Mississippi Today
With clock ticking, Judge Wingate mulls a second injunction blocking appointments to separate Jackson court
A federal judge will decide whether to approve another injunction to prevent state appointments to a new, separate court system in Jackson set to go into effect in two weeks.
U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate said Tuesday he plans to rule on the injunction and other pending court motions before Jan. 1, 2024, which is when the Capitol Complex Improvement District court will be created through House Bill 1020.
Wingate heard arguments about the injunction in a NAACP lawsuit on behalf of Jackson residents that is challenging the court appointments required under the law. The injunction seeks to prevent Chief Justice Michael Randolph from appointing one judge and Attorney General Lynn Fitch from appointing two prosecutors to the Capitol Complex Improvement District court.
Brenden Cline, who is representing the plaintiffs, called HB 1020 “a comprehensive overhaul of the criminal justice system in Jackson” and a change in status quo for the city’s voters.
They won’t get to elect judges from their community who can be held accountable like other communities across the state do, he said. Plaintiffs also argue that the legislation dilutes the voting power of Jackson residents and stigmatizes them, sending the message that they are unfit to have a say in their own local government.
Cline also argued that HB 1020 has discriminatory impact on the majority Black city, had discriminatory intent by the Legislature and that the plaintiffs would suffer irreparable harm to their voting rights and their 14th Amendment rights.
He emphasized that the plaintiffs are challenging state officials’ appointments to, not the creation of, the CCID court.
The Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in September that creating the CCID court would be allowed under the state constitution. It also ruled that appointing four temporary judges to Hinds County Circuit Court was unconstitutional.
Rex Shannon, who is representing the defendants from the attorney general’s office, said the plaintiffs don’t have standing and the burden is on them to prove discriminatory intent and risk of actual, imminent harm.
Voting rights are not an issue in this case, he said, and nothing in HB 1020 affects the plaintiffs’ voting rights. Shannon added that the legislation doesn’t change the way judges are elected in Jackson and Hinds County, nor did it remove elected judge positions.
Shannon also emphasized that not every action or intent behind the legislation is racist, including how judicial appointments would be made and how the CCID court would function.
He also said the plaintiffs have assumed the Legislature was not acting in good faith when crafting and passing HB 1020. Shannon asked whether any legislative act relating to Jackson could be seen as discriminatory based on the city’s racial makeup.
Shannon argued that blocking creation of the CCID court would prevent lawmakers from addressing Jackson’s ongoing public safety and criminal justice issues.
The city is in need of additional resources, he said, and the Legislature is providing them by supporting the Capitol Police and establishing the court to handle the force’s increase in cases, rather than adding additional cases to the Hinds County Circuit Court, which is experiencing a backlog, he said.
“That shouldn’t be controversial at all,” Shannon said about the state’s interest in Jackson as the capital city and its efforts to address crime there.
In his rebuttal, Cline asked whether the state could have funded the existing Jackson and Hinds County criminal justice system rather than creating a new one. He said the assumption is that the Legislature would have to write a blank check, but the city’s delegation and local leaders over the years have requested funding that the Legislature has not approved.
Chief Justice Randolph’s place in the lawsuit was brought up again in court.
Randolph was a defendant in the lawsuit up until September when Wingate removed him under judicial immunity, paving the way for Randolph to proceed with judicial appointments. As of December, Randolph has not appointed any judges to the CCID or temporary judges to work in the Hinds County Circuit Court.
The plaintiffs proposed a workaround to block Randolph’s judicial appointments even though he is no longer part of the lawsuit.
Those motions and others, including a request from the U.S. Department of Justice to intervene, are awaiting a ruling from Wingate. He said Tuesday that he would address them in an elongated opinion.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1865
Dec. 24, 1865
Months after the fall of the Confederacy and the end of slavery, a half dozen veterans of the Confederate Army formed a private social club in Pulaski, Tennessee, called the Ku Klux Klan. The KKK soon became a terrorist organization, brutalizing and killing Black Americans, immigrants, sympathetic whites and others.
While the first wave of the KKK operated in the South through the 1870s, the second wave spread throughout the U.S., adding Catholics, Jews and others to their enemies’ list. Membership rose to 4 million or so.
The KKK returned again in the 1950s and 1960s, this time in opposition to the civil rights movement. Despite the history of violence by this organization, the federal government has yet to declare the KKK a terrorist organization.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
An old drug charge sent her to prison despite a life transformation. Now Georgia Sloan is home
CANTON – Georgia Sloan is home, back from a potentially life-derailing stint in prison that she was determined to instead make meaningful.
She hadn’t used drugs in three years and she had a life waiting for her outside the Mississippi Correctional Institute for Women in Pearl: a daughter she was trying to reunite with, a sick mother and a career where she found purpose.
During 10 months of incarceration, Sloan, who spent over half of her life using drugs, took classes, read her Bible and helped other women. Her drug possession charge was parole eligible, and the Parole Board approved her for early release.
At the end of October, she left the prison and returned to Madison County. The next day she was back at work at Musee, a Canton-based bath products company that employs formerly incarcerated women like Sloan and others in the community facing difficulties. She first started working at the company in 2021.
“This side of life is so beautiful. I would literally hold on to my promise every single minute of the day while I was in (prison),” Sloan told Mississippi Today in December.
Next year, she is moving into a home in central Mississippi, closer to work and her new support system. Sloan plans to bring her daughter and mother to live with her. Sloan is hopeful of regaining custody of her child, who has been cared for by her aunt on a temporary basis.
“This is my area now,” she said. “This has become my family, my life. This is where I want my child to grow up. This is where I want to make my life because this is my life.”
Additionally, Sloan is taking other steps to readjust to life after prison: getting her driver’s license for the first time in over a decade, checking in monthly with her parole officer and paying court-ordered fines and restitution.
In December 2023, Sloan went to court in Columbus for an old drug possession charge from when she was still using drugs.
Sloan thought the judge would see how much she had turned her life around through Crossroads Ministries, a nonprofit women’s reentry center she entered in 2021, and Musee. Her boss Leisha Pickering who drove her to court and spoke as a witness on Sloan’s behalf, thought the judge would order house arrest or time served.
Instead, Circuit Judge James Kitchens sentenced her to eight years with four years suspended and probation.
He seemed doubtful about her transformation, saying she didn’t have a “contrite heart.” By choosing to sell drugs, Kitchens said she was “(making) other people addicts,” according to a transcript of the Dec. 4, 2023, hearing.
“I felt like my life literally crumbled before my eyes,” Sloan said about her return to prison. “Everything I had worked so hard for, it felt like it had been snatched from me.”
She was taken from the courtroom to the Lowndes County Detention Center, where she spent two months before her transfer to the women’s prison in Rankin County.
Sloan found the county jail more difficult because there was no separation between everyone there. But the prison had its own challenges, such as violence between inmates and access to drugs, which would have threatened her sobriety.
She kept busy by taking classes, which helped her set a goal to take college courses one day with a focus on business. Visits, phone calls and letters from family members and staff from Musee and Crossroads were her lifeline.
“I did not let prison break me, I rose above it, and I got to help restore other ladies,” Sloan said.
She also helped several women in the prison get to Crossroads – the same program that helped her and others at Musee.
Sloan credits a long-term commitment to Crossroads and Musee for turning her life around – the places where she said someone believed in her and took a chance on her.
Pickering, Musee’s CEO, said in the three years she’s known Sloan, she’s watched her grow and become a light for others.
The bath and lifestyle company has employed over 300 formerly incarcerated women in the past dozen years, but Pickering said not everyone has had the same support, advocacy and transformation as Sloan. Regardless, Pickering believes each person is worth fighting for.
When Sloan isn’t traveling for work to craft markets with Pickering, she shares an office with her Musee colleague Julie Crutcher, who is also formerly incarcerated and a graduate of Crossroads’ programs. She also considers Crutcher a close friend and mentor.
Sloan has traveled to Columbus to see her mother and daughter whom she spent Thanksgiving with. She will see them again for Christmas and celebrate her daughter’s 12th birthday the day after.
Her involvement with the criminal justice system has made Sloan want to advocate for prison reform to help others and be an inspiration to others.
“I never knew what I was capable of,” Sloan said. “I never knew how much people truly, genuinely love me and love being around me. I never knew how much I could have and how much I could offer the world.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1946
Dec. 23, 1946
University of Tennessee refused to play a basketball game with Duquesne University, because they had a Black player, Chuck Cooper. Despite their refusal, the all-American player and U.S. Navy veteran went on to become the first Black player to participate in a college basketball game south of the Mason-Dixon line. Cooper became the first Black player ever drafted in the NBA — drafted by the Boston Celtics. He went on to be admitted to the Basketball Hall of Fame.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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