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This story originally appeared in the Jackson Free Press. It was added to the Mississippi Free Press website in 2025.
Note that any opinions expressed in legacy Jackson Free Press stories do not reflect a position of the Mississippi Free Press or necessarily of its staff and board members.

JFP Staff

Deryl Dedmon pleaded guilty today to the murder of James Craig Anderson. The judge sentenced Dedmon to life for murder and another life sentence for hate crime, to run concurrently.

Dedmon was accused of running over Anderson in a pickup truck last year in what prosecutors called a racially motivated hate crime. The district’s attorney’s office asked for life in prison for the crime.

At the hearing, the judge explained that by pleading guilty, Dedmon would give up his constitutional rights to trial by a jury of peers and a right against self-incrimination. The maximum sentence Dedmon could get was two life sentences.

We’ll post more as this story develops. JFP reporter R.L. Nave is tweeting live from the hearing.

Read more about the case in the JFP archives:
Divided We Fall
Dedmon Pleads Not Guilty
Dedmon Indicted by Grand Jury
The Cycle of Hate

Mississippi native Donna Ladd and partner Todd Stauffer founded the Jackson Free Press in 2002 in the capital city. The heavily awarded local newspaper did many investigations heralded across the state and nation and served as a paper of record due to its diversity, inclusion, in-depth reporting and deep connection to readers and dedication to narrative change in and about Mississippi. In 2022, the nonprofit Mississippi Free Press, founded by Ladd and JFP Associate Publisher Kimberly Griffin in 2020, purchased the journalism assets and archives of the Jackson Free Press. A Google grant through AAN Publishers enabled Newspack's integration of the JFP archives into the Mississippi Free Press website to become part of a more searchable archive of recent Mississippi history and essential journalism.