FOCUS: H.B. 1020 • 2023 Elections • Voting • Fact Checks • #MSWelfare/TANF Scandal • Jackson Water • Abortion • Race & Racism
The Black family of Harry Mitchell has waited 32 years for the Lafayette County Sheriff’s Department to solve his 1991 cold case murder.
The Black family of Harry Mitchell, murdered in Lafayette County, Mississippi, in 1991 wants justice after decades of being ignored.Â
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.
In April, the Mississippi Supreme Court changed the rules for state courts to require that poor criminal defendants have a lawyer throughout the sometimes lengthy period between arrest and indictment. The goal is to eliminate a gap during which no one is working on a defendant’s behalf. That mandate went into effect Saturday. But few of the state’s courts have plans in place to change their procedures in a way that is likely to accomplish what the justices intended.
Attorney Carlos Moore announced Tuesday that the family of Aderrien Murry had filed a $5 million lawsuit against the City of Indianola, Indianola Police Chief Ronald Sampson and Officer Greg Capers. The lawsuit identifies Capers, 61, as the officer who shot Murry.
Duvalier Malone reflects on the recent death of Carolyn Bryant Donham, the white woman whose accusations led to the kidnapping, beating and lynching of 14-year-old Emmett Till in Money, Miss., in August 1955, writing that “her death reopens old wounds for the family and all of Black America simply because justice never came.”
“These ancestors of mine are responsible for me existing. But they are not heroes to America. Heroes fight for the oppressed. Their participation in policies established prior to independence were designed for me to have an easier time in this country.”
Different approaches to justice are on the ballot in November 2022 in some public prosecutor and congressional elections around the country, revealing a deep divide about how differently Americans feel about crime and its consequences. But the data do not support the rhetoric.
“Civil Rights era murderers still living among us should be hunted down in the same manner as Nazi War criminals,” Melva L. Bradford writes.
Mississippi Journalism and Education Group is a a 501(c)(3) nonprofit media organization (EIN 85-1403937) for the state, devoted to going beyond partisanship and publishing solutions journalism for the Magnolia State and all of its people.
125 S. Congress Street #1324
Jackson, MSÂ 39201
info@mississippifreepress.org
tips@mississippifreepress.org
events@mississippifreepress.org
601-362-6121
The Mississippi Free Press is a project of the Mississippi Journalism and Education Group, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit journalism organization (EIN 85-1403937).