The 5 Most Powerful People in Mississippi’s Hinds County Justice System

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Thousands of persons are arrested and prosecuted annually on felony prices in Jackson and Hinds County, Mississippi. Their fates are practically at all times determined by 5 elected officers — the district legal professional and 4 Circuit Court docket judges. The Marshall Mission – Jackson profiled every official so you’ll higher perceive how prison justice works within the county.

Jody E. Owens II, Hinds County District Legal professional: From Advocate to Prosecutor

Hinds County District Legal professional Jody E. Owens II fought for practically a decade to reform Mississippi’s prison justice system earlier than turning into part of it.

He left his profession as a civil rights legal professional in 2019 to develop into Hinds County’s chief prosecutor. He served as managing legal professional and chief coverage counsel on the Southern Poverty Regulation Middle’s Mississippi workplace, the place he filed lawsuits regarding inhumane circumstances in prisons and jails, represented juvenile lifers in sentencing appeals, and led coverage choices for the group throughout Mississippi, Louisiana and Alabama.

“We modified a whole lot of legal guidelines in Mississippi,” Owens mentioned of his time on the SPLC. He mentioned he’s most pleased with the reforms within the juvenile justice system, together with the middle’s involvement in elevating the age at which youngsters might be tried as adults. The middle additionally labored to increase the variety of offenses that might be expunged, or faraway from their prison data, for individuals who had been convicted as youths.

His work with the SPLC additionally took him to each jail within the state to analyze their circumstances. He mentioned these visits confirmed him not solely the necessity to reform how incarcerated individuals had been handled, but additionally the “super quantity of injustice” in deciding who goes to jail.

“We sit right here in an workplace within the capital of a state that incarcerates extra individuals per capita than anyplace on the planet,” Owens mentioned in an interview with The Marshall Mission – Jackson. “Whereas all of us need public security, we even have to understand as Mississippians, as a state, we’ve gotten one thing improper in our method.”

Owens’ choice to run for district legal professional in 2019 was primarily based on the facility the workplace holds in making choices about crime and punishment. Owens’s duties embrace deciding who’s charged with crimes and the way they are often punished or rehabilitated. The workplace handles about 2,000 circumstances per 12 months, in line with the DA’s web site.

The district legal professional’s workplace convenes grand juries, consisting of registered voters within the county, which decide whether or not there may be sufficient proof to cost defendants with prison offenses that can result in trials. The workplace can even resolve whether or not individuals accused of crimes can keep away from trial, by means of diversion packages, together with psychological well being analysis, drug therapy or job talent improvement.

For individuals who have been convicted of a criminal offense, the workplace additionally runs a reentry program in partnership with the American Civil Liberties Union to offer companies to defendants just lately launched from incarceration. The workplace additionally supplies free expungement help, which might clear some prison prices from an individual’s document.

Owens’ workers consists of assistant district attorneys who prosecute circumstances in courtroom, prison investigators who collect proof and make sure the proof can be utilized in prosecution, program coordinators who oversee initiatives corresponding to reentry and pretrial diversion, and administrative assist workers.

As a former civil rights legal professional, Owens is considered a progressive prosecutor. He ran his marketing campaign primarily based on ending mass incarceration. He has referred to as for the elimination of money bail and capital punishment. Mississippi has 35 individuals on dying row, in line with the state Division of Corrections, with two sentenced in Hinds County in 2006 and 2013, earlier than Owens took workplace.

Owens says he makes use of a precept referred to as “good justice” to assist cut back crime and construct safer communities. Sensible justice combines new packages, corresponding to his 2022 partnership with the ACLU to launch a reentry help program for previously incarcerated individuals, with established social companies, corresponding to habit therapy by means of drug courtroom and pretrial diversion for nonviolent defendants.

“You’ll be able to’t solely prosecute your self to a safer neighborhood,” Owens mentioned. “We have now to do greater than we’re at present doing.” He mentioned the county wants extra packages and initiatives to influence youth and promote neighborhood involvement. In his 2022 District Legal professional’s Workplace annual report, Owens listed packages corresponding to an annual Christmas toy drive and victims’ help as indicators of progress.

Nonetheless, Owens maintained he’s additionally powerful on crime.

Throughout his first time period, he pursued and obtained a conviction in what he referred to as the biggest embezzlement scandal within the state’s historical past. In 2022, his workplace convicted former state Division of Human Rights head John Davis, in connection to the misuse of greater than $77 million of federal welfare grant funds. A number of others have pleaded responsible to prices regarding the funds, and prosecution is ongoing.

Owens’ workplace additionally convicted former Jackson Police Division officer Anthony Fox within the 2019 beating dying of George Robinson, a call that Owens mentioned went in opposition to an unwritten code that held cops as off-limits to prosecutors. Fox is at present serving 5 years in jail.

Along with these high-profile convictions, he mentioned he prioritizes prosecuting violent crimes over nonviolent offenses.

“We don’t must spend taxpayer cash on people who stole bubblegum. We want to verify violent offenders are behind bars. We want to verify we’re placing packages in place that allow people come again into society as soon as they’ve proven they’re in a position and prepared to,” Owens mentioned in a 2019 interview with WJTV.

Owens’s prison justice beliefs, nonetheless, should not novel within the capital metropolis, which has a historical past of organizing for civil rights that usually locations it at odds with the largely rural, White and conservative Republican state.

He discovered himself on the middle of statewide controversy in July 2023 when Legal professional Common Lynn Fitch, an elected Republican, referred to as to have Fox’s conviction overturned. She filed a request with the state appeals courtroom, stating that “the proof at trial was inadequate as a matter of regulation to permit a rational juror to convict Fox of culpable-negligence manslaughter.”

Owens, a Democrat, referred to as the transfer political and “not primarily based on substantive regulation,” in a press release following Fitch’s enchantment. “It’s unlucky that not all elected officers take their constitutional prices as severely as they need to … Her submitting is unprecedented as a result of her function, on this occasion, is to characterize the State, i.e. the decision returned by the jury. It’s not her responsibility to substitute her opinion for theirs,” he wrote.

It was not the primary time he went up in opposition to Fitch. After she petitioned the U.S. Supreme Court docket concerning the choice that may result in the reversal of Roe v. Wade, Owens pledged to not prosecute individuals in search of, offering or supporting abortions.

He has additionally publicly opposed Home Invoice 1020, the laws that creates a separate courtroom system, the Capitol Complicated Enchancment District Court docket. The courtroom is about to have an unelected choose to be appointed by the chief justice of the state’s Supreme Court docket and prosecutors to be appointed by Fitch. The sitting chief justice is Michael Randolph, a White Republican. Regardless of a lawsuit from civil rights teams that mentioned the appointment of judges violated the rights of residents to elect their judges, a federal choose allowed the regulation to enter impact this 12 months.

Owens gained reelection in 2023 over an impartial candidate with 69% of the vote. His second time period, he mentioned, will give attention to lowering the backlog of prison circumstances that usually go away individuals accused of crimes languishing in overcrowded jails as they wait for his or her circumstances to maneuver by means of the system.

The district legal professional acknowledged that his workplace has an extended option to go. The typical time it takes from arrest to remaining decision of a case is about 16 months in Hinds County. Greatest practices across the nation, he mentioned, are nearer to at least one 12 months.

Winston Kidd, Hinds County Circuit Court docket Senior Decide: My Aim is to Deal with Folks ‘Equally and Pretty’

Hinds County Circuit Court docket Senior Decide Winston Kidd remembers the “Whites solely” indicators and segregated ready rooms from his childhood in Decatur, Mississippi. He was born there in 1964, the 12 months following the assassination of Decatur native and civil rights chief Medgar Evers.

When Evers was murdered in 1963, he was embroiled in a authorized battle to desegregate public colleges in Jackson. Six years later, Evers’ brother, Charles, was elected the primary Black mayor of a racially blended city in Mississippi since Reconstruction.

Rising up with that backdrop of civil rights activism and continuously studying about injustice, Kidd mentioned, he developed an curiosity within the regulation. He had began his profession as a respiratory therapist, however shortly made the swap to the authorized career.

There was “one thing concerning the regulation that saved calling, so I made a decision to go to regulation faculty,” Kidd mentioned in an interview with The Marshall Mission – Jackson. “My major motive for desirous to go to regulation faculty was to attempt to have an effect on our justice system and ensuring that individuals might be handled equally and pretty.”

After acquiring his J.D. at Mississippi Faculty College of Regulation, he labored at Walker & Walker, PLLC, in Jackson, the place he primarily dealt with civil circumstances involving automotive accidents, medical malpractice and private harm. These circumstances, he mentioned, gave him the trial expertise obligatory for the bench.

Gov. Ronnie Musgrove, a Democrat, appointed Kidd to the bench in 2001. He changed James E. Graves Jr., who was appointed to the Mississippi Supreme Court docket.

After 22 years on the bench, Kidd is the senior choose of the Hinds County Circuit Court docket, which handles felony prison prosecutions and civil lawsuits involving claims of greater than $250,000. Through the years, he has dealt with circumstances that acquired nationwide consideration, together with the $11 million wrongful dying lawsuit for Willie Jones Jr., and the homicide trials of Elicia Hughes, which had been dramatized on nationwide TV.

Kidd’s service over twenty years has not been with out controversy. In 2011, the Mississippi Supreme Court docket overturned a homicide conviction in Kidd’s courtroom, citing errors in how the choose instructed the jury. The defendant, nonetheless, was retried in Kidd’s courtroom and convicted a second time.

Kidd’s time on the bench has modified his perspective on the judgeship, he mentioned. Earlier than his appointment, he had not dealt with felony circumstances, however he got here into the place within the capital metropolis with excessive crime charges and a heavy backlog. Through the years, he mentioned, crime has elevated, and his caseload has solely gotten heavier.

When he entered workplace, he held civil trials regularly. Now, he mentioned, he now not strives to be a choose who spends all his time on trials, however a more practical choose who resolves circumstances. Along with trials, felony circumstances could be resolved by means of plea offers or pre-trial diversion packages corresponding to drug courtroom for nonviolent crimes, which he presides over.

On a December day within the courtroom, Kidd’s voice competed with the creaking of outdated benches, the clinking of the shackled defendants, and later, transient shrieks from a battle simply outdoors the courtroom’s heavy double doorways. Regardless of the distractions, Kidd’s focus remained regular.

“Did you commit this crime?” he requested a younger man getting into a responsible plea to grand larceny. Earlier than he accepted the plea, Kidd continued with extra questions. “What did you do?” “Why did you commit this crime?”

“I used to be in a nasty spot,” the defendant answered.

“What does that imply, ‘in a nasty spot?’” Kidd requested.

Kidd listened intently because the defendant defined his circumstances earlier than accepting the responsible plea.

“I care about individuals,” Kidd mentioned. “Generally my courtroom might go lengthy as a result of if I’m handing out a sentence that requires jail time, I would like that individual in entrance of me to know that this isn’t the top…. You’ve been given a second alternative to study out of your errors.”

“I look again at conditions the place I’ve needed to sentence a 15-year-old to life or give an 18-year-old 40 or 50 years in jail. These are powerful circumstances,” Kidd mentioned. “I feel some judges deal with this job with out having any emotions. I’m capable of do it successfully, however I even have emotions. You bear in mind these issues once they occur.”

In his spare time, he tries to assist with crime prevention by means of mentorships. He typically speaks to youth, welcomes faculty teams into his courtroom, and is the coach of a highschool mock trial staff. He’s mentored elementary and highschool college students, in addition to different attorneys.

“Youngsters, youngsters, some adults, look as much as judges, and we feature a whole lot of affect. Hopefully, that’s a constructive affect,” Kidd mentioned. “So we have now to be lively in our neighborhood to an extent in order that we will share our experiences contained in the courtroom with individuals in order that they’ll know what path to not take.”

Debra Hendricks Gibbs, Hinds County Circuit Court docket Decide: From Statehouse to Courthouse

The most recent of the 4 Hinds County Circuit Court docket judges, Debra Hendricks Gibbs served as a Democratic state consultant for six years earlier than being elected to the bench. Within the Mississippi Statehouse, she served as vice chair of the Home Tourism Committee and a member of the banking and monetary companies, ethics, schooling, judiciary and Medicaid committees.

“I honor the regulation, I’ve practiced the regulation, I’ve enacted the regulation, and now I’m able to interpret the regulation with equity, impartiality, and with promptness. I’ll proceed to serve with integrity and braveness,” Gibbs mentioned in a 2022 interview with Y’all Politics throughout her marketing campaign for choose. The choose was unavailable to be interviewed by The Marshall Mission – Jackson, in line with her administrator.

Gibbs pursued an accounting profession earlier than getting into politics. She taught accounting at Jackson State College and was the director of the college’s College of Enterprise Middle for Skilled Growth from 1984 to 1989, in line with her LinkedIn account. From 1989 to 1993, Gibbs served because the director of accounting and finance on the Mississippi Division of Human Companies. She later served as a commissioner on the Mississippi Staff Compensation Fee from 2010 to 2015.

Gibbs is a Gulfport native and hails from a politically lively Hinds County household. Gibbs’ husband, Robert Gibbs, previously held the judicial seat she now holds and her son, Justis Gibbs, at present holds her former seat within the Legislature.

In her first 12 months as a choose, Gibbs has dealt with a mixture of prison and civil proceedings, together with standing hearings, pleas and trials. Earlier than donning the black gown, Gibbs had a hand in shaping prison regulation and the justice system within the Mississippi Home of Representatives.

Gibbs served on Judiciary Committees A and B, which proposed adjustments to civil and prison legal guidelines. She launched payments to handle excessive crime charges in Hinds County, together with one to make unlawful drag racing a felony, and to extend penalties for firing a gun in a residential space. Neither invoice, nonetheless, grew to become regulation.

She was additionally a co-sponsor of the Dignity for Incarcerated Ladies Act, which now limits the usage of restraints on incarcerated girls giving start, supplies entry to female hygiene merchandise and limits the gap that incarcerated girls could be held away from their younger youngsters.

Hinds County Circuit Court docket Decide E. Faye Peterson Exhibits Defendant ‘Grace and Mercy’

On a November day in her courtroom, Circuit Court docket Decide E. Faye Peterson heard a mixture of responsible pleas and standing updates, largely for individuals who had been moved from the overcrowded Raymond Detention Middle in Hinds County to a jail in Tallahatchie County, greater than two hours north.

In a single case, a 19-year-old man, who had been jailed for 2 years, stood earlier than Peterson to plead responsible to a felony sexual battery cost.

He raised his proper hand, nonetheless shackled to his left wrist, as he ready to enter his plea.

A prosecutor learn off the info of the case. Shortly after turning 17, the defendant had gotten a 14-year-old woman pregnant. When he came upon concerning the being pregnant, the defendant started working a job at Wendy’s to earn cash to assist his new household. Youngster Protecting Companies was alerted of the being pregnant. When requested whether or not he’d had intercourse with the woman, he mentioned sure — that they had intercourse in her mom’s home.

Because the prosecutor completed studying, the courtroom fell silent. Peterson requested the attorneys to method the bench.

“I’ve a priority,” the choose advised the attorneys, including that the case was “not really sexual battery.”

The prosecutor then decreased the cost to a misdemeanor offense of contributing to the delinquency of a minor. Peterson sentenced the defendant to at least one 12 months, suspended, making him eligible for fast launch from jail.

As a choose, Peterson has the facility to reject a plea or dismiss prices if they don’t match as much as the info of the case. On this occasion, she questioned the cost, which she mentioned didn’t match the defendant’s actions, in a dialog with the prosecutor and public defender. This prompted the state’s change.

“You probably did two issues proper,” she addressed the 19-year-old, explaining why the courtroom confirmed him “grace and mercy.”

“You admitted what you probably did at a younger age, and also you tried to get a job,” Peterson mentioned.

She mentioned in courtroom that the case didn’t warrant a felony cost and that it isn’t the prosecutor’s job to be the ethical or parental police.

In making such life-changing choices, she calls on her years working a number of sides of the prison justice system as a public defender, chief prosecutor and presiding over youngster assist circumstances in Chancery Court docket. These experiences, Peterson mentioned in an interview with The Marshall Mission – Jackson, confirmed her how you can lead with humanity whereas balancing the info of what they did and who had been harmed.

“I bought to see either side of the prison course of. And since I labored in authorized companies, I actually had seen what poverty actually regarded like and folks needing authorized assist,” Peterson mentioned. “After I bought to the DA’s workplace, I then bought to see the faces of victims, who crime hurts and what it does to individuals.”

Earlier than attending regulation faculty, Peterson studied physics and arithmetic at Jackson State College and labored in engineering. She carried these experiences over to her authorized profession: she prides herself on being logical and environment friendly, utilizing her math expertise to judge and create new processes with the assets available.

Early in her profession, she labored on the Mississippi Middle for Authorized Companies, helping low-income residents. She later labored as a public defender, earlier than turning into an assistant district legal professional after which the primary Black girl district legal professional within the state when she was appointed in 2001. She was subsequently elected to the workplace twice earlier than dropping a reelection bid in 2007. She then went into personal apply, whereas additionally presiding over Chancery Court docket circumstances.

Peterson shortly lists the packages and processes she applied at each stage of her profession: from a fatherhood initiative throughout her time in Chancery Court docket that helped fathers discover jobs and pay youngster assist, to live-streaming present courtroom proceedings. She mentioned she is working to implement a psychological well being therapy courtroom as an alternative choice to prison courtroom for individuals with psychological well being problems.

“She’s a superb choose… She’s one of many few judges that was truly a protection legal professional and the DA, so she understands the problems and the work she’s doing,” District Legal professional Jody E. Owens II mentioned. “That, after all, is fairly essential.”

As a choose, Peterson hears civil and prison circumstances, together with the high-profile Division of Human Companies lawsuit making an attempt to get better thousands and thousands of misused federal welfare {dollars} for low-income Mississippians. The lawsuit comes along with prison prices in opposition to former DHS chief John Davis, who was sentenced to 32 years in jail, and a number of other others accused of funneling thousands and thousands of federal welfare {dollars} to personal initiatives.

Among the many named defendants within the civil swimsuit is retired NFL star Brett Favre, who acquired $1.1 million of these funds. Most just lately, Peterson denied Favre’s request to be faraway from the lawsuit.

Adrienne Wooten, Hinds County Circuit Court docket Decide: A Yr of Excessive-Profile Circumstances

Circuit Court docket Decide Adrienne Wooten has presided over a number of the most controversial trials lately in Hinds County.

In 2023, Wooten sentenced former Jackson Police Division officer Anthony Fox, who was convicted by a jury of culpable negligence manslaughter within the killing of George Robinson, to 5 years in jail — a 20-year sentence with 15 years suspended. The case drew important consideration, particularly after Republican Legal professional Common Lynn Fitch referred to as on a state appeals courtroom to overturn Fox’s conviction.

Wooten additionally sentenced former state Division of Human Companies Director John Davis to 32 years in jail after he was convicted of 5 counts of conspiracy and 13 counts of fraud in opposition to the state authorities for his function within the welfare scandal that funneled greater than $77 million in federal welfare funds away from the poor.

Wooten additionally accepted a responsible plea for Anne McGrew, an accountant concerned within the DHS scandal, on one rely of conspiracy to commit embezzlement.

In 2024, Wooten is presiding over the case of Avery Willis, a former Jackson Police Division officer charged with second-degree homicide within the in-custody dying of Keith Murriel, who authorities mentioned died after he was tased quite a few occasions. Willis’ trial is about to begin on March 11.

One other controversial choice got here in 2020 when Wooten refused to revoke bond for T’Quarius Jones, who was accused of homicide. Whereas free on a $20,000 bond, Jones was wounded throughout a shootout, which prompted prosecutors to ask that his bond be revoked. Wooten, nonetheless, denied the request, stating that the foundations of his launch settlement had expired however she did order him to put on an ankle monitor. Wooten confronted public scrutiny over the choice from District Legal professional Jody E. Owens II, a Democrat, and then-U.S. Legal professional Mike Hurst, a Republican.

“The truth that he’s alleged to have been in one other shootout scenario when his underlying crime was taking somebody’s life is yet one more instance of why bond ought to have been revoked on this occasion,” Owens advised WLBT-TV after the listening to.

Inside weeks, the U.S. Legal professional’s workplace charged Jones with a federal receipt of a firearm by an individual below felony indictment. Jones was convicted of homicide in January 2024.

Wooten, in her second four-year time period on the bench, was born in Riverside, California, and grew up in Meridian, Mississippi. She graduated from the College of Mississippi College of Regulation in 1999 and practiced each prison and civil regulation. She labored as an affiliate legal professional at Blackmon & Blackmon regulation agency earlier than beginning her personal personal apply. She additionally served as an assistant public defender in Holmes County, in line with a legislative proclamation honoring her service.

Wooten took the bench in 2019 after serving 11 years as a state consultant for South Jackson and components of Byram. Throughout her time within the state Home of Representatives, Wooten served on a number of committees, together with the Judiciary Committee, which enacted civil and prison legal guidelines.

In a 2022 interview with the Jackson Advocate, she cited her function in two prison justice reform payments handed within the Legislature. Wooten mentioned she added an modification to HB 585 that may permit previously incarcerated individuals who couldn’t afford their fines and charges to be despatched to restitution facilities to pay their money owed, somewhat than again to jail. She additionally mentioned she helped change a regulation that now permits individuals with addictions who’ve dedicated a violent crime 10 or extra years earlier than their arrest to take part in drug courtroom.

Drug courtroom permits defendants to keep away from a trial in the event that they efficiently cross the courtroom’s drug testing program and different necessities. Wooten was not obtainable for an interview with The Marshall Mission – Jackson.

Wooten ran a profitable 2022 reelection marketing campaign by emphasizing that she dispenses justice pretty, impartially and effectively in her courtroom. She additionally advocated for establishing psychological well being therapy courts as an intervention measure, just like the drug courtroom run by Decide Winston Kidd.

In 2023, Hinds County acquired $300,000 from the state to determine a psychological well being therapy courtroom.