No more driving to Louisiana to buy your Powerball and Mega Millions lottery tickets! Scratch-off lottery tickets went on sale in Mississippi this past November, but it took a few months for the Mississippi Lottery Corporation to incorporate the multi-state games into their system.
So, are you feeling lucky?
Click here to find a Mississippi lottery retailer near you.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Mississippi Supreme Court should overturn an “astonishing” 12-year prison sentence given to an African American man who took a mobile phone into a jail cell when he was arrested on a misdemeanor charge, attorneys argued in court papers filed Thursday.
The state’s high court upheld Willie Nash’s sentence Jan. 9. Critics have slammed the case an example of racial injustice.
The new appeal asks justices to reconsider and reverse their own decision. The appeal doesn’t mention race, but it notes that the case drew international condemnation. It also says Nash received a longer sentence for possessing a cellphone in jail than Mississippi courts would impose for second-degree arson or poisoning someone with the intent to kill.
“Nash’s astonishing sentence is grossly disproportionate to the act for which he stands convicted. It is cruel and unusual,” Will Bardwell, an attorney for the Southern Poverty Law Center, wrote in the appeal Thursday.
There’s no proof Nash was searched for a cellphone before being booked into the jail, Bardwell wrote. The appeal also says Mississippi is one of only three states where a 12-year sentence for having a cellphone in jail is even possible. Research found no cases of such a long sentence being given in the other two states, Arkansas and Illinois.
“There is no indication that anyone outside Mississippi has ever received a sentence as long as Nash’s for doing what Nash did,” Bardwell wrote.
Nash, now 39, didn’t seek to overturn his conviction, but argued on his first appeal that his August 2018 sentence was grossly disproportionate, violating the constitutional ban on cruel and unusual punishment.
Mississippi justices unanimously rejected his argument.
“Though harsh, Nash’s sentence falls within the statutory range,” Justice James Maxwell wrote for the high court Jan. 9.
A 2012 Mississippi law sets a sentencing range of three to 15 years for inmates found with deadly weapons, cellphones or components of cellphones in state jails and prisons.
Corrections officials have said for years that contraband cellphones are a problem in Mississippi’s jails and prisons. During an outbreak of violence that left five inmates dead and an undisclosed number of others injured between Dec. 29 and Jan. 3, inmates used cellphones to take photos and videos that showed prisoners sleeping on the floor of a crowded cell and smoke filling a corridor and cells at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman.
One of the justices who joined in the unanimous ruling Jan. 9 said that while the sentence is legal, the prosecutor and trial judge could have avoided punishing Nash entirely.
Justice Leslie King is currently the only African American justice on the nine-member court. He wrote that Nash’s case “seems to demonstrate a failure of our criminal justice system on multiple levels” because it’s not clear whether Nash was properly searched or told not to take his phone into his cell.
Sentencing reform advocates expressed outrage, and Leonard Pitts, a nationally syndicated Miami Herald columnist, published Gov. Tate Reeves’ phone number, urging readers to tell Reeves to “let my people go.”
Court records show Nash asked an employee at the Newton County jail for “some juice” and then willingly handed over his phone. The employee thought Nash wanted something to drink before realizing he wanted electricity to power the device.
The jailer gave the phone to a deputy sheriff, who later unlocked it using the pass code Nash provided. The deputy found the phone had photos and messages belonging to Nash.
The trial judge told Nash to “consider yourself fortunate” in getting the 12-year sentence, because Nash had previous burglary convictions and could have been sentenced as a habitual offender to the full 15 years without the possibility of early release. The Supreme Court noted that Nash could get out after serving 25% of his sentence, or three years.
King called Nash’s case an example of why prosecutors and judges have “wide discretion.” King wrote that Nash had served time for the previous convictions and stayed out of trouble for years. He also wrote the cellphone possession was a “victimless” crime based on a failure of the booking procedure.
“Nash did not do anything nefarious with his phone, and he certainly did not hide his phone from law enforcement,” King wrote.
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IUKA, Miss. (AP) — A global aerospace and defense technology company has announced it will be expanding existing operations in a northeast Mississippi city.
Northrop Grumman Corp. employs more than 200 employees at its 320,000-square-foot (29,729-square-meter) facility in Iuka, The Daily Journal reported. The company will invest an additional $8.3 million dollars into the plant and add 40 new jobs there in an effort to support the area’s manufacturing work, the facility’s director of operations confirmed on Tuesday. The company produces large aerospace structures and launch vehicles, among other defense products.
The Mississippi Development Authority will provide a $600,000 grant for infrastructure improvements and the construction of a new warehouse, the authority’s Executive Director Glenn McCullough, Jr. announced in a statement commending the partnership.
The plant has operated in Iuka, which is about 60 miles (96.56 kilometers) north of Tupelo, for just over 20 years, the newspaper said.
Timelines for the expansion and hiring process weren’t immediately reported.
VICKSBURG, Miss. – The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Vicksburg District’s Grenada Lake announced that a portion of the Gums Crossing Bridge, located in Yalobusha County, Mississippi, collapsed into the Skuna River basin of the lake Jan. 17.
The bridge was closed in 2019 by Yalobusha County officials due to structural damage from flooding. No one was injured in the collapse.
Grenada Lake Field Office personnel assessed the site of the bridge collapse using side sonar imagery Jan. 21. After the assessment, personnel placed six caution buoys in the river basin to indicate potential underwater hazards. Visitors are encouraged to exercise caution when boating in the area.
Grenada, Arkabutla, Enid, and Sardis lakes, the four Mississippi flood control reservoirs in the Vicksburg District’s area of responsibility, were authorized by the Flood Control Act of 1936, which provided a plan designed to address flooding that originated in the Yazoo Basin. The four reservoirs are used to hold runoff, or excess rainwater, as a flood-prevention measure. With approximately 3.2 million visitors each year, the north Mississippi lakes also contribute approximately $82 million into the local economy.
Sunflower County Coroner Heather Burton told local news outlets that 36-year-old Dennoris Howell was stabbed to death before dawn Friday at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. Howell is the fifth inmate to be killed by another inmate since Sunday, and the third at Parchman.
Burton and Sunflower County Sheriff James Haywood have described the violence as related to a dispute between members of gangs, but officials with the Mississippi Department of Corrections haven’t said what’s driving the violence. All state prisons statewide are locked down, confining inmates to cells and blocking visitors.
Another inmate was stabbed in the 3 a.m. Friday incident and taken to a Memphis, Tennessee, hospital. He was not identified.
The stabbing took place on the same unit at Parchman where a 32-year-old inmate was stabbed and killed Thursday in a fracas that left multiple prisoners injured. That incident brought a heavy police response, with state troopers, corrections officers and deputies from multiple counties responding. Inmates set another unit at Parchman on fire. Mississippi Department of Corrections spokeswoman Grace Simmons Fisher said the fire caused no structural damage. Inmates were evacuated and later moved back in, Fisher said.
Howell was convicted of manslaughter in Marshall County in 2012 and sentenced to 17 years in prison. The troubles began Sunday at South Mississippi Correctional Institution near Leakesville, when inmate Terradance Dobbins, 40, was killed and two others hurt. Prison officials said the killing was part of a “major disturbance.” The Greene County prison can pose particular difficulties to secure because hundreds of prisoners are housed in bunks in one large room, instead of in individual cells. The prison was locked down for almost all of 2019, in part because of guard shortages.
Mississippi’s prison system has struggled to fill guard vacancies, with outgoing Corrections Commissioner Pelicia Hall saying it’s difficult to attract people with salaries that start below $25,000 a year. Some of the guards that do get hired end up bringing illegal drugs and cell phones into prisons, with some being criminally prosecuted. Hall announced Tuesday that she will resign in mid-January to take a private sector job signaling incoming Gov. Tate Reeves won’t retain her upon taking office Jan. 14.
Tuesday at Parchman, 25-year-old inmate Walter Gates was stabbed and several other inmates were injured during a fight that spread to multiple units of the sprawling prison, which sits on thousands of acres in the Mississippi Delta.
Earlier Friday, before the killing at Parchman, 26-year-old prisoner Gregory Emary of Hernando was killed at the Chickasaw County Regional Correctional Facility, a county-run jail that holds state inmates. The violence came even as U.S. District Judge William Barbour ruled Tuesday that while conditions may have previously been poor at East Mississippi Correctional Facility near Meridian, there’s no longer any evidence that the privately run prison is violating inmates’ rights.