Dozens of Killings Inside Mississippi Prisons Typically Go Unprosecuted

This text is a part of the “Dying Behind Bars” collection.

A minimum of 42 individuals have been killed inside Mississippi prisons up to now decade, leaving scores of grieving households questioning a system that fails to guard individuals in its custody or maintain anybody accountable.

There are sisters wracked with guilt, moms with despair, and kids struggling to fill the voids of their lives. Former jail workers discuss mendacity sleepless in mattress, replaying the killings they’ve witnessed however couldn’t cease.

In Mississippi, jail homicides are the fruits of long-documented festering issues: power understaffing, lax oversight, gangs that rule by violence and delays in treating life-threatening accidents, an investigation by a statewide reporting workforce discovered.

Murders sign “catastrophic failures” of jail directors, whose primary job is to maintain incarcerated individuals secure, mentioned David Fathi, director of the ACLU Nationwide Jail Challenge.

The perpetrators haven’t confronted justice generally. Simply six of the 42 homicides have led to convictions.

And the killings present no signal of ending. Within the first half of this 12 months, there have been 5 homicides in three Mississippi prisons.

Sydney Miller mentioned her household was given virtually no particulars by jail officers after her elder brother, Gregory Emary, was stabbed to demise on the Chickasaw County Regional Facility in Houston in 2020.

Over the previous 5 years, they’ve obtained no contact from jail investigators or prosecutors about what occurred or if somebody could be held accountable. Miller didn’t know Emary’s demise had been deemed a murder by a health worker till a reporter informed her. She wonders if her household would have been handled the identical method if her brother had been killed on the skin.

“So why is that this any completely different?” Miller requested. “Simply because it was dedicated inside jail partitions?”

‘Nobody deserves to die like this’

Uncovering the toll of Mississippi’s jail homicides took a workforce of reporters from 5 information organizations: The Marshall Challenge – Jackson, Mississippi At present, the Clarion Ledger, Hattiesburg American and The Mississippi Hyperlink. The workforce scoured 1000’s of pages of courtroom information, corrections paperwork, federal and state authorities demise information, and interviewed households, previously incarcerated individuals, former guards, attorneys and corrections specialists.

The investigation discovered that the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman, which holds about 2,500 individuals, has had probably the most killings up to now decade. A minimum of 19 individuals died in homicides at Parchman from 2015 by way of 2024.

For many of this time interval, the murder fee amongst individuals inside Parchman was 5 occasions increased than the state as a complete, which already had the very best fee within the nation in 2023.

Lack of constant and correct reporting nationwide makes a state-by-state comparability of jail homicides troublesome. The reporting workforce recognized three Mississippi homicides that weren’t listed in federal and state experiences.

A lot of the 42 killings all through the state jail system concerned beatings or stabbings, generally involving a number of assailants. Three in 5 victims have been Black. The age of the victims ranged from 23 to 62.

Mississippi Division of Corrections officers declined a number of requests for an interview about killings throughout the jail system, however launched an emailed assertion. “MDOC stays dedicated to making sure the protection of inmates in its custody,” the company wrote.

Lots of the individuals who have been killed in Mississippi’s prisons have been despatched there after being convicted of offenses that included parole and probation violations, in addition to extra critical crimes, together with theft and homicide. A minimum of 1 / 4 have been serving life sentences. Though jail officers have a authorized responsibility to guard all incarcerated individuals from hurt, they might not shield them from demise by the hands of cellmates, rival gang members or different incarcerated individuals.

In a single case, a corrections officer pleaded responsible to accent after the very fact in a 2021 homicide.

Detrick Munford, who served as deputy warden of Parchman till 2022, mentioned the variety of unprosecuted homicides doesn’t shock him.

Mississippi officers didn’t set up most of the cameras at Parchman till after 2020, so in lots of circumstances, there was no approach to show who was chargeable for a demise, he mentioned. Anybody who witnessed a killing “just isn’t going to speak,” he mentioned, alluding to the jail tradition of violent retribution, “as a result of he is aware of what would possibly occur to him.”

MDOC usually shares sparse particulars about jail homicides, if any in any respect, even with the households of the victims. Almost all inside investigations into the killings are hidden from the general public as a result of the state’s open information legislation exempts all legislation enforcement investigative information.

Though most of the latest homicides have been filmed by safety cameras and a few of these accountable are identified to corrections officers primarily based on inside experiences, native prosecutors filed fees towards suspects in 36% of the homicides up to now decade.

MDOC officers responded of their e mail that jail officers take “each demise of an inmate in its custody severely. Every suspected murder is investigated…The remaining investigations which might be closed didn’t help a referral (for prosecution).”

In a single legal case, a cost was filed, however the Marshall County District Lawyer’s workplace basically forgot to prosecute the suspect almost 4 years after the jail killing. The indictment had gotten misplaced within the paperwork, District Lawyer Ben Creekmore later acknowledged in an interview. It was reactivated solely after a reporter from the information workforce known as him in regards to the case.

The prospect of legal prosecution, nevertheless, is probably going of little concern to somebody already serving a multi-decade sentence. The continued killings present how the jail system has not considerably addressed its failures to stop homicides. The reporting workforce recognized one one who pleaded responsible to manslaughter for a killing in a single jail, then allegedly went on to kill once more in one other jail. He’s awaiting trial on the second murder cost and is at present serving a 40-year sentence.

DeAndre Davis was serving a life sentence when he was stabbed to demise in 2017 within the Wilkinson County Correctional Facility in Woodville, months after he was stabbed in one other assault on the similar jail. On the sentencing listening to for the person convicted of the killing, Davis’ mom, Victorra Williams, mentioned she didn’t perceive why her son died, as a result of he was imagined to be in isolation after he obtained a demise menace.

“Nobody deserves to die like this,” she informed the choose.

“I perceive that they’re in jail, and I perceive that they’re (caged), however I don’t perceive you might be in jail and you might be regular killing one another for no purpose,” Williams mentioned. “That’s simply — that’s loopy.”

Punishment after killing: lack of privileges

Rising up, Marcie Harper protected her child brother, Joshua Odom. He was smaller than the opposite youngsters, so she fought his fights. She known as him her Cabbage Patch Child due to his massive blue eyes and bald head. Her brother grew right into a wiry man who beloved to fish, gaining him the nickname Catfish.

“I used to be all the time there for him,” Harper mentioned.

However Odom developed a drug downside that landed him out and in of jail, locked away from his massive sister, who couldn’t all the time afford to go to or speak to him on the telephone.

She couldn’t be there to guard her brother on Jan. 12, 2025.

He died, a casualty of jail violence, lax safety and questionable medical care that gave superficial remedy to a head wound that might show deadly.

Odom was incarcerated at South Mississippi Correctional Establishment in Leakesville. His buddy Shelby Peevyhouse, who has a pacemaker, had simply gotten right into a struggle and been kicked within the chest. As Odom came to visit to verify on his buddy, Peevyhouse mentioned later, one other incarcerated particular person punched Odom, knocking him to the bottom, the place he hit his head and fell unconscious.

When Odom got here to, guards have been restraining him, Peevyhouse mentioned from jail.

“Don’t kill him. He wants your assist,” Peevyhouse pleaded with the guards as they wrestled Odom. Each males have been taken to the medical wing.

“Catfish was laying there screaming for assist in a medical gurney to the left of me, calling for his mama,” Peevyhouse mentioned.

Guards declined to name an ambulance and went house, as their shifts have been ending, Peevyhouse mentioned. As a substitute, he mentioned, a medical staffer glued Odom’s head wound shut and despatched each injured males again to their housing unit.

Odom, although, was dazed. He couldn’t even say his title. Peevyhouse tried to maintain his buddy awake.

“I didn’t know what to do,” Peevyhouse mentioned. “I used to be so scared.”

As Odom started vomiting a “pink foam,” Peevyhouse banged on a window. He says he informed a guard coming round for a rely to name medical or else he would begin a hearth.

A medical employee took Odom away in a wheelchair. “Hey, smile just a little,” Odom mentioned earlier than being wheeled off. Peevyhouse lit a cigarette for his buddy, informed him he beloved him, and that he could be there when Odom bought again. This time, an ambulance was known as. It was too late.

The following morning, Peevyhouse discovered Odom was lifeless.

“He was my greatest buddy. That is actually arduous for me,” Peevyhouse mentioned repeatedly.

The state health worker dominated Odom’s demise a murder by blunt power trauma. As a result of his alleged attacker was by no means criminally charged, the reporting workforce just isn’t naming him. Imprisoned on a home violence conviction, he’s scheduled for launch by 2028.

The suspect was issued a disciplinary quotation for assaulting one other particular person. Prisons use a guidelines violation e-book that outlines dozens of actions which might be prohibited inside jail partitions, from hoarding meals to attacking others. In accordance with a rule violation report obtained by the reporting workforce, guards used safety digital camera footage to verify the assault.

The suspect’s punishment was the lack of 180 days of earned time — time that might have decreased his sentence for good conduct — in addition to misplaced telephone and visitation privileges for 60 days, and he was held chargeable for Odom’s medical prices, which weren’t listed. He didn’t obtain the next violation for inflicting Odom’s demise. The following day, he was transferred to a different facility, which is MDOC’s customary process.

State Rep. Becky Currie, a registered nurse, has publicly criticized VitalCore, the corporate contracted to offer medical care within the state’s prisons, after assembly and receiving letters from incarcerated individuals who declare they weren’t getting look after treatable sicknesses and accidents.

“It’s arduous for me to listen to that (MDOC) feels that they supply ample care,” Currie informed Mississippi At present.

A spokesperson for VitalCore informed Mississippi At present that the corporate offers “complete and competent well being care companies in accordance with prevailing requirements of care.”

After Odom’s demise, his sister mentioned the household couldn’t get a transparent story from jail officers.

The official who known as their mom mentioned Odom had been discovered damage and died on the hospital. It wasn’t till somebody linked to Peevyhouse despatched her a Fb message that she discovered that her brother died ready for an ambulance.

The 40-year-old Odom, incarcerated since 2018 after being convicted of housebreaking and bank card fraud, was imagined to be launched in just a few weeks, his household mentioned.

“I simply want I had one thing of his,” Harper mentioned. As a substitute, all she has left are reminiscences and his ashes, which the household plans to scatter within the Gulf, the place he beloved to fish, on his birthday.

Quickly, she’ll even have a tattoo of a catfish on a hook with a phrase he all the time informed her: “Hold your head up.”

Constitutional violations, few solutions

Odom’s demise got here lower than a 12 months after the federal Division of Justice discovered that three Mississippi prisons — together with the South Mississippi jail the place he had been held — violated the constitutional rights of the greater than 7,400 individuals housed in them by failing to guard them from widespread violence. The investigation listed quite a few failures: gross understaffing, assaults which might be probably undercounted due to this lack of workers supervision, gang brawls involving dozens of individuals, violent incidents that go uninvestigated, and bungled investigations that lead nowhere.

The Justice Division had discovered related violations in a 2022 investigation of the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman.

What Odom’s household skilled is widespread. The reporting workforce discovered that the households of different incarcerated individuals killed in jail have been usually left with out solutions. Lots of these interviewed realized particulars about their family members’ deaths by way of a whisper community of incarcerated individuals, insiders, advocates, and, in some circumstances, from journalists.

Some households contacted legal professionals, making an attempt to file civil fits, solely to search out out that nobody would take their circumstances.

“I actually simply gave up on it,” mentioned Dale Graham, whose brother was killed within the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in 2021. “Nothing occurred.”

Currie, a Brookhaven Republican, who chairs the state’s Home Corrections Committee, has raised questions on how the prisons are run, together with the well being and security of the incarcerated.

She mentioned jail killings present that violence is rampant contained in the state’s prisons, and that it’s amplified by points resembling contraband and gangs.

“No matter the reason for demise is, I feel the households are owed a solution,” she mentioned. “Was my beloved one killed? Was it that their diabetes wasn’t tended to? What was the reason for demise?” Currie requested. “And I have no idea of 1 household that is ever obtained that reply.”

She has puzzled how seemingly wholesome males die in Mississippi’s prisons. Currie mentioned she plans to introduce laws to create a gaggle of lawmakers and jail officers to look into all jail deaths, which might function a information on the best way to forestall future deaths.

In a written response to reporters’ questions, MDOC mentioned the division has taken a number of corrective measures because the Justice Division started investigating the jail system in 2020, together with improved coaching, facility upgrades and elevated staffing.

MDOC mentioned the Justice Division’s investigation is ongoing, and either side are engaged in confidential settlement negotiations.

A lethal jail financial system

Violent deaths in Mississippi prisons have a tendency to guide again to the identical components: understaffing, poor coaching, and gang management, based on legal professionals, specialists, former corrections staffers interviewed, and the Justice Division experiences.

Jail guards, a lot of whom are younger and feminine, are poorly skilled and generally left alone to supervise models holding as many as 180 males, based on Catina Washington, a former MDOC case supervisor who mentioned she was assaulted in December 2020 by an incarcerated particular person on the South Mississippi jail. Her attacker was charged with easy assault, however the cost was later dropped as a result of conflicting witness testimony.

Guards make choices on whether or not a sick or injured particular person can see a jail nurse and even go to a hospital.

“We don’t notice how a lot belief of one other particular person’s life we put into the fingers of correctional officers,” mentioned Greta Kemp Martin, previously the litigation director of Incapacity Rights Mississippi. “They actually maintain your life of their fingers.”

Poor oversight permits gang members to make the most of the safety gaps, shopping for and promoting unlawful medicine and cellphones, generally with the assistance of jail guards whom they recruit to smuggle contraband in. The reporting workforce recognized a number of legal circumstances through which corrections officers have been charged with bringing in medicine or cellphones. Martin mentioned some incarcerated shoppers have informed her about correctional officers who share gang affiliations with them.

The gangs run a brutal underground financial system. A debt to the fallacious particular person can value a life, because it did for 31-year-old Jeremy Irons, who was killed over $40 in Parchman, federal and state experiences confirmed.

The Justice Division’s investigations discovered that the amenities operated at dangerously low staffing ranges. In 2022, the Central Mississippi jail was working with 44% of the workers wanted to run the power. On the South Mississippi jail, the place Odom was later killed, the power ran with 36% of the mandatory workers. And in Wilkinson County’s jail, a human sources supervisor informed investigators that the officer emptiness fee hovered round 50%.

Persistent understaffing is a key think about jail homicides throughout the nation, mentioned Fathi, of the ACLU Nationwide Jail Challenge. And what workers there may be could also be poorly skilled to deal with violence.

Former MDOC staffers reported that their coaching was rushed, leaving them unprepared for the hazards of the job.

“Parchman is all about ‘We’re gonna hurry up and get you out of sophistication, throw your ass on the market, as a result of we’d like individuals to look at the inmates,” a former correctional officer, who didn’t need his title used for concern of retaliation, informed a reporter. “Many occasions I’ve seen individuals get killed proper in entrance of me, and it actually wasn’t nothing you may actually do, since you ain’t however one particular person.”

Chuck Mullins, a lawyer who has represented Mississippi households in wrongful jail demise circumstances for many years, mentioned in most of the demise circumstances he has litigated, he discovered that workers have been both not current or poorly skilled.

Persistent understaffing and poor coaching endanger each the incarcerated individuals and corrections workers, leaving many who stay fearful to do their jobs. The Justice Division’s experiences cited a number of situations of workers failing or refusing to do safety counts and falsifying rely sheets.

Disciplinary experiences reviewed by the reporting workforce present corrections officers being overpowered, crushed, choked, stabbed, spit on and sprayed with human waste.

Deadly beating ignored for 5 hours

Military veteran Ronnie Graham survived fight in Iraq. He survived most cancers.

He didn’t survive 9 days contained in the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl.

Within the early hours earlier than daybreak in December 2021, jail safety digital camera footage captured a person attacking Graham close to his bunk, choking and kicking him within the head, based on federal and state information reviewed by the reporting workforce.

All through the evening, Graham handed out and in of consciousness. Later, one other particular person punched him within the face. Greater than 5 hours later, an officer discovered Graham and known as for assist. By then, his physique was inflexible, and he was foaming on the mouth. Graham died quickly after assist arrived.

For at the very least 5 hours, Graham suffered. And for many of that point, guards have been nowhere to be discovered. An investigative report famous that an officer turned the lights off within the unit about 45 minutes after Graham was attacked, however no officer walked by way of to verify on the welfare of the lads held there.

“If somebody would have carried out their job that evening, he would nonetheless be alive in the present day,” his brother, Dale Graham, mentioned. “However as a result of somebody did not do their job, my brother is now lifeless.”

Nobody was charged in Graham’s demise.

Lawsuits and inside jail experiences present that, on a number of events, guards didn’t discover a lifeless particular person for hours.

Earlier this 12 months, Jonathan Havard was strangled within the Wilkinson County Correctional Facility. A guardian, who discovered in regards to the demise by way of unknown means, notified the jail that somebody in Havard’s cell was lifeless, based on an inside MDOC report.

Final 12 months, a gaggle of roughly 10 individuals beat and stabbed 28-year-old Edward Boyd to demise at East Mississippi Correctional Facility in Lauderdale County, based on a lawsuit his household filed towards the non-public jail firm that operates the lockup, Administration & Coaching Corp. The swimsuit acknowledged that the attackers killed him “in plain view of surveillance digital camera” after which “dragged (Boyd) right into a cell, the place they left him to die.”

He was discovered lined in blood throughout a morning rely. The lawsuit alleges {that a} correctional officer wrote in a report that that they had final seen Boyd alive and effectively throughout a 4 a.m. rely. Nevertheless, there was no proof of a rely being carried out at 4 a.m., based on the lawsuit.

In response to the lawsuit, MTC denied any negligence or wrongdoing. The case is pending in federal courtroom.

Useless-end investigations

When somebody is killed in a Mississippi jail, sometimes, the division conducts an investigation. It interviews workers, witnesses, generally confidential informants, individuals it believes to be complicit within the demise, and opinions digital camera footage.

MDOC generally requests assist from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.

Nevertheless, the U.S. Justice Division discovered many investigations by the division have been incomplete, didn’t reply key questions or have been mishandled.

Investigations of homicides that stemmed from fights over drug money owed routinely ignored the supply of the medicine or didn’t conduct follow-up interviews.

Through the 2022 Parchman investigation, a supervisor in MDOC’s investigative division informed Justice Division officers that the caseload was too heavy and staffers have been too overworked to conduct complete investigations.

For instance, after Jeremy Irons was stabbed to demise in 2019, the inner investigation concluded that one incarcerated particular person stabbed him and flushed the weapon down the bathroom.

The investigation into Irons’ demise relied on one written assertion from a trainee officer. No different workers was interviewed. Nevertheless, a number of different individuals took half within the struggle, which stemmed from Irons’ $40 debt to a different particular person, based on the Justice Division.

After MDOC concludes its investigations, it could cross its findings alongside to native county district attorneys, who can then search an indictment from a grand jury.

In an August 2019 case, Samuel Wade was strangled to demise at Parchman. The Justice Division’s investigation references an incarcerated particular person strangled with a bedsheet that month. The sufferer’s cellmate allegedly confessed to the killing, and MDOC referred the case to the Sunflower County district lawyer, based on the investigation. After six years, nevertheless, no fees have been filed.

Sunflower County District Lawyer Dewayne Richardson has not responded to a number of interview requests.

Felony fees have solely been filed in 5 of the 19 killings in Parchman over the previous decade. 4 of these circumstances are pending within the courts. The fifth was dismissed after the defendant died by suicide.

Different district attorneys with prisons of their counties didn’t reply to requests for remark or declined to touch upon open circumstances.

Consultants mentioned secrecy round jail operations and the dearth of oversight, coupled with most people’s lack of concern towards incarcerated individuals, permit the long-documented abuses and civil rights violations to proceed.

Reforms to cut back deaths in custody have been hampered by “the secrecy that pervades prisons and jails,” mentioned Andrea Armstrong, a Loyola College New Orleans legislation professor and main researcher on deaths behind bars.

Lots of the jail incident information the reporting workforce obtained got here with scant narratives or with whole sections blacked out, though such information are public underneath the state’s open information legislation.

Prior to now decade, at the very least 5 households of individuals killed in Mississippi prisons have filed civil lawsuits towards the Division of Corrections or Administration & Coaching Corp. Nevertheless, paperwork in these lawsuits, resembling proof and settlement particulars, are sometimes sealed or protected by confidentiality agreements.

For the incarcerated individuals who have been killed, their households are left with little, apart from despair.

“This (is) an unimaginable ache you all gave me. This grief will final without end,” one sufferer’s mom wrote in a courtroom assertion for the upcoming trial of the jail homicide of her son.

“Folks discuss justice. They are saying it’s blind. However justice shouldn’t be silent. It shouldn’t flip away when somebody dies in state custody,” she wrote. “If the state takes accountability for an individual’s life, it also needs to be held accountable when that life is misplaced.”