The Mississippi Legislature’s attempt to create four unelected special circuit court judges in Hinds County is unconstitutional, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled today, while upholding House Bill 1020’s creation of a single inferior court in Jackson’s Capitol Complex Improvement District. Justices heard arguments in the case in July.
In 2017, the Mississippi Supreme Court’s then-Chief Justice William Waller Jr. helped mandate that judges throughout the state explain in writing how they deliver on their duty to provide poor criminal defendants with a lawyer. Now, six years after the rule went into effect, only one of the 23 circuit court districts in the state has responded.
The white chief justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court will remain blocked from appointing four unelected circuit court judges to serve Hinds County, the majority-Black home of the capital City of Jackson, after a federal judge extended a temporary restraining order against House Bill 1020 on Monday.
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