fbpx
Connect with us

Mississippi Today

Who Investigates the Sheriff? In Mississippi, Often No One.

Published

on

Who Investigates the Sheriff? In Mississippi, Often No One.

As Marquise Tillman led deputies on a high-speed chase through rural Mississippi in March 2019, Sheriff Todd Kemp issued a blunt order over the radio: “Shut him down and beat his ass.”

When the Clarke County deputies caught Mr. Tillman, they did just that, he later alleged in a . He said they pummeled and stomped on him while he was handcuffed, leaving him with a fractured eye socket and broken bones in his face and chest.

The sheriff denied giving the order. But it was captured on tape and described under oath by four of his deputies.

Sheriff Todd Kemp was recorded ordering deputies to use force. Four of them corroborated it in depositions.

Such an explosive revelation might have roiled a community elsewhere in the country and led state or federal to investigate. But in Mississippi, it was largely ignored, even after the county paid Mr. Tillman an undisclosed amount to settle his claim.

There was no news coverage and no state investigation. In an interview, Sheriff Kemp said he had turned the case over to the state’s agency. But the agency could find no record of having pursued it.

That is not unusual in Mississippi, where allegations like those leveled against Sheriff Kemp often go nowhere, an investigation by The New York Times and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today has found.

A photo of Clarke County Sheriff Todd Kemp, right, at the county courthouse in Quitman, Miss. (Rory Doyle for The New York Times)

State authorities are responsible for investigating shootings and in-custody deaths involving sheriffs and deputies. But they are not obligated to investigate other potential wrongdoing by sheriffs’ offices, and may not even know about it: The sheriffs’ offices are also not obligated to incidents to them.

The Times and Mississippi Today examined dozens of publicly available federal lawsuits that described severe brutality and other abuses of power, reviewing thousands of pages of court records and interviewing people involved in cases across the state.

At least 27 claims do not appear to have led to a state investigation, including accusations of rape, brutal assault and retaliation against sheriffs’ enemies.

Many of the lawsuits depicted incidents that had eyewitnesses or significant physical evidence. Some included transcripts of deputies admitting under oath to troubling conduct. All but five of the cases were settled, according to court files that do not disclose the financial terms.

A man in Simpson County said in a lawsuit that the sheriff in 2012, Kenneth Lewis, choked him and slammed his head against a cell wall until he passed out. (Credit: United States District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi)

Mississippi has a long history of powerful rural sheriffs breaking the law with little consequence. This year, The Times and Mississippi Today revealed how sheriffs and deputies dodged accountability after allegations that they had sexually abused women in their custody, tortured people for information or misused subpoena power to spy on others.

The lawsuits underscored how many similar allegations have been leveled in the state over the past decade, especially in small-town jails. A man in Itawamba County said that in 2020 his jailers tied him to a chair, choked him and squeezed his genitals until he vomited. A woman in Bolivar County said that in 2016 a deputy held her arms behind her back and raped her in her cell. A man in Simpson County said that the sheriff in 2012, Kenneth Lewis, choked him and slammed his head against a cell wall until he passed out.

All of their lawsuits were settled. Attempts to reach former Sheriff Lewis for comment were unsuccessful.

Officials with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office said they could find no records indicating that either office had investigated any of the 27 allegations. Jim Hood, who was attorney general during most of these cases, did not respond to requests for comment.

Reporters also reached people familiar with 12 of the claims, including plaintiffs, their members and their lawyers. All said they were not aware of state investigators asking about the cases.

The Simpson County Jail, behind a cemetery in Mendenhall, Miss. (Rory Doyle for The New York Times)

In a statement responding to The Times and Mississippi Today’s findings, the state’s public safety commissioner, Sean Tindell, said he was working toward more oversight. He said he would ask the to empower Mississippi’s law enforcement licensing board, which he oversees along with the bureau of investigation, to investigate abuse allegations and consider revoking law enforcement officers’ licenses, an approach some states use aggressively.

Sheriffs are elected and not required to hold licenses, however. And it would not change how cases are investigated criminally.

The lack of investigations troubled experts who reviewed some of the cases.

James Tierney, a former Maine attorney general who now lectures at Harvard Law School, said the lawsuits described “corrupt” and “criminal” behavior that should have been investigated by the attorney general.

“This wasn’t one renegade cop or a renegade D.A. There is a systemic problem here,” he said.

In Mr. Tillman’s case, the accused deputies all denied beating him. They do not appear to have any consequences. “I don’t think there was any wrongdoing,” Sheriff Kemp said in an interview.

“Everybody kept their job,” recalled Mr. Tillman’s aunt, Kristy Tillman.

Mr. Tillman is serving 12 years in prison for crashing into deputies during the high-speed chase. Sheriff Kemp is retiring at the end of this month after 24 years in office. His elected successor, Anthony Chancelor, is one of the deputies accused in the beating.

The Itawamba County Courthouse in the town center of Fulton, Miss. (Rory Doyle for The New York Times)

Trails of Evidence

Across Mississippi’s 82 counties, candidates for sheriff are not required to have law enforcement experience or police training. Once in office, sheriffs can launch investigations, direct the use of force and put people in jail, where they control virtually every aspect of an inmate’s .

“There is no transparency for what happens inside these local jails, and we know that abuse thrives in dark places,” said Michele Deitch, the director of a center at the University of Texas at Austin that studies jail oversight and operations. She said the allegations of brutality described in the lawsuits were a window into a world that sheriffs have been allowed to conceal.

Many of the lawsuits examined by The Times and Mississippi Today included trails of evidence — video footage, medical records, eyewitness accounts — ready for an investigator to follow.

In 2020, deputies at the Itawamba County jail beat Christopher Evan Easter relentlessly, he said in court filings and an interview.

He said one jailer put him in a chokehold until he passed out; he awoke to deputies doing chest compressions on him. They tied him to a chair, squeezed his genitals and punched his head until he lost consciousness again, he said. “When I come to, my ears are ringing. I’m covered in puke and blood,” he recalled.

Mr. Easter was taken to a hospital, he said, but when he returned to jail, he was stripped naked and thrown in a dark, maggot-infested room the deputies called “the hole,” where the plumbing did not work and the toilet was full of feces.

Mr. Easter’s father, Christopher Lewis Easter, said the jail’s administrator told him that his son had fallen and hit his head on a filing cabinet. The family filed a lawsuit, detailing the violence inflicted on Mr. Easter, which the county settled for $15,000, he said.

Some claims revealed patterns of similar allegations. In a three-year span, two men held in the jail used by Humphreys County filed lawsuits saying deputies had taken them to the chapel before beating them out of view of security cameras. The lawsuits said that members of each family had confronted then-Sheriff J.D. Roseman, who acknowledged one of the assaults happened. Both cases were settled. Sheriff Roseman remained in office until his death in 2020.

In other cases, deputies’ testimony supported some of the plaintiffs’ claims.

Photos of former sheriffs remain in the lobby entrance of the Tunica County Justice Complex in Tunica, Miss. (Rory Doyle for The New York Times)

The county administrator of Tunica County, population 10,000, accused Sheriff Calvin Hamp of conspiring to have him arrested in 2014 in retaliation for trying to cut the department’s budget.

Two days after the men argued over a purchase order, a captain in the department pulled over an S.U.V. carrying the administrator, Michael Thompson. The captain instructed Mr. Thompson to get behind the wheel and watched him away, then pulled him over and charged him with driving with a suspended license. The sheriff’s office issued a press release announcing the arrest.

In a sworn deposition, the captain conceded that he had known Mr. Thompson’s license was suspended — because of an unpaid traffic ticket in another county — when he told him to drive.

Sheriff Hamp did not respond to questions from The Times and Mississippi Today. Mr. Thompson declined to comment.

On appeal, a judge dismissed the charge against Mr. Thompson, and a jury later awarded him $50,000 in damages.

The Clarke County Jail and Sheriff’s office in Quitman, Miss. (Rory Doyle for The New York Times)

Deflecting Responsibility

In 2022, state lawmakers formally gave the attorney general and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation responsibility for investigating police shootings and prosecuting those that involve criminal misconduct.

When a sheriff or a deputy is accused of other types of crimes, however, it remains less clear what is supposed to happen.

The F.B.I. and the Justice Department handle some law enforcement cases, but generally look into only the most serious allegations.

District attorneys can investigate and bring charges. But those local prosecutors can have “politically incestuous” relationships with sheriffs, creating pressure to overlook allegations, said Chris Toth, the former executive director of the National Association of Attorneys General.

To avoid conflicts of interest, sheriffs or local prosecutors can ask the attorney general or the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation to step in. But the system only works if local officials contact the state for help, and that often does not happen, The Times and Mississippi Today found.

Mississippi’s Board on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Training also conducts background checks and decides whether law enforcement officers who have been fired for cause or charged with a crime should be allowed to serve in other counties. But it does not perform its own investigations into officers’ conduct. Mr. Tindell, the public safety commissioner, argues that it should.

Some states, including Florida and Arizona, have long taken an approach like the one Mr. Tindell is proposing, with powerful licensing boards that require police agencies to report misconduct and then can hold hearings and potentially revoke officers’ certification.

More recently, other states have given their attorneys general additional authority. New York‘s can now investigate any officer or deputy, and Illinois’s and Colorado’s can conduct wide-ranging civil investigations into patterns of illegal conduct.

In Mississippi, the lack of has allowed some sheriffs and district attorneys to disregard reports of abuse within their jurisdictions.

In Clarke County, accounts that Sheriff Kemp had gotten on the radio and ordered his deputies to beat a fleeing man were widely known.

District Attorney Kassie Coleman said in a statement that she had heard about the accusation and that it was “general knowledge” that both the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and the F.B.I. had been contacted about the case.

“I was not provided an investigative case regarding any potential criminal acts that resulted from the investigation into the allegations,” Ms. Coleman wrote, “nor was I provided a copy of the federal lawsuit.”

But the state bureau of investigation said it had no file on the case, Mr. Tillman’s family said he was never contacted by the F.B.I. or anyone else, and the lawsuit is available in an online courts database.

People who have complained directly to Mississippi sheriffs’ offices have often found themselves speaking to someone close to the sheriff.

A man accused deputies in Forrest County of shackling him in a holding cell, beating him unconscious and breaking his ribs in 2016. He noted in his lawsuit that he filed complaints with the F.B.I. and Nick Calico, a chief investigator for then-Sheriff Billy McGee, giving him medical records and photos that could have served as evidence.

In an interview, Mr. Calico said he had investigated the allegations and found that nothing improper happened. After the lawsuit was filed, he said, he was contacted by the F.B.I., sent them a copy of his investigative file and never heard about it again.

Seven months after the alleged beating, he would marry Sheriff McGee’s daughter.


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

Joel Engelhardt contributed reporting. Kitty Bennett contributed research.

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

Mississippi Today

On this day in 1875

Published

on

mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-11-02 07:00:00

Nov. 2, 1875

Pictured here are U.S. Sen. Hiram Revels of Mississippi, left, with six Black members of the U.S. House, Ben J.S. Turner of Alabama, Josiah T. Walls of Florida, Jefferson H. Long of Georgia, and Robert C. De Large, Joseph H. Rainy and R. Brown Elliot, all of South Carolina. Credit: Library of

The first Mississippi Plan, which included violence against Black Americans to keep them from , resulted in huge victories for white Democrats across the

A year earlier, the Republican Party had carried a majority of the votes, and many Black had been elected to office. In the wake of those victories, white leagues arose to 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, 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.

Continue Reading

Mississippi Today

Mississippi Today’s NewsMatch Campaign is Here: Support Journalism that Strengthens Mississippi

Published

on

mississippitoday.org – Mary Margaret White – 2024-11-01 12:34:00

High-quality journalism like ours depends on reader ; without it, we simply couldn’t exist. That’s why we’re proud to join the NewsMatch movement, a national initiative aimed at raising $50 million for nonprofit newsrooms that serve communities like ours here in Mississippi, where access to reliable information has often been limited.

In a time when trusted journalists and media sources are disappearing, we believe the stakes couldn’t be higher. Without on-the-ground, trustworthy reporting, civic engagement suffers, accountability falters and corruption often goes unaddressed. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

Here at Mississippi Today we act as watchdogs, holding those in power accountable, and as storytellers, giving a platform to voices that have been ignored for too long. And we’re committed to keeping our stories free for everyone because information should be accessible when it’s needed most.

Why NewsMatch and Why Now?

This year’s NewsMatch campaign runs from November 1 through December 31, giving us a special to make each dollar you give go even further. Through matching funds provided by local foundations like the Maddox Foundation, and national funders like the MacArthur Foundation, the Rural Partner Fund and the Hewlett Foundation, your gift will be dollar for dollar up to $1,000. Plus, if 100 new donors join us, we’ll unlock an additional $2,000 in funding, bringing us even closer to our goal. Boiled down: your donation goes four times as far.

Every dollar raised strengthens our ability to serve you with fact-based journalism on issues that impact your everyday —whether it’s covering local election issues or reporting on decisions affecting schools, safety and economic growth in Mississippi. Your support makes it possible for us to stay rooted in the community, offering nuanced perspectives that Mississippians understand and engage with what’s happening around them.

Special Event: “Freedom of the Press: Southern Challenges, National Impact”

As part of the campaign, we’re to host a special virtual , “Freedom of the Press: Southern Challenges, National Impact.” Join Deep South Today newsrooms Mississippi Today and Verite News, along with national experts on press freedom, for an in-depth discussion on the unique challenges facing journalists in the Deep South. This one-hour session will explore the critical role local newsrooms play in holding power accountable, highlighting recent restrictions on press freedom such as Louisiana’s “25- ,” which affects journalists’ ability to report vital .

We’ll examine what’s at stake if local newsrooms lose press freedoms and will discuss how you, as members of the public, can help protect it. This event is open to Mississippi Today and Verite News members as a special thank-you for supporting local journalism and standing with us in this mission. Donate today to RSVP!

How You Can Help

Make Your Gift Today

Together, let’s ensure Mississippi has the robust, independent journalism it needs to thrive. Your support fuels our ability to expose the truth, elevate marginalized stories and build a more informed Mississippi.

Thank you for believing in the power of journalism to strengthen the communities we love—not only during election season but year-round. With your help, we’ll keep Mississippi informed, engaged and connected for generations to come.

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

Continue Reading

Mississippi Today

Hinds County loses fight over control of jail

Published

on

mississippitoday.org – Mina Corpuz – 2024-11-01 12:57:00

The 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, 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

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 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 they offered was building a new jail, which is now under construction in

The county had a to further prove itself during three weeks of hearings held in February 2022. Focuses included the of seven detainees in 2021 from assaults and suicide and issues with staffing, contraband, old 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.

Continue Reading

Trending