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Where the sheriff is king, these women say he coerced them into sex

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In 2012, three months after Eddie Scott became sheriff of Clay County, Miss., a claim by a woman he had helped put behind bars threatened to tarnish his earliest days in office.

The woman said in an April court filing that, while chief deputy less than three years earlier, he had coerced 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.

She laid out her allegations in state circuit court in October 2012 and asked a judge to overturn her prison sentence. To back up her story, the 26-year-old showed suggestive letters with a return address of the Clay County Sheriff’s Office and signed by then-Chief Deputy Scott, who was 47.

“Hey Sexy,” he wrote to her in prison nine months before his election to the top job. “Got my blood pumping hard after reading the last two letters. Can’t stop thinking of how tight it is. I want all of that and more if you can.”

A letter written by Clay County Sheriff Eddie Scott when he was chief deputy, to a woman who has accused him of coercing her into sex.

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.

Judge Jim Kitchens ruled against the woman. Sheriff Scott’s predecessor, Laddie Huffman, had known of the allegations before retiring but did not report them to state or federal law enforcement agencies. There is no record of any internal investigation or disciplinary review.

The court file for the woman’s case — the only public record of the allegations — went missing at the Clay County Courthouse, likely for years. It was placed in the wrong filing cabinet, lost among hundreds of cases, until reporters pressed for it this summer while investigating other allegations against Sheriff Scott.

In interviews, Sheriff Scott would not directly answer whether he had ever had sex with the woman. When asked about his relationship with her, he called it a “mistake.” He denied coercing her.

“What she didn’t tell was, she was coming up to the office with her tits hanging out,” he said. “I never put myself in that position anymore.”

But an investigation by The New York Times and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today, which included dozens of interviews and a review of court records and exclusively obtained internal documents, found that during his 11 years in office, Sheriff Scott has repeatedly been accused of using the power of his position to harass women, coerce them into sex and retaliate against those who criticize him or allege abuse.

In rural communities like Clay County — dominated by farmland and economic hardship — some sheriffs rule like kings. They can arrest anyone they choose, smear reputations and hand out reprieves and other favors. They have enormous latitude to hold people in jail as long as they please and they answer to no one, typically facing little press or prosecutorial scrutiny.

Three months ago, The Times and Mississippi Today told the story of another sheriff’s office, less than 40 miles away. Former Noxubee County Sheriff Terry Grassaree rose in the ranks of his Mississippi department and kept his elected office for years despite similar accusations of abuse. He was voted out in 2019 and now faces federal charges of bribery.

But in Clay County, Sheriff Scott remains in power even after repeated allegations of misconduct.

A local woman said the sheriff had repeatedly forced her into sex during her eight months in jail starting in 2017. When she began telling people after her release, she said, a sheriff’s deputy arranged to have drugs planted in her car — an allegation corroborated by a secretly recorded conversation with a man who said he had planted them.

In a court filing last year, a man claimed that Sheriff Scott had pursued a sexual relationship with his girlfriend and helped her avoid a lengthy prison sentence when the couple’s child died in 2019 with meth in his system. Prosecutors charged the parents with child neglect. While prosecutors sought only probation in the mother’s case, they offered the father a plea deal that called for 10 years in prison.

Also last year, a woman who once worked for the sheriff sued him, claiming he had subjected her to months of sexual harassment, including texts commenting on her breasts. After she filed her complaint, Sheriff Scott fired her boyfriend, a captain in the office.

At least five people who accused the sheriff of misconduct, or who were potential witnesses in the cases, said he had retaliated against them, efforts they believe were intended to silence them or discredit their allegations.

In 2021, the F.B.I. began investigating allegations against the sheriff. They interviewed nearly a dozen witnesses, including Sheriff Scott and staff members in his office. No charges have been filed.

Officials familiar with the allegations and how they have been investigated, including federal prosecutors, declined to comment. Sheriff Huffman, citing poor health, said he did not remember any of the allegations. Judge Kitchens did not respond to a request for comment.

In multiple interviews, including one on camera with reporters, Sheriff Scott, now 58, has denied harassing women, coercing them into sex or retaliating against anyone. He said he has had to defend his reputation from “con artists” and “drug users” who were inventing accusations to avoid jail time or somehow benefit financially.

The sheriff said he was the victim in all of this, and that he had been under attack. “It was a coordinated hit on me,” he said.

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

Sheriff Scott and his siblings grew up milking cows on their family farm in Montpelier, Miss., a rural crossroads along Highway 46 marked by a single gas station and the Baptist church his family attended.

After high school, he married, had children and worked at Bryan Foods, a meat processing company and one of the area’s biggest employers. Then he was called to serve on a Clay County grand jury and became fascinated with police work, he said.

In 1999, he became a full-time deputy for the Clay County Sheriff’s Office. He fought the drug trade just as meth was emerging as the scourge of rural America and he eventually became an investigator, responsible for solving the county’s occasional murders. He rose to chief deputy, second in command to Sheriff Huffman.

The logical heir when Sheriff Huffman retired, he won his first election in 2011 and took office the next year.

Today, Sheriff Scott is one of Clay County’s most popular figures and the face of area law enforcement. His brother, Terry, is listed as senior investigator on the Clay County Sheriff’s Office website; his son James serves on the Mississippi Highway Patrol’s SWAT team; and his sister, Tanya, has worked as the nurse for the county jail.

On the 137-acre spread where his family once raised cows, Sheriff Scott hosts fish fries and crawfish boils, where he swaps stories and swigs cold beer with fellow law enforcement officers and some of the county’s most powerful officials.

Sheriff Scott has covered his office walls with images of John Wayne, whom the sheriff considers his hero. The actor and the characters he played symbolize everything good and decent in America, Sheriff Scott said. “They don’t build them like him anymore.”

In his office, he keeps a Christmas card from former President Donald J. Trump, whom he has met several times. Beside it is a Bible that, he said, reminds him of his childhood.

“Back when we were kids, we all went to church and learned the difference between right and wrong,” he said. “And we’re not seeing that now.”

Amber Jones was 21 in the summer of 2017 and incarcerated for violating probation after three failed drug tests when she said Clay County Sheriff Eddie Scott began forcing her to have sex with him. Credit: Rory Doyle for The New York Times

A New Allegation

Sheriff Scott’s public persona clashes with what a woman named Amber Jones says she experienced after she failed three drug tests and was arrested for violating probation in May 2017.

That summer, Ms. Jones, then 21, was called down from her cell at the Clay County Detention Center to the sheriff’s office, where Sheriff Scott asked if she would like to help out filing paperwork.

She had spent weeks in a dirty jail cell without seeing the sun, she recalled. She told him yes and became a trusty, an inmate with special privileges, working for the jail records administrator, Patty Stange.

One day in the office, Ms. Jones recalled, Sheriff Scott held out a hand to her and said, “If you take this splinter out of my finger, I’ll give you an eight-hour home pass.”

Desperate to see her family, she agreed, and a few days later, the sheriff himself checked her out of jail to take her home, she said. A mile down the road, the sheriff stopped the car by a small brick house and told her she had to change out of her jail clothes.

Ms. Jones said she felt uneasy as the sheriff led her inside, through a bedroom to a bathroom. He gave her a T-shirt and left her alone to change.

But he eventually returned and came up behind her, Ms. Jones recalled, touching her and commenting on her tattoos. Without another word, the sheriff pulled her to the bed and forced her to have sex, she said.

Ms. Jones said she felt that she had no choice — he was the sheriff. “I felt like I was worthless, like I didn’t have any control over my own body,” she said. “There was nothing I could do to stop it.”

After she visited her brother and returned to jail, she said, the sheriff called her to his office and told her she didn’t have to worry about getting pregnant because he had been “fixed.”

For the rest of Ms. Jones’s eight months in jail, this pattern continued, she said: Sheriff Scott offered her home passes to arrange sexual encounters.

Her accusations were detailed in a federal lawsuit filed last year by a former employee of the Clay County Sheriff’s Office, Caitlyn Wilson. The suit claims that Sheriff Scott sexually harassed Ms. Wilson, and it cites Ms. Jones’s allegations as evidence of the sheriff’s mistreatment of women. In sworn testimony last month, Sheriff Scott declined to say whether he had ever had sex with Ms. Jones, citing his Fifth Amendment right to avoid self-incrimination. The case is set for trial next year.

In interviews for this article, Sheriff Scott denied taking Ms. Jones out of jail or having sexual contact with her. “Amber is a sweet, likable girl on the face,” he said. “But we learned that she’s one of the biggest con artists that ever walked the face of the earth.”

Had he had taken her out of the jail, he said, their exit would have been recorded on surveillance video and sign-out sheets. When reporters asked to review such materials, Sheriff Scott said the computer system that logged inmates’ whereabouts was broken.

Sign-out sheets were kept among thousands of pages of jail records stacked in lopsided piles on an office floor. A review of the only records available revealed that Ms. Jones had received at least one home pass.

Ms. Jones’s description of the house where she said the sheriff took her for sex matches that of a place Sheriff Scott said he used for storage: a one-story brick home about a mile from the jail. Sheriff Scott said it was widely known that he used the house and that lots of people let themselves in and out using a key he kept under the doormat.

Ms. Jones shared account records showing that past midnight on Jan. 25, a week after she left jail, Sheriff Scott sent her a friend request on Snapchat, the disappearing-photo app. She also shared copies of text messages between them.

In the texts, Sheriff Scott asked Ms. Jones for “updates,” his code for nude photographs, she said. She felt forced to send them, she said, because her brother was in jail for drug possession.

In one text exchange from 2019, Ms. Jones asked the sheriff if he had heard anything about her criminal record being expunged. A “good update” would “help me remember,” he replied, adding a smiling emoji. In another exchange, the sheriff wrote that Ms. Jones owed him an “update” and sent her an emoji with a tongue sticking out.

Sheriff Scott said he couldn’t remember what he had meant by “update,” but denied that it involved nude pictures.

The only photos he received from Ms. Jones over Snapchat, he said, were “body shots” that he had requested from her as part of an investigation into jail inmates tattooing one another. Sheriff Scott said he had provided those photos to the F.B.I.

Two women, including another female inmate, had seen her in the house where she said the sheriff took her for sex.

On one occasion, she said, the sheriff drove her and the other jailed woman there, had them remove their clothing and gave them boxer shorts to put on. Ms. Jones’s were Superman-themed, with a cape to cover the otherwise-bare back, she said; the other woman received a “Duck Dynasty” pair.

Sheriff Scott posed the women together and snapped a photo from behind, according to Ms. Jones. The other woman, visibly upset, bolted for the bathroom, she said.

A few minutes later, Ms. Jones said she heard a knock at the door: It was Ms. Stange, the jail records administrator.

Ms. Stange said in a statement that she drove the women back from the house to the jail and they seemed in good spirits. She said she had no knowledge of “any sexual misconduct of Sheriff Scott with any female inmates.”

The second woman declined to comment. But in a Facebook post last year, she appeared to confirm that she had been present for the picture. Replying to a post by Ms. Jones describing the events, the woman recalled that she had said, “Oh, hell no,” and walked out of the room.

When asked about this under oath, Sheriff Scott took the Fifth.

Caitlyn Wilson stands for a portrait in West Point, Miss., on Oct. 13, 2022. Credit: Rory Doyle for The New York Times

‘I Knew I Was Being Set Up’

For years after her release from jail, Ms. Jones said she tried to put these abuses behind her. She stopped getting messages from the sheriff after blocking his number near the beginning of 2020, she said.

Then, in September 2021, a woman who had worked for the Clay County Sheriff’s Office came forward with new accusations that threatened to bring attention to years of alleged sexual misconduct by Sheriff Scott.

Caitlyn Wilson, a former investigative assistant who alleged sexual harassment, filed an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint that said Sheriff Scott had made sexual advances toward her and threatened to fire her after she rebuked him. She made reference to other women whose similar experiences had not yet been made public.

“My situation has been exacerbated,” her complaint said, citing multiple women either in jail or employed by the county who had “made claims that the Sheriff was having sex with them. It appears to be well-known within the County that the Sheriff suffers from a sexual addiction, and this sexual addiction has affected my work performance and is causing me extreme fear and anxiety.”

The E.E.O.C. did not weigh in on the merits of Ms. Wilson’s complaint, but determined she had the right to sue.

In the lawsuit she filed in May 2022, Ms. Wilson described a group chat in which Sheriff Scott had sent several employees a steady stream of sexually explicit text messages.

His messages, reviewed by reporters, referred to women as “hookers,” “heifers” and “hos.” In one text, the sheriff suggested Ms. Wilson and Ms. Stange should “tag team” to give him oral sex. In others, he called himself a stallion and said women “liked to be hammered.”

Pictures the sheriff sent, which he called “humorous memes on the humor channel” under oath as part of the lawsuit, compared women to dogs that needed to be trained and joked about date rape.

Ms. Wilson said she decided to file her complaint after Sheriff Scott rubbed his crotch against her as he walked past her one day in the office. “I felt very violated,” she said in an interview. “I was just so shocked and surprised because he was my boss.”

Sheriff Scott denied touching Ms. Wilson inappropriately, saying he was running a high fever that day. “I was as sick as a dog,” he said. “Grabbing a woman was the last thing on my mind.”

He told reporters that none of his texts included sexual content and said under oath that anyone in the group chat could have stopped participating at any time.

When Ms. Wilson filed her complaint, Sheriff Scott assigned one of his own deputies to investigate. The final report concluded that the allegations were “unsubstantiated and punitive” and dismissed Sheriff Scott’s texts as adult humor shared among willing participants.

As the deputy investigated, Ms. Wilson said, she found herself increasingly isolated at work. She was barred from carrying her gun at the office and told to eat lunch at her desk. Most of her co-workers stopped talking to her, she said.

In December 2021, three months after Ms. Wilson filed her initial complaint, Sheriff Scott suspended her then-boyfriend, Jeremy Bell, a captain who had worked in the office for five years. According to a personnel report signed by Sheriff Scott, Mr. Bell had violated department policy by driving his patrol car outside of Clay County to visit Ms. Wilson’s house in a neighboring town. He was fired two days after Christmas.

It was around this time that Ms. Jones, who had not heard from Sheriff Scott for months, found herself under the scrutiny of local law enforcement again, she said.

Several weeks after Ms. Wilson submitted her complaint citing allegations that women in the jail had been forced to have sex with Sheriff Scott, Ms. Jones was pulled over by a narcotics officer from West Point, a town of about 10,000 people in Clay County.

The officer discovered a bag of diabetic needles filled with meth under her passenger seat and arrested her. Ms. Jones believes the drugs were planted there.

“I knew I was being set up,” she said. Frustrated and facing time behind bars, Ms. Jones decided two months later to post on a Facebook page called Mississippi Corruption, where she detailed for the first time her allegations against the sheriff.

“I was fixing to go to prison for a really long time for something that I didn’t even do, just because he was mad over his mistakes, over things that he had done,” she said.

A few months later, in April 2022, Ms. Jones received a video from her friend Madison Ray, she said. Ms. Ray said she had secretly recorded a conversation with Joshua Fulgham, a local diabetic man with prior drug arrests, because she suspected someone had planted the drugs while they were all hanging out the night before Ms. Jones’s arrest.

The recording, on Ms. Ray’s cellphone, captures him explaining how and why he placed the drugs in Ms. Jones’s car. “I put dope under that seat like Kyle told me to,” he says. “I didn’t even have to use mine. Kyle gave it to me.”

According to Ms. Wilson’s lawsuit, Mr. Fulgham is referring to Deputy Kyle Eaves, who used to work for Sheriff Scott. “The apparent purpose of Deputy Sheriff Eaves causing drugs to be planted upon Jones is to intimidate Jones or to cause her to be arrested so that she will lack credibility in claiming an involuntary sexual relationship with Defendant Scott,” the complaint states.

After the video spread around town, Mr. Fulgham was arrested on drug possession charges, taken to the jail and made a trusty. About six months later, he made a video at the Clay County jail and had it posted on Facebook. He accused Ms. Jones of being a liar out to get Sheriff Scott, but never recanted his previous statements.

“She needs help and rehab, just like me,” Mr. Fulgham said in the video, “and she needs to leave the sheriff alone.”

The sheriff sent a copy of the video to reporters and pointed to it as proof that Ms. Jones and others were lying. “Seems like their plan [is] coming to light,” he said.

Neither Mr. Fulgham nor Mr. Eaves responded to requests for comment.

About six months after the video was made, another potential witness in Ms. Jones’ case changed his story, too.

Her former boyfriend, Edward Adam Todd, had been arrested by Clay County deputies and was facing up to 50 years in prison for two burglary charges.

After initially backing Ms. Jones’ allegations, Mr. Todd later told investigators that he had lied to get the sheriff in trouble, according to transcripts of his April sentencing hearing.

The court transcript shows that Judge Kitchens praised Mr. Todd for his change of heart, saying his statements “cleared a local member of law enforcement that had been accused of something that probably turns out that was not true.”

At the hearing, the prosecutor suggested a seven-year prison sentence for Mr. Todd, citing his help to law enforcement. Judge Kitchens further reduced his sentence, cutting it to four years.

Instead of being transferred to prison to serve his sentence, Mr. Todd has remained at the Clay County jail, where he could not immediately be reached for comment.

The Clay County Sheriff’s Office is located in West Point, Miss., on June 29, 2023. Credit: Rory Doyle for The New York Times

Back on the ballot

Sheriff Scott believes that he will be vindicated and that voters will see through the allegations to re-elect him in the deciding Democratic primary election on Aug. 8.

He has won his previous elections easily. But this time, he faces an unexpected opponent who is an experienced law enforcement officer in Clay County: his own chief deputy, Ramirez Williams.

In February, Chief Deputy Williams announced his run for sheriff. The next month, Sheriff Scott demoted him to work the graveyard shift as a jailer.

When asked if Mr. Williams’s candidacy played a role in his demotion, the sheriff replied, “Not necessarily,” and declined to comment further.

Sheriff Scott insists he will leave office on his own terms, regardless of what becomes of the accusations against him.

He said he believes the federal investigation is over and he cooperated with their review, even voluntarily meeting with federal authorities to answer questions. “I wasn’t going to let a bunch of drugheads run me out of office,” he said.

The sheriff said he had been burned by extending compassion to people behind bars, but had no plans to stop. “You can’t turn your back,” he said. “One of these days, I might be in the same shape.”

He chuckled. “You never know.”

This article was co-reported by The New York Times and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today.

Read More: Sex abuse, beatings and an untouchable Mississippi sheriff — Read the first story in this series examining the power of sheriff’s offices in Mississippi.

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

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Mississippi Today

Mississippi River flooding Vicksburg, expected to crest on Monday

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mississippitoday.org – @alxrzr – 2025-04-25 16:04:00

Warren County Emergency Management Director John Elfer said Friday floodwaters from the Mississippi River, which have reached homes in and around Vicksburg, will likely persist until early May. Elfer estimated there areabout 15 to 20 roads underwater in the area.

A truck sits in high water after the owner parked, then boated to his residence on Chickasaw Road in Vicksburg as a rising Mississippi River causes backwater flooding, Friday, April 25, 2025.

“We’re about half a foot (on the river gauge) from a major flood,” he said. “But we don’t think it’s going to be like in 2011, so we can kind of manage this.”

The National Weather projects the river to crest at 49.5 feet on Monday, making it the highest peak at the Vicksburg gauge since 2020. Elfer said some residents in north Vicksburg — including at the Ford Subdivision as well as near Chickasaw Road and Hutson Street — are having to take boats to get home, adding that those who live on the unprotected side of the levee are generally prepared for flooding.

A rising Mississippi River causing backwater flooding near Chickasaw Road in Vicksburg, Friday, April 25, 2025.
Old tires aligned a backyard as a deterrent to rising water north of Vicksburg along U.S. 61, Friday, April 25, 2025.
As the Mississippi River rises, backwater flooding creeps towards a home located on Falk Steel Road in Vicksburg, Friday, April 25, 2025.

“There are a few (inundated homes), but we’ve mitigated a lot of them,” he said. “Some of the structures have been torn down or raised. There are a few people that still live on the wet side of the levee, but they kind of know what to expect. So we’re not too concerned with that.”

The river first reached flood stage in the city — 43 feet — on April 14. State officials closed Highway 465, which connects the Eagle Lake community just north of Vicksburg to Highway 61, last Friday.

Flood waters along Kings Point Road in Vicksburg, Friday, April 25, 2025.

Elfer said the areas impacted are mostly residential and he didn’t believe any businesses have been affected, emphasizing that downtown Vicksburg is still safe for visitors. He said Warren County has worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency to secure pumps and barriers.

“Everybody thus far has been very cooperative,” he said. “We continue to tell people stay out of the flood areas, don’t drive around barricades and don’t drive around road close signs. Not only is it illegal, it’s dangerous.”

NWS projects the river to stay at flood stage in Vicksburg until May 6. The river reached its record crest of 57.1 feet in 2011.

The boat launch area is closed and shored up on Levee Street in Vicksburg as the Mississippi River rises, Friday, April 25, 2025.
The boat launch area (right) is closed and under water on Levee Street in Vicksburg as the Mississippi River rises, Friday, April 25, 2025.
City of Vicksburg workers shore up the bank along Levee Street as the Mississippi River rises, Friday, April 25, 2025.
The old pedestrian bridge spanning the Mississippi River in Vicksburg, Friday, April 25, 2025.

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 Today

With domestic violence law, victims ‘will be a number with a purpose,’ mother says

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mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-25 15:07:00

Joslin Napier. Carlos Collins. Bailey Mae Reed. 

They are among Mississippi domestic violence homicide victims whose family members carried their photos as the governor signed a bill that will establish a board to study such deaths and how to prevent them. 

Tara Gandy, who lost her daughter Napier in Waynesboro in 2022, said it’s a moment she plans to tell her 5-year-old grandson about when he is old enough. Napier’s presence, in spirit, at the bill signing can be another way for her grandson to feel proud of his mother. 

“(The board) will allow for my daughter and those who have already lost their lives to domestic violence … to no longer be just a number,” Gandy said. “They will be a number with a purpose.” 

Family members at the April 15 private bill signing included Ashla Hudson, whose son Collins, died last year in Jackson. Grandparents Mary and Charles Reed and brother Colby Kernell attended the event in honor of Bailey Mae Reed, who died in Oxford in 2023. 

Joining them were staff and board members from the Mississippi Coalition Against Domestic Violence, the statewide group that supports shelters and advocated for the passage of Senate Bill 2886 to form a Domestic Violence Facility Review Board. 

The law will go into effect July 1, and the coalition hopes to partner with elected officials who will make recommendations for members to serve on the board. The coalition wants to see appointees who have frontline experience with domestic violence survivors, said Luis Montgomery, public policy specialist for the coalition. 

A spokesperson from Gov. Tate Reeves’ office did not respond to a request for comment Friday.

Establishment of the board would make Mississippi the 45th state to review domestic violence fatalities. 

Montgomery has worked on passing a review board bill since December 2023. After an unsuccessful effort in 2024, the coalition worked to build support and educate people about the need for such a board. 

In the recent legislative session, there were House and Senate versions of the bill that unanimously passed their respective chambers. Authors of the bills are from both political parties. 

The review board is tasked with reviewing a variety of documents to learn about the lead up and circumstances in which people died in domestic violence-related fatalities, near fatalities and suicides – records that can include police records, court documents, medical records and more. 

From each review, trends will emerge and that information can be used for the board to make recommendations to lawmakers about how to prevent domestic violence deaths. 

“This is coming at a really great time because we can really get proactive,” Montgomery said. 

Without a board and data collection, advocates say it is difficult to know how many people have died or been injured in domestic-violence related incidents.

A Mississippi Today analysis found at least 300 people, including victims, abusers and collateral victims, died from domestic violence between 2020 and 2024. That analysis came from reviewing local news stories, the Gun Violence Archive, the National Gun Violence Memorial, law enforcement reports and court documents. 

Some recent cases the board could review are the deaths of Collins, Napier and Reed. 

In court records, prosecutors wrote that Napier, 24, faced increased violence after ending a relationship with Chance Fabian Jones. She took action, including purchasing a firearm and filing for a protective order against Jones.

Jones’s trial is set for May 12 in Wayne County. His indictment for capital murder came on the first anniversary of her death, according to court records. 

Collins, 25, worked as a nurse and was from Yazoo City. His ex-boyfriend Marcus Johnson has been indicted for capital murder and shooting into Collins’ apartment. Family members say Collins had filed several restraining orders against Johnson. 

Johnson was denied bond and remains in jail. His trial is scheduled for July 28 in Hinds County.  

He was a Jackson police officer for eight months in 2013. Johnson was separated from the department pending disciplinary action leading up to immediate termination, but he resigned before he was fired, Jackson police confirmed to local media. 

Reed, 21, was born and raised in Michigan and moved to Water Valley to live with her grandparents and help care for her cousin, according to her obituary. 

Kylan Jacques Phillips was charged with first degree murder for beating Reed, according to court records. In February, the court ordered him to undergo a mental evaluation to determine if he is competent to stand trial, according to court documents. 

At the bill signing, Gandy said it was bittersweet and an honor to meet the families of other domestic violence homicide victims.

“We were there knowing we are not alone, we can travel this road together and hopefully find ways to prevent and bring more awareness about domestic violence,” she said.

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 Today

Court to rule on DeSoto County Senate districts with special elections looming

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mississippitoday.org – @MSTODAYnews – 2025-04-25 15:06:00

A federal three-judge panel will rule in coming days on how political power in northwest Mississippi will be allocated in the state Senate and whether any incumbents in the DeSoto County area might have to campaign against each other in November special elections.  

The panel, comprised of all George W. Bush-appointed judges, ordered state officials last week to, again, craft a new Senate map for the area in the suburbs of Memphis. The panel has held that none of the state’s prior maps gave Black voters a realistic chance to elect candidates of their choice. 

The latest map proposed by the all-Republican State Board of Election Commissioners tweaked only four Senate districts in northwest Mississippi and does not pit any incumbent senators against each other. 

The state’s proposal would keep the Senate districts currently held by Sen. Michael McLendon, a Republican from Hernando and Sen. Kevin Blackwell, a Republican from Southaven, in majority-white districts. 

But it makes Sen. David Parker’s district a slightly majority-Black district. Parker, a white Republican from Olive Branch, would run in a district with a 50.1% black voting-age population, according to court documents. 

The proposal also maintains the district held by Sen. Reginald Jackson, a Democrat from Marks, as a majority-Black district, although it reduces the Black voting age population from 61% to 53%.  

Gov. Tate Reeves, Secretary of State Michael Watson, and Attorney General Lynn Fitch comprise the State Board of Election Commissioners. Reeves and Watson voted to approve the plan. But Watson, according to meeting documents, expressed a wish that the state had more time to consider different proposals. 

Fitch did not attend the meeting, but Deputy Attorney General Whitney Lipscomb attended in her place. Lipscomb voted against the map, although it is unclear why. Fitch’s office declined to comment on why she voted against the map because it involves pending litigation. 

The reason for redrawing the districts is that the state chapter of the NAACP and Black voters in the state sued Mississippi officials for drawing legislative districts in a way that dilutes Black voting power. 

The plaintiffs, represented by the ACLU, are likely to object to the state’s newest proposal, and they have until April 29 to file an objection with the court

The plaintiffs have put forward two alternative proposals for the area in the event the judges rule against the state’s plans. 

The first option would place McLendon and Blackwell in the same district, and the other would place McLendon and Jackson in the same district. 

It is unclear when the panel of judges will issue a ruling on the state’s plan, but they will not issue a ruling until the plaintiffs file their remaining court documents next week. 

While the November election is roughly six months away, changing legislative districts across counties and precincts is technical work, and local election officials need time to prepare for the races. 

The judges have not yet ruled on the full elections calendar, but U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals Judge Leslie Southwick said at a hearing earlier this month that the panel was committed have the elections in November. 

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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