Stories related to Pauper’s Field Burials
The U.S. Department of Justice will provide JPD and the Hinds County Coroner’s Office with technical assistance to improve their death-notification policies.
Pascagoula Police Lt. Darren Versiga said he began pushing for a new law to regulate how officials handle bodies after digging into cold cases.
Rampant misinformation about the Hinds County pauper’s graveyard on social media is “harmful,” Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba warned.
Three mothers held a joint press conference on Dec. 20, 2023, demanding justice for their sons wrongly buried at the Hinds County Penal Farm.
Hinds County buried John David Hankins in a pauper’s field without notifying his family—the third such case NBC News has identified since October.
After failing to notify two men’s families about their deaths this year, the Jackson Police Department has adopted a new death-notification policy requiring officers to
Rev. Al Sharpton called for prosecutions of any Jackson police officers involved in the death of Dexter Wade while giving a eulogy at his funeral.
Dexter Wade’s body was exhumed hours before his family could arrive at his gravesite, despite Hinds County giving a different time for the ceremony.
Dexter Wade’s death and the monthslong failure of the Jackson Police Department to notify his family deserve federal scrutiny from the U.S. Department of Justice, civil-rights attorney Ben Crump said as he joined family members at a press conference on Monday, Oct. 30.
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