Mississippi Today
Rankin County undersheriff resigns
Rankin County Undersheriff Paul Holley resigned Monday as a string of controversies encircles his department.
The former undersheriff worked for the department for nearly eight years, serving as the department's legal counsel and as Sheriff Bryan Bailey's right-hand man.
“During my 4 months as Undersheriff, I have implemented a number of changes that I believed were the best way to help the Sheriff's Office improve its credibility,” Holley wrote in a Tuesday press release. “I continue to remain an unabashed supporter of Rankin County law enforcement.”
The former undersheriff did not explain why he was resigning and declined to comment when reached by phone.
Department spokesperson Jason Dare confirmed Holley's resignation but declined to comment further.
Holley's departure is the latest in a series of upsets at the department after several Rankin County deputies were accused of torturing two Black men and an investigation by Mississippi Today and The New York Times found evidence that Sheriff Bryan Bailey may have illegally obtained phone records for his girlfriend and a Mississippi state representative.
In August, five members of the Rankin County Sheriff's Department and one Richland police officer pleaded guilty to torturing Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker and attempting to cover up their crimes.
The deputies—Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton, Daniel Opdyke, Hunter Elward, Christian Dedmond and Richland Officer Joshua Hartfield—conducted a late-night raid of Parker's home in January, according to a criminal information filed by the Justice Department.
Holley was not implicated in the investigation.
The deputies beat the men, used tasers to shock them repeatedly and sexually assaulted them with a sex toy, court documents show.
Elward then shoved his pistol into Jenkins' mouth and pulled the trigger, shattering the young man's jaw and shredding his neck. He barely survived.
According to the criminal information, the deputies then attempted to hide their crimes by disposing of the shell casing and gun used to shoot Jenkins and throwing Jenkins and Parkers' clothes into the woods behind Parker's home.
They concocted a false story claiming Jenkins had pulled a BB gun on the deputies, forcing Elward to shoot. The deputies planted drugs on the pair and attempted to coerce Parker into going along with their invented narrative.
The deputies were part of a group of officers who called themselves the Goon Squad because of their willingness to use violence against criminal suspects, according to the Justice Department's investigation.
The indicted officers are still awaiting sentencing on state and federal charges.
Sheriff Bryan Bailey has denied any knowledge of the Goon Squad's activities.
“All of the former deputies lied to me,” Bailey said at a press conference in August. “We have cooperated fully with all outside investigating agencies to uncover the truth and bring justice to the victims.”
Bailey told reporters he planned to consult with outside agencies and the FBI in order to improve accountability and transparency at his department.
Litigation from the case is expected to cost the county's taxpayers millions of dollars, according to legal experts.
Bailey fell under further scrutiny after Mississippi Today and The New York Times discovered evidence that the sheriff used at least eight grand jury subpoenas to obtain phone records for his girlfriend, her ex-husband and another local man in 2014.
Bailey allegedly began requesting grand jury subpoenas to obtain Kristi Pennington Shanks' phone records after beginning a romantic relationship with her while she was married to Mississippi State Rep. Fred Shanks, R-Brandon.
A 2016 investigative report filed by then-Rankin County District Attorney Michael Guest found the subpoenas did not appear related to any criminal investigation by the sheriff. Guest submitted his investigation to the attorney general at the time, Jim Hood, but his office did not pursue the matter further.
Hood told Mississippi Today in a statement that he did not remember all the details of how the case was handled, but he insisted that his office had investigated and made the right call to not prosecute.
If there was a legitimate criminal case, legal experts said, the sheriff should not have been involved in the case.
“There was an obvious and profound conflict of interest here,” said Matthew Steffey, an attorney and a professor at the Mississippi College School of Law.
“If there was a legitimate criminal investigation, the sheriff should not have been subpoenaing his own girlfriend's phone records. And he certainly cannot do it without the knowledge or the direction of the district attorney's office.”
Bailey did not respond to requests for comment about the allegations. The sheriff is running unopposed this year in his third reelection bid.
Holley was not implicated in the investigation into Bailey's subpoenas.
In his resignation letter, Holley urged the community to “be patient with the men and women that wear the badge as they continue to serve all the citizens of Rankin County.”
Nate Rosenfield and Brian Howey are Immersion Fellows with the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, part of Mississippi Today.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1968
MAY 11, 1968
The Poor People's Campaign arrived in Washington, D.C. A town called “Resurrection City” was erected as a tribute to the slain Martin Luther King Jr.
King had conceived the campaign, which was led by his successor at the head of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, Ralph David Abernathy. Civil rights leader Jesse Jackson reached out to young Black men wanting vengeance for King's assassination.
“Jackson sat them down and said, ‘This is just not the way, brothers. It's just not the way,”' recalled Lenneal Henderson, then a student at the University of California at Berkeley. “He went further and said, ‘Look, you've got to pledge to me and to yourself that when you go back to wherever you live, before the year is out, you're going to do two things to make a difference in your neighborhood.' It was an impressive moment of leadership.”
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Lawmakers may have to return to Capitol May 14 to override Gov. Tate Reeves’ potential vetoes
Legislators might not have much notice on whether they will be called back to the Mississippi Capitol for one final day of the 2024 session.
Speaker Jason White, who presides over the House, and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, who presides over the Senate, must decide in the coming days whether to reconvene the Legislature for one final day in the 2024 session on Tuesday at 1 p.m.
Lawmakers left Jackson on May 4. But under the joint resolution passed during the final days of the session, legislators gave themselves the option to return on May 14 unless Hosemann and White “jointly determine that it is not necessary to reconvene.”
The reason for the possible return on Tuesday presumably is to give the Legislature the opportunity to take up and try to override any veto by Gov. Tate Reeves. The only problem is the final bills passed by the Legislature — more than 30 — are not due action by Reeves until Monday, May 13. And technically the governor has until midnight Monday to veto or sign the bills into law or allow them to become law without his signature.
Spokespeople for both Hosemann and White say the governor has committed to taking action on that final batch of bills by Monday at 5 p.m.
“The governor's office has assured us that we will receive final word on all bills by Monday at 5 p.m.,” a spokesperson for Hosemann said. “In the meantime, we are reminding senators of the possibility of return on Tuesday.”
A spokesperson for White said, “Both the House and Senate expect to have all bills returned from the governor before 5 p.m. on Monday. The lieutenant governor and speaker will then decide if there is a reason to come back on May 14.”
The governor has five days to act on bills after he receives them while legislators are in session, which technically they still are. The final batch of bills were ready for the governor's office one day before they were picked up by Reeves staff. If they had been picked up that day earlier, Reeves would have had to act on them by Saturday.
At times, the governor has avoided picking up the bills. For instance, reporters witnessed the legislative staff attempt to deliver a batch of bills to the governor's Capitol office one day last week, but Reeves' staff refused to accept the bills. They were picked up one day later by the governor's staff, though.
Among the bills due Monday is the massive bill that funds various projects throughout the state, such as tourism projects and infrastructure projects. In total, there are more than 325 such projects totaling more than $225 million in the bill.
In the past, the governor has vetoed some of those projects.
The governor already has taken action of multiple bills passed during the final days of the session.
He allowed a bill to strip some of the power of the Public Employees Retirement System Board to become law without his signature. The bill also committed to providing a 2-and-one-half percent increase in the amount governmental entities contribute to the public employee pension plan over a five year period.
A bill expanding the area within the Capitol Complex Improvement District, located in the city of Jackson, also became law without his signature. The CCID receives additional funding from the state for infrastructure projects. A state Capitol Police Force has primary law enforcement jurisdiction in the area.
The governor signed into law earlier this week legislation replacing the long-standing Mississippi Adequate Education Program, which has been the mechanism to send state funds to local schools for their basis operation.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 2007
MAY 10, 2007
An Alabama grand jury indicted former state trooper James Bonard Fowler for the Feb. 18, 1965, killing of Jimmie Lee Jackson, who was trying to protect his mother from being beaten at Mack's Café.
At Jackson's funeral, Martin Luther King Jr. called him “a martyred hero of a holy crusade for freedom and human dignity.” As a society, he said, “we must be concerned not merely about who murdered him, but about the system, the way of life, the philosophy which produced the murderer.”
Authorities reopened the case after journalist John Fleming of the Anniston Star published an interview with Fowler in which he admitted, despite his claim of self-defense, that he had shot Jackson multiple times. And Fleming uncovered Fowler's killing of another Black man, Nathan Johnson. In 2010, Fowler pleaded guilty to second-degree manslaughter and was sentenced to six months behind bars.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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