by Mina Corpuz, Mississippi Today
June 12, 2025

Less than two weeks from the scheduled execution of Richard Jordan, the Mississippi Supreme Court said it will not reconsider the death row inmate’s appeal, but the federal high court is expected to discuss his case next week. 

Jordan, at 79 the state’s oldest and longest serving death row inmate, was first convicted in 1976 for kidnapping and killing Edwina Marter in Harrison County. He had four trials until a death sentence stuck in 1998. 

On Thursday, eight of the nine justices of the Mississippi Supreme Court declined to rehear an order to set Jordan’s execution date. Justice Leslie King was the lone person who wanted to grant a rehearing. 

This decision comes about a week after Jordan’s attorney, Krissy Nobile of the Office of Capital Post-Conviction Counsel, wrote to the court to emphasize that her client has not yet exhausted federal remedies and an execution could not be set. 

The U.S. Supreme Court distributed Jordan’s petition for a writ of certiorari at a May 29 conference and is expected to discuss it again at a June 18 conference – a week before the execution. 

Meanwhile, Jordan’s attorneys filed an emergency application for a stay of execution with Justice Samuel Alito Jr. pending the court’s disposition on the case. 

They argue there is a reasonable prospect that the court will grant certiorari and reverse the Mississippi Supreme Court’s decision, and that Jordan will suffer irreparable harm if a stay is not ordered. 

In its response, the state argues Jordan has been trying to avoid his death sentence for almost 50 years and that he is repeating baseless arguments in his pending petition for certiorari. 

His attorneys argue Jordan’s death sentence is not valid because in 1976, when the murder was committed and Jordan was sentenced, Mississippi and all other states had ceased executions based on a 1972 U.S. Supreme Court decision in Furman v. Georgia that capital punishment was unconstitutional. 

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post U.S. Supreme Court may be death row inmate’s last chance to avoid execution appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

The article reports factually on the legal developments surrounding Richard Jordan’s impending execution, presenting arguments from both his attorneys and the state without apparent editorializing. It neutrally covers the procedural history, legal basis for appeals, and positions of involved parties, without adopting a tone that favors or opposes capital punishment or any political viewpoint. The language remains formal and focused on the judicial process, reflecting balanced reporting rather than ideological framing. Overall, the piece serves to inform rather than advocate, maintaining a centrist stance in its coverage.

by Jamie Barnett, Rear Admiral, USN (Retired), Mississippi Today
June 11, 2025

Editor’s note: This essay is part of Mississippi Today Ideas, a platform for thoughtful Mississippians to share fact-based ideas about our state’s past, present and future. You can read more about the section here.

In America, the military does not enforce our domestic laws. America does not use the military to suppress peaceful protests, even if we disagree with the protests. We have always known that tyrants use the military against their own people. 

The use and misuse of federal military forces to enforce laws and basic order are deeply, and darkly, rooted in Mississippi and Southern history. The deployment of California National Guard troops by President Trump to “address the lawlessness” in Los Angeles is redolent of another century.

In fact, the last time such a deployment occurred, bypassing the state governor, was last century, in 1965, when President Lyndon Johnson activated the Alabama National Guard without the cooperation of Alabama’s segregationist governor, George Wallace. LBJ did so with good reason. Not only were state law enforcement officers not protecting peaceful protesters, they were the ones inflicting horrendous violence on the 600 protesters crossing the Edmund Pettus Bridge at Selma, resulting in a massive number of injuries and four deaths.

In America, federal troops, including “federalized” troops, are not used in domestic law enforcement by law (with very few exceptions). This dates back to the post-Civil War era in the South, when federal troops were used to enforce the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment because local sheriffs and police officers would not protect the newly freed African Americans. 

Mississippians, and most Southerners, hated the presence of federal troops in the South, and in 1878, a deal with the devil was made by President Rutherford Hayes to withdraw troops and to pass the Posse Comitatus Act. The deal effectively threw federal troops out of the South and allowed the white supremacists to suppress Black and Republican votes. One good result of the deal was the Posse Comitatus Act, which prevents the use of armed forces to enforce domestic laws unless expressly authorized by Congress or the U.S. Constitution. Posse comitatus is a $50 Latin phrase lawyers use to talk about a sheriff who mobilizes citizens to suppress lawlessness in the jurisdiction. 

Even though 1878 is when the prohibition of the use of U.S. military to enforce civilian laws was codified, it is an American principle that echoed through history back to the Founders. Why? The Founders had direct experience of British troops enforcing oppressive laws without mercy or appeal.

In a conversation with ABC News, Steven Levitsky, one of the authors of “How Democracies Die,” has stated that in the large majority of cases, autocrats justify appropriating military power to use against citizens by claiming “there’s an enemy within that’s more dangerous than our external enemies and that justifies the use of extra-constitutional measures.” 

There are limited, narrow exceptions to the prohibition of the use of military forces for law enforcement. A law from 1807, the Insurrection Act, allows the president to use military and National Guard forces to stop an invasion, threat of invasion or a rebellion. But the U.S. has not been invaded despite the Trump administration’s attempt to characterize illegal immigration as an invasion. Federal judges, including judges appointed by President Trump, have stated the U.S. is not being invaded. No invasion means that the president may not invoke the Insurrection Act.

As recounted so well in the book An American Insurrection: The Battle for Oxford, Mississippi, 1962 by William Doyle, President Kennedy federalized the Mississippi National Guard in response to violence occasioned by the enrollment of James Meredith, an African American, in the University of Mississippi. Kennedy ultimately deployed the Army’s 503^rd Military Police battalion, the 82d Airborne and the Oxford-based National Guard Troop E to quell a riot that resulted when Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett and state leaders pointedly withdrew state and local police and abandoned the Ole Miss campus to rioters. That riot resulted in two deaths and injuries to over 160 federal officers, including 28 federal marshals who sustained gunshot wounds. Kennedy was justified in using the military. 

There is no invasion, no rebellion in California. Legal, peaceful protests are not reasons for the deployment of federal troops. If law enforcement in the state of California is being overwhelmed, the state can send in reinforcements from other cities, from the state Highway Patrol, or the governor can decide to use California National Guard. None of this was warranted.

The reason this must matter to Mississippians, and all Americans, is that our Founders had a reason to fear presidents who deploy federal troops against American citizens. If a president can wield military force against U.S. citizens on a flimsy or politicized excuse, he can suppress speech, lawful assembly and a host of other constitutional rights with impunity. Every dictator, every authoritarian, has not become so until he has gained control of the citizenry with the military. 

Some people might like the outcome in California, the suppression of the protesters, some of whom became violent. If that is so, you might consider how you would feel if a different president were using the military in Mississippi in a similar way, say perhaps Obama, Biden, Clinton, even George W. Bush. It should not matter which party is in power; in America, we don’t allow the military to enforce the law against citizens, even citizens with whom we disagree.

From a national and homeland security standpoint, there is another argument against using the National Guard for political reasons. The National Guard is made up of men and women who have day jobs, own their own businesses or punch a time clock, and they work to keep food on the table for their families. You can think of this valuable resource like a gas tank. Once you use it up, it is gone.

We need our National Guard for natural disasters and emergencies. California needs its National Guard for major fires, earthquakes and other emergencies. It should not be wasted on deployments that can be and were being handled locally. And the Marine Corps is needed to protect us from China and Russia. It is a misuse of the Marine Corps to have them on the streets of Los Angeles.

But the compelling argument is that presidents cannot and should not be trusted with the power of deploying the military against its citizenry without real constitutional justification. My wife is a retired school teacher who taught her students George Orwell’s Animal Farm, an incisive parody of Stalinist Russia. She would ask her students “at which point did the farm animals irreversibly lose control of the farm?” The answer? When the autocratic pigs grew the puppies into attack dogs to control the farm animals.

Jamie Barnett is a native Mississippian and a retired rear admiral in the U.S. Navy, having served 32 years. He served as chief of the Public Safety and Homeland Security Bureau of the Federal Communications Bureau. He is currently an adjunct professor of national security in the Center for Intelligence and Security Studies at the University of Mississippi. The opinions expressed in this article are the author’s alone and are not expressions of the views of any of the organizations with which he is associated.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Retired military officer: In America, the military is not used against its own citizens for law enforcement appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

This article by a retired military officer presents a clear, fact-based argument grounded in historical and legal context, emphasizing the principle that the U.S. military should not be used for domestic law enforcement against citizens. The tone is measured and focused on constitutional norms, avoiding partisan language or ideological framing. The critique of the Trump administration’s use of federal troops in Los Angeles is rooted in legal and historical precedent rather than political ideology. The piece underscores democratic safeguards and constitutional limits on military power without endorsing any political party, reflecting a centrist stance centered on rule of law and civil liberties.

by Molly Minta, Mississippi Today
June 11, 2025

After Jackson’s Ward 1 Councilman Ashby Foote unofficially won reelection by 10 votes in a too-close-to-call race last Tuesday, election commissioners had to wait five days to see if any additional mail-in absentee ballots postmarked by election day would arrive.

On Wednesday, they met at a former downtown fire station, where they counted one such vote. It went to Foote.

“I think this was a huge change election and I’m excited to be part of the leadership that will move the city in hopefully a much more constructive direction to improve quality of life and improve the city’s prospects going forward,” Foote said.

After last week’s tally, Foote also received one additional affidavit vote, which cancelled out one of his absentee votes that was thrown out due a redistricting error that led the resident to vote in the wrong ward. Foote’s two opponents also picked up three affidavit votes each.

Winning 1,739 out of 5,186 ballots, or just 34% of the vote, Foote shared a nearly equal percentage of support with his two opponents, independent candidate Grace Greene, 1,731 and Democratic nominee Jasmine Barnes, 1,716. The final, official tally still needs to be certified with the state.

Greene, who came in second, received just eight fewer votes than Foote.

“It’s a good lesson for everyone that voting matters and your vote matters and sometimes democracy can be messy,” Greene said. “So thank you for all the support I got as a first time candidate.”

The competitive race signified the changing demographics of the ward, historically considered a “white, Republican bastion” but which is now home to more Black residents than white.

“I think that I had support across all demographics and so honestly that just means a lot that people were willing to just believe in me and the vision that I have for Ward 1 and Jackson,” Barnes said after votes were counted Wednesday. “I’m very humbled.”

Next, Hinds County Election Commission will certify the vote, which opens up a 12-day window for candidates to request to examine the ballots themselves. 

Candidates have time still to challenge the election results in court, but even if that happened, Foote would still be sworn into office on July 1. 

Foote acknowledged on election night that he did not win the vote of a majority of Ward 1 residents. But in local races in Mississippi, general elections do not feature runoffs, meaning candidates may win by only a plurality of votes.

Addressing the two-thirds of Ward 1 residents who did not vote for him, Foote said, “I need to work with them and please them and I look forward to the opportunity to do that, to serve their needs, and serve the broader needs of Ward 1, whether its infrastructure, roads, safer cities, gating, you name it.”

Foote, founder of a financial services company, was first elected in a 2014 special election and has often represented the voice of opposition to the mayor on the council. He was previously elected as a Republican but ran as an independent in this race to encourage Jacksonians to vote in the Democratic primary, which typically determines the next mayor.

Reporter Allen Siegler and JXN Editor Anna Wolfe contributed to this report.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

The post Ward 1 reelects Foote on Jackson City Council after hard-fought race appeared first on mississippitoday.org

Note: The following A.I. based commentary is not part of the original article, reproduced above, but is offered in the hopes that it will promote greater media literacy and critical thinking, by making any potential bias more visible to the reader –Staff Editor.

Political Bias Rating: Centrist

The article presents a factual and balanced report on the close reelection race for Jackson’s Ward 1 City Council seat without endorsing any candidate or ideological stance. It neutrally details vote counts, demographic changes, and candidates’ reactions, reflecting the competitive nature of local politics. The language is straightforward and measured, avoiding loaded or partisan framing. While it mentions Foote’s previous Republican affiliation and current independent status, the piece does not promote a political agenda but focuses on election mechanics and community representation. Overall, it adheres to impartial, fact-based local news reporting.