwest Mississippi.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1875
Nov. 2, 1875
The first Mississippi Plan, which included violence against Black Americans to keep them from voting, resulted in huge victories for white Democrats across the state.
A year earlier, the Republican Party had carried a majority of the votes, and many Black Mississippians had been elected to office. In the wake of those victories, white leagues arose to challenge Republican rule and began to use widespread violence and fraud to recapture control of the state.
Over several days in September 1875, about 50 Black Mississippians were killed along with white supporters, including a school teacher who worked with the Black community in Clinton.
The governor asked President Ulysses Grant to intervene, but he decided against intervening, and the violence and fraud continued. Other Southern states soon copied the Mississippi plan.
John R. Lynch, the last Black congressman for Mississippi until the 1986 election of Mike Espy, wrote: “It was a well-known fact that in 1875 nearly every Democratic club in the State was converted into an armed military company.”
A federal grand jury concluded: “Fraud, intimidation, and violence perpetrated at the last election is without a parallel in the annals of history.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
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This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Hinds County loses fight over control of jail
The Hinds County sheriff and Board of Supervisors have lost an appeal to prevent control of its jail by a court-appointed receiver and an injunction that orders the county to address unconstitutional conditions in the facility.
Two members from a three-judge panel of the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals agreed with decisions by U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves to appoint a receiver to oversee day-to-day jail operations and keep parts of a previous consent decree in place to fix constitutional violations, including a failure to protect detainees from harm.
However, the appeals court called the new injunction “overly broad” in one area and is asking Reeves to reevaluate the scope of the receivership.
The injunction retained provisions relating to sexual assault, but the appeals court found the provisions were tied to general risk of violence at the jail, rather than specific concerns about the Prison Rape Elimination Act. The court reversed those points of the injunction and remanded them to the district court so the provisions can be removed.
The court also found that the receiver should not have authority over budgeting and staff salaries for the Raymond Detention Center, which could be seen as “federal intrusion into RDC’s budget” – especially if the receivership has no end date.
Hinds County Board of Supervisors President Robert Graham was not immediately available for comment Friday. Sheriff Tyree Jones declined to comment because he has not yet read the entire court opinion.
In 2016, the Department of Justice sued Hinds County alleging a pattern or practice of unconstitutional conditions in four of its detention facilities. The county and DOJ entered a consent decree with stipulated changes to make for the jail system, which holds people facing trial.
“But the decree did not resolve the dispute; to the contrary, a yearslong battle ensued in the district court as to whether and to what extent the County was complying with the consent decree,” the appeals court wrote.
This prompted Reeves to hold the county in contempt of court twice in 2022.
The county argued it was doing its best to comply with the consent decree and spending millions to fix the jail. One of the solutions they offered was building a new jail, which is now under construction in Jackson.
The county had a chance to further prove itself during three weeks of hearings held in February 2022. Focuses included the death of seven detainees in 2021 from assaults and suicide and issues with staffing, contraband, old infrastructure and use of force.
Seeing partial compliance by the county, in April 2022 Reeves dismissed the consent decree and issued a new, shorter injunction focused on the jail and removed some provisions from the decree.
But Reeves didn’t see improvement from there. In July 2022, he ordered receivership and wrote that it was needed because of an ongoing risk of unconstitutional harm to jail detainees and staff.
The county pushed back against federal oversight and filed an appeal, arguing that there isn’t sufficient evidence to show that there are current and ongoing constitutional violations at the jail and that the county has acted with deliberate indifference.
Days before the appointed receiver was set to take control of the jail at the beginning of 2023, the 5th Circuit Court ordered a stay to halt that receiver’s work. The new injunction ordered by Reeves was also stayed, and a three-person jail monitoring team that had been in place for years also was ordered to stop work.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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