By Caleb Bedillion for The Marshall Project.
Broadcast version by Danielle Smith for Mississippi News Connection reporting for the Marshall Project-Public News Service Collaboration

Three months after Mississippi's Supreme Court directed judges in the state to ensure that poor criminal defendants always have a lawyer as they wait to be indicted, one of those justices acknowledged that the rule isn't being widely followed.

"We know anecdotally that there's a problem out there," Supreme Court Justice Jim Kitchens said during a state House of Representatives committee meeting on the public defense system last week.

That means Mississippi's "dead zone" - the period during which poor people facing felony charges are left without a lawyer while they await indictment - persists in many counties.

At the first court hearing after someone is arrested for a felony, a judge is supposed to decide whether the defendant can be released from jail and should appoint a lawyer if they can't afford one.

In many Mississippi courts, that lawyer stays on the case for a short time to handle initial proceedings, including a possible motion for bond reduction, and then exits. Only after the defendant is indicted, which often takes months, is another lawyer appointed. In the meantime, no one is assigned to the case, even if the defendant is in jail.

"Mississippi stands alone as the only state that has this problem," public defense expert David Carroll said at the state House hearing.

Carroll is the executive director of the Sixth Amendment Center, a nonprofit that studies state public defense systems and advocates for improvements. The center released a report in 2018 that found many defects in Mississippi's public defense system, including the dead zone.

The Supreme Court's rule, approved in April, was supposed to eliminate this problem. It says a lawyer can't leave a case unless another one has taken over. All courts in the state must follow it.

Individual judges could face sanctions for not complying with the rule if someone files a complaint against them, Kitchens told legislators. Beyond that, however, Kitchens said it's outside the purview of the Supreme Court to monitor local courts. "It's not for us to go out and investigate whether that rule is being complied with," he said.

When the rule went into effect in July, the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal, The Marshall Project and ProPublica found that many courts were unprepared to comply. Some local court officials were unaware of it. Others suggested that their practice of appointing lawyers for limited purposes would satisfy the rule, even though those attorneys do little beyond attending early court hearings.

State Rep. Nick Bain, a Republican from northeast Mississippi's Alcorn County, convened the hearing on the weaknesses in the state's public defense system. He also practices as a defense attorney in about 10 counties and regularly talks with lawyers who work around the state.

"There are wide swaths all over Mississippi where that rule is not being followed," he said at the hearing.

In one circuit court district that did take action in response to the Supreme Court's rule, there are signs that appointed defense attorneys are not doing much more than they did before.

In the 1st Circuit Court District, which covers seven counties in northeast Mississippi, chief Circuit Judge Paul Funderburk issued an order in July directing lower court judges in the district on how to meet the new requirements for indigent representation. He said an attorney in the lower court, where defendants first appear, must stay on the case until the defendant is indicted.

State Sen. Daniel Sparks, a Republican from Tishomingo County, represents those defendants in the county's Justice Court, which hears misdemeanors and some early felony matters. He acknowledged that under the new Supreme Court rule and Funderburk's order, he remains the attorney for indigent clients until they are indicted.

He said that although he will take calls from defendants and offer advice after they appear in justice court, he believes there is usually little defense work to do before an indictment. "I don't think it changes my work dramatically," he said of the Supreme Court's rule.

He believes problems linked to the dead zone have been exaggerated by reform advocates.

Lee County Justice Court, based in Tupelo, is in the same circuit court district as Tishomingo. In July, the Daily Journal, The Marshall Project and ProPublica reported that the part-time appointed counsel for Lee County Justice Court, Dan Davis, typically did little more than file for a bond reduction for defendants who remained in jail for more than a month. After the new rule became effective in July, Davis told the court he didn't want the job anymore.

Bill Benson, the administrator for Lee County, said last week that it's not clear when a replacement will be available. "We're trying to find someone who will stick with the defendants all the way through like the rule says," Benson said.

Funderburk said he expects strict adherence to the new indigent defense rule and warned that courts "ignore it at their peril."

Courts across Mississippi have ignored a broader rule regarding public defense, the Daily Journal, The Marshall Project and ProPublica have found. That rule, part of a 2017 push to standardize how courts across the state operate, requires judges to send to the Supreme Court their policy on how they fulfill their constitutional obligation to provide lawyers for poor criminal defendants. Just one circuit court district, covering three rural counties in southwest Mississippi, has complied.

"The counties need to come up with a plan," Kitchens told lawmakers. "The justice courts, the circuit courts, the supervisors - all of them need to collaborate and come up with a plan."

He called on lawmakers to fix problems with public defense that the Mississippi Supreme Court has been unable to remedy by imposing rules on local judges. The state is responsible for ensuring that its public defense system is adequate, he said. "The bottom line is the counties cannot do it alone."

Bain, whose term ends in December after a primary defeat, said Mississippi must eliminate the dead zone and address other problems, including a lack of full-time public defenders and payment arrangements that encourage lawyers to cut corners.

"I think Mississippi is really stretching the limits of our constitutional obligations," he said.


Caleb Bedillion wrote this article for The Marshall Project.




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A controversial new law is set to take effect next week, requiring Hoosiers to upload sensitive documents, including driver's licenses and Social Security numbers, to access adult content online. The measure aims to prevent minors from viewing explicit materials, but it has sparked significant concerns.

Chris Daley, executive director of the ACLU of Indiana, argues the law infringes on constitutional rights by excessively burdening access for Hoosiers.

"You can't do that in a way that impermissibly burdens an adult's access to the same material. And the state can't use a means to limit a minor's access to adult material if there's a less burdensome means available to do so," Daley said.

Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita supports the law, citing the need to protect children from the psychological impacts of explicit material.

Opponents question the effectiveness of the measure, pointing out that minors could still access adult content through unregulated sites or by using VPNs.

The law also raises concerns about potential censorship of sex education and LGBTQ+ content. Sen. Liz Brown, D-Fort Wayne, chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee when the law made its way through the Statehouse in the 2024 session. She suggests porn sites find it easier to adapt than comply - recently cutting its feed in states such as Louisiana, Mississippi and Utah.

"This isn't about eliminating pornography from the state of Indiana - although I would be OK with this," Brown said. "Pornhub -- and I can't speak for that business -- but they decided that their business model was easier, which would indicate to me that they knew at the time they were operating that they were having minors access their material."

Pornhub and other operators are seeking to block the law, arguing it impinges on adults' free speech and other constitutional rights.


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A new bill that takes effect next Monday will allow incarcerated Mississippians to request an absentee ballot in time for the presidential election on November 5.

House Bill 1406 will impact incarcerated Mississippians who have not been convicted of any of the 23 disenfranchisement crimes to be eligible to participate in the electoral process.

Paloma Wu, deputy director of impact litigation at the Mississippi Center for Justice, said they want all eligible Mississippians to vote because it's better for democracy. She added the Magnolia State has a limited excuse-only absentee ballot, meaning people can vote absentee, but only in specific circumstances.

"Many people who are held in jail and imprisoned in Mississippi are actually eligible to vote. And for one large group of those people, they had no excuse, which would have applied to them," she said.

Wu pointed out that Mississippi has one of the highest incarceration rates in the nation, with more than 1,000 people per 100,000 residents behind bars.

Wu noted those who are convicted of one of 23 disenfranchising crimes in a Mississippi court are automatically banned from voting for life. She added the history behind the disfranchising law was to prevent people of color from voting.

"Our list of disenfranchising crimes was created to target primarily descendants of recently enslaved people back in 1890," she explained.

Wu pointed out that her organization, along with other advocacy groups, Mississippi Votes, Black Voters Matter, and Mississippi Center for Re-Entry, collaborated with the state throughout the 2024 legislative session to get House Bill 1406 passed.

Mississippi's pilot work-release program for incarcerated individuals has been extended to three years.

The program allows qualified participants to gain job skills and earn money while serving their sentence.

Wil Ervin, senior vice president of the advocacy group Empower Mississippi, said the existing law has a pilot work-release program operated by the Mississippi Department of Corrections at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility. It is limited to only 25 participants, but the expansion of Senate Bill 2445 will include more state and regional correctional facilities.

"Obviously, we recognize the importance of an individual having a job both while they're in prison and when they get out," Ervin pointed out. "Having a job is one of the biggest predictors of recidivism for individuals once they're released from prison."

Ervin noted during the legislative session, his organization worked with the bill's author, Sen. Juan Barnett, D-Heidelberg, and House Corrections Chairperson Becky Curry to expand the program.

They decided to expand this program statewide at the end of the session whenever the conference report from the Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review was released.

He added the working wage participants will receive is higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25.

"The PEER report that was released last year shows that average wages were $13.35 an hour," Ervin explained. "Under the new bill, 15% goes back to administration of the program; 25% goes towards child support fines, fees, restitution, court costs."

Ervin added 50% goes into a savings account, which will be made available to the individual when they are released. He pointed out another 10% can be used for commissary and incidental expenses while they are in prison.


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