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Voter inactivations surged ahead of Tuesday’s midterm elections, the first since the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Office authorized unverified data from the credit bureau Experian for counties to use statewide when cleaning their voter rolls.

A Mississippi Today analysis of voter data from the secretary of state found that in the eight months since the March primaries, inactivations more than doubled in some jurisdictions, leaving up to 1 in 5 voters in counties such as DeSoto and Wilkinson one step closer to being purged from the rolls. Over 230,000 voters statewide — or about 1 in 9 — are now inactive ahead of Election Day as Mississippi stares at an increasingly competitive U.S. Senate race between Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic challenger Scott Colom.

For years, county election officials relied on verified government data to do the routine job of identifying and inactivating voters who moved or died. But since Republican Secretary of State Michael Watson last year announced a $50,000 deal to use Experian’s data statewide to “strengthen the integrity of elections,” Mississippi Today found incorrect information mistakenly led to the inactivation of legitimate voters ahead of the primaries.

Watson previously said his office’s rollout of the commercial data was “wildly successful,” but voting rights advocates and election experts question whether the latest surge in inactivations indicates mistakes in the data have put a larger number of legitimate voters at risk. The secretary of state’s office did not answer questions about the reason behind the spike in time for Mississippi Today’s publication of this article.

“Our office is busy prepping for the federal midterm election, and we will be happy to address your questions in a more realistic timeframe after the election,” Assistant Secretary of State Elizabeth Jonson wrote in an email.

Advocates warn surge could create barriers to ballot box

While inactive voters can still cast a ballot, they have to go through additional hurdles to make sure their vote counts, such as filling out an affidavit ballot. Advocates are concerned that many of these voters won’t find out they’ve been inactivated until they go to the polls, where confusion, frustration or fear may prevent them from exercising their right to vote.

“There may be a lot of disenfranchisement tomorrow from people who are showing up to vote,” Nsombi Lambright, executive director of the Jackson-based nonprofit One Voice, said Monday. “My concern is that their vote may not be counted.”

The additional steps inactive voters must take at the polls has made Amir Badat, a Mississippi voting rights attorney with Fair Fight Action, concerned that the surge could disrupt election operations Tuesday by creating long lines, depleting affidavit ballots and straining the county election commissioners responsible for conducting the elections.

“It’s just a totally unnecessary burden on voters and election commissioners that the state has created,” Badat said. “Voters are going to be, like, ‘Wait, why is my name not on the poll book? Why do I have to vote this separate process?’ People are going to have less confidence that their ballot will be counted.”

DeSoto County emerges as ‘hotspot’ for inactivations

Voting rights advocates are watching DeSoto County, which accounted for over a third of all inactivations in Mississippi’s 82 counties from the primaries to the midterms. There, election commissioners removed over 15,000 voters from the active rolls, doubling the number of inactive voters in just months.

To election researcher Thessalia Merivaki, who previously taught at Mississippi State University, an increase of that scale raises a “red flag.” She said the secretary of state’s rollout of commercial data could have driven the surge, instead of the traditional methods election commissioners have used to identify whether voters have moved, such as information from the U.S. Postal Service or an undeliverable jury summons.

“Is it reasonable to expect that all these voters that are inactive, they were asked to do jury duty, or they moved out of the county, or they moved within the county in six months?” Merivaki said.

The surge in inactive voters also pushed DeSoto County Democratic Party Chair Deborah Williams to raise concerns to the election commission responsible for inactivating voters. Williams said after she asked about it, commissioners ordered more affidavit ballots to ensure there wouldn’t be a shortage on Election Day.

The DeSoto County Election Commission did not respond to a request for comment.

As voting rights advocates seek answers on the reason behind the surge, Lambright said the most immediate concern is ensuring inactive voters still know they have the right to vote. Her organization, One Voice, last week announced the launch of a website with the Mississippi Poor People’s Campaign for voters to search whether they’ve been inactivated or purged.

Since entering the partnership with Experian, the secretary of state’s office last week wrote in a statement to WAPT that it has replaced the credit bureau’s data with another company, IDI Data.

You can check your voter registration status before heading to the polls at the secretary of state’s Y’all Vote website.

The parents of a 1-year-old boy who was shot and killed by a police officer in Mississippi led a protest Monday at the office of the state’s attorney general, who ruled last month that the shooting was justified.

Cries of “our baby’s life mattered” echoed through the office’s lobby as Kohen Wiley’s parents and a small group of activists demanded to speak to Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch.

Marquell Bridges, an activist who has been working with Kohen’s parents, said they wanted Fitch to look Kohen’s parents in the eyes and tell them why the shooting was justified.

“These people work for us. We pay their salaries. We vote. We put them in office, and our people have to understand that we have the power,” Bridges said.

They were met in the lobby by Fitch’s chief of staff, who said Fitch was not in the office. An email seeking comment was sent to the attorney general’s office Monday.

Kohen Wiley was killed in June when a police officer in the small town of Senatobia about 40 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee, fired his gun into a moving vehicle while responding to a shoplifting call.

Body-worn cameras show Kohen’s mother, Vellesiya Wiley, holding Kohen as she and another woman run across the parking lot of a Senatobia Walmart and enter their vehicle.

Five officers approach the parked car with guns drawn. The car reverses away and crashes into a parked vehicle nearby as officers yell for it to stop.

The vehicle then accelerates forward as Senatobia Sgt. Hunter Foster steps toward it, directly in front, with his gun drawn. The wheels turn away from him, and he appears to put his hands on the hood as he jumps out of the way. He fires his gun, shattering the window of the front passenger side, where Kohen was seated on his mother’s lap.

The shooting sparked months of mourning and calls for justice, both nationally and in Senatobia.

Kohen would have turned 2 on Sunday.

Sitting outside the attorney general’s office, Kohen’s father, Davion Williams, said the passing of Kohen’s birthday was “the worst feeling ever.”

“It’s hard. It’s just hard to even express and talk about,” Williams said. “Now we have to keep his name alive.”

Williams said he wants Foster prosecuted and Fitch out of office. He wore a T-shirt with Kohen’s face that read “Kohen should be 2. Vote in his honor.”

Fitch, a Republican, is running for governor in 2027.

Foster’s attorney, Martin Zummach, has said his client had “no choice” but to shoot at the vehicle because it was going to hit him. The Mississippi Attorney General’s office said its monthslong probe found that Foster’s use of force was appropriate.

The U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, meanwhile, was investigating an arson fire on Saturday that damaged the Senatobia police building. It was unclear what caused the fire. Emails to the ATF and the state fire marshal’s office Monday were not immediately returned.

Mississippi’s prison healthcare provider has not met the requirements of its contract, according a report published Monday by the state’s legislative watchdog committee.

Kansas-based VitalCore Health Strategies, a private company with a three-year, $357 million contract to provide medical care in Mississippi’s prisons, failed to provide annual physical assessments for all inmates, meet staffing requirements and maintain complete patient records, the Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review, or PEER, found in the report. 

The watchdog committee conducted a limited review of 13 of the contract’s requirements, finding that the company met six requirements and partially met or failed to meet the remaining seven. It reviewed documents requested in December 2025 and provided through April 2026, including 50 patients’ medical records. 

“The combination of VitalCore’s proficiencies and deficiencies indicates that VitalCore only partially meets its contractual obligations and may be underserving the inmates entrusted to its care,” the report said.

VitalCore provided PEER with additional documentation after the review period ended, but still did not show it is meeting all of the requirements of its contract, according to PEER. 

In a statement, Bryan Collier, VitalCore’s operations adviser, said the PEER report identified opportunities to improve documentation and reporting. He noted that VitalCore implemented a new electronic medical record system after discovering there was not one in place. 

“While the report identified areas for clerical improvement, its findings also indicated that VitalCore is meeting the primary contractual requirements for the delivery of necessary healthcare services to Mississippi’s incarcerated population,” Turner said.

The Mississippi Department of Corrections did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Mississippi Today.

The report comes on the heels of a more than three-hour-long hearing Oct. 15 in which lawmakers heard testimony about inadequate care in Mississippi prisons. Lawmakers heard about amputations resulting from untreated diabetes, delayed cancer treatment and a mother taking desperate measures to help her son treat his chronic pain. 

Viola Riggin, VitalCore’s founder and CEO, said at the hearing that the challenges facing medical care at Mississippi’s state prisons are the residual effects of previous contractors’ impropriety. 

VitalCore has provided medical care to Mississippi prisons since 2020, when it was awarded its first of four emergency, no-bid contracts. It was selected to continue providing medical care in Mississippi prisons through a competitive bidding process in 2024. 

Mississippi Today’s Behind Bars, Beyond Care series has documented potentially thousands of people living with hepatitis C going without treatment, an untreated broken arm that resulted in amputation and delayed cancer screenings one woman said led to a terminal diagnosis. One ex-corrections official said people are experiencing widespread medical neglect in Mississippi’s prisons and turned over internal messages bemoaning the contractor’s care to Mississippi Today. 

From January to September 2025, VitalCore failed to meet staffing requirements, according to PEER. Optometry was among the positions that experienced staffing shortages, with 77% of the required hours going unfilled. 

During that reporting period, MDOC determined VitalCore owed roughly $6 million for staffing shortages, PEER added. Although MDOC received a $2.1 million credit on its June 2025 invoice for the year’s first quarter, VitalCore had not repaid the remaining balance as of January.

VitalCore told PEER it had entered into negotiations with MDOC over the calculation of unfilled staffing hours, claiming that MDOC was using an incorrect formula. 

MDOC Commissioner Burl Cain said in a July letter to PEER included in the report that MDOC had not yet agreed to any findings by VitalCore’s auditor regarding the staffing penalty calculation and that negotiations were ongoing for the last two quarters of 2025. 

People incarcerated in MDOC facilities were also not receiving annual physical assessments, as required by the company’s contract, PEER found. Of the 29 inmates whose time in custody made them due for an annual physical, only two had received an annual assessment. 

VitalCore said it did not provide annual physicals because it was following an older MDOC policy approved in 2021 that scheduled health assessments every one to four years based on age and health status. Company officials said they have crafted a plan to meet the annual physical assessment requirement. 

In May, VitalCore provided updated documentation to PEER showing that the percentage of people in MDOC custody due for an annual examination who had received one had increased from 7% to 86%. PEER did not independently verify the records. 

PEER also identified requests for medical care missing required information. VitalCore is required to triage these requests within 24 hours or by the next scheduled clinic day, but did not indicate the initial request date about three-fourths of the time. Ten of the 32 dated records contained inconsistencies with MDOC and VitalCore spreadsheets. 

MDOC and VitalCore records contained other discrepancies. For example, at least one patient’s medical records reviewed by PEER contained 11 fewer requests than MDOC and VitalCore spreadsheets reported. 

“The inconsistencies between the dates in the original spreadsheet and the inmates’ actual medical records suggest potential issues with the quality of VitalCore’s data collection and the accuracy of its reporting,” the PEER report said. 

VitalCore later provided additional documents pertaining to medical care requests, this time showing that 45% of the records included the initial request date. PEER declined to complete a full analysis due to the limited sample size of documents provided. The report noted that other issues, including unclear triage dates, persisted in the updated documents. An updated collection of patients’ medical care requests corrected most discrepancies between VitalCore documents and medical records regarding the number of requests. 

VitalCore’s intake examinations lacked documentation of several required components. The exams included vital signs but did not record screenings for HIV, sexually transmitted infections, COVID and tuberculosis. Mammograms were marked ‘no’ on about two out of three women’s intake forms. 

The intake examinations also omitted required mental health documentation, including the person’s experience with substance use or an indication that a suicide risk assessment was performed. 

VitalCore later provided additional intake information and explained that mammograms were provided based on age and previous mammogram dates, as the contract permits. The company also reported that other missing components were only provided as clinically indicated. 

PEER found that VitalCore met six requirements: providing timely physical and mental health intake screenings; maintaining four mobile medical units; and maintaining or creating several reports, including a monthly log of pregnant inmates, advisory committee meeting minutes and statistical quality improvement reports.

PEER recommended that VitalCore should ensure it completes all required elements of intake assessments, continue implementing its plan to provide annual physical examinations and accurately record requests for medical care. It also recommended that MDOC work with VitalCore to resolve staffing shortage issues. 

MDOC entered into a contract in the summer of 2025 with Butler Snow, a politically connected law firm, to monitor VitalCore’s contract. Lawmakers passed a law in 2025 requiring a report by Dec. 15 of each fiscal year, but had yet to receive one as of July. 

A federal judge has denied Elon Musk-owned SpaceXAI’s motion to dismiss a lawsuit brought by the NAACP over its use of gas turbines to power data centers in Southaven and Memphis. 

The lawsuit alleges that the artificial intelligence company’s turbines require a state air permit from the Mississippi Environmental Quality to operate and are “a major source of hazardous air pollutants” that are harming residents.

SpaceXAI, previously known as xAI, argued in its motion to dismiss that the turbines do not require permits because they fall under an exception for “mobile sources,” which the Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality said in a letter to the company last year. 

However, on Friday, U.S. District Judge Debra Brown found that turbines are “not a ‘mobile source’ according to the federal regulations” and require permits. She added in her ruling that “the letter does not alter the Court’s determination that the defendants’ turbines are not mobile sources”

The company also argued that the NAACP could not sue under the federal Clean Air Act and that lawsuits brought by the NAACP and other groups are unconstitutional. Brown found that the NAACP does have standing to sue and the case can continue.

Two weeks ago, Brown denied a separate motion to dismiss the case filed by the U.S. Department of Justice. The DOJ said it intervened in the case because Grok, the company’s artificial-intelligence chatbot, is vital for national security. 

“This decision is another important victory in our effort to hold xAI accountable,” said Abre’ Conner, NAACP director of environmental and climate justice in a statement. “The courts have repeatedly rejected attempts by xAI and the DOJ to dismiss the NAACP’s Clean Air Act case, affirming our right to pursue justice for communities impacted by pollution. Our position has been clear: xAI cannot operate gas turbines without the required permits,” 

In March, the state permit board unanimously approved the company’s air permit application to build 41 permanent turbines in Southaven to power its expanding data center presence in the area. Southaven residents appealed that decision and a hearing is scheduled for Nov. 9. 

The project has faced stiff opposition from residents who are concerned about noise and pollution. Some residents have brought a separate class action lawsuit against the company over the “pervasive and inescapable” noise created by the temporary turbines.   

SpaceXAI is constructing six data centers in the Memphis area according to a social media post by Elon Musk on Saturday. The company has said its Southaven operations could amount to an over $45 billion investment. When the project was announced in Jan. 2026, Gov. Tate Reeves said it was the largest economic development in the state’s history and would “transform the region and bring amazing opportunities to its residents for generations.” 

The NAACP has requested the court order SpaceXAI to stop operating its mobile turbines until it gets them permitted. The court has not yet ruled on that request. In response, Reeves wrote to the court that such a move would create an “immediate and substantial disruption to the state’s economy.”

SpaceXAI did not respond to a request for comment. 

Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic challenger Scott Colom are continuing to travel across Mississippi before Tuesday’s midterm elections and make their final pitches to voters.

READ MORE: What you need to know to vote in Mississippi 2026 midterm elections Tuesday

As voters across the country appear furious over rising prices, Hyde-Smith hopes to weather political headwinds that have sent Republicans scrambling to defend seats even in red states such as Mississippi. Democrats hope to flip the Senate and have begun looking at Mississippi as a dark-horse pickup opportunity.

The race has attracted a string of appearances by national figures hoping to turn out voters. President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton and former Vice President Kamala Harris have each come to Mississippi over the past two weeks to campaign for their party’s candidate.

Colom has tapped into dissatisfaction with high consumer costs under Trump’s watch, urging Mississippians to send a Democrat to the U.S. Senate for the first time since 1982 and promising to lower costs and reverse cuts to social services such as Medicaid. 

Hyde-Smith has promoted her close relationship with Trump and her support in Congress for his agenda, which has included tax cuts and cuts to social safety net programs, a crackdown on illegal immigration and efforts to curb fraud. 

Independent candidate Ty Pinkins is also running, saying voters want a choice neither party is offering.

Hyde-Smith urges voters to show Mississippi remains ‘ruby red’

Over the past week and through the weekend, Hyde-Smith embarked on a bus tour, stopping in Flora, Grenada, Hernando, Holly Springs, Tupelo and Amory. 

“Mississippians know what is at stake in this election, and we’re grateful for the tremendous support and encouragement we have received everywhere we have gone,” said Jake Monssen, Hyde-Smith’s campaign manager. 

On Sunday evening, she was in Jackson for an event at Martin’s Downtown, a bar where many patrons typically come to watch football and share buckets of beer. 

Hyde-Smith was introduced by U.S. Rep. Michael Guest, Mississippi Republican Party Chairman Mike Hurst and state Department of Transportation Director Brad White. The Republican officials said the race is theirs to win if they turn out voters, and urged supporters not to get complacent.

“We want a big win. We don’t want a little win,” Hyde-Smith said. “I want the rest of this country to know Mississippi is ruby red, and Mississippi is going to stay ruby red.” 

On stage, Hyde-Smith called Colom “literally the most radical liberal” that has “ever run for office in Mississippi,” and said her conservative policies, such as keeping the border secure, would protect jobs and strengthen the economy. 

In a brief interview with Mississippi Today after she walked off stage, Hyde-Smith said voters’ economic pain would be temporary, and that Trump’s war in Iran would keep America safe in the long run. 

“Yes, the prices are high, and yes, the Iran conflict has caused that,” Hyde-Smith said. “We want to get on the other side of that, but today we’re not worried about a nuclear missile about to hit the United States because we took care of that.”

Hyde-Smith also stood by a response she gave in a television interview where she suggested that Mississippians upset over the high cost of beef remember that there are “so many proteins to choose from.” Colom’s campaign seized on the moment, crafting a viral ad that urged voters to “pick another senator” instead of picking another protein. 

Hyde-Smith said her words were taken out of context. 

“You know, gasoline’s expensive, and there’s not a lot of other choices. Or you ride a bicycle. But when a mother wants to feed her family meat, there are several to choose from. I buy gasoline, but there’s one product that’ll make that car go. And I never would take that out,” Hyde-Smith said. “I stand by that every single day.”

Colom repeatedly challenged Hyde-Smith to a debate, which she declined. Asked by Mississippi Today whether she wishes she had accepted the invitations, Hyde-Smith said Colom is “is totally to kill babies in the room. We have nothing to debate.”

Asked for clarification on the senator’s comments, Monssen confirmed she meant “womb” instead of “room” and was talking about abortion. He also said Colom’s policies were too “radical” to merit a debate.    

Colom previously told the Commercial Dispatch that he has always been pro-life, but trusts women “to make the choices that are best for them.”

On Sunday night, Hyde-Smith said she was proud to chair the pro-life caucus in the Senate and said she helped double the number of Republican senators in the caucus.   

Hyde-Smith was set to appear early Monday morning at Ingalls Shipbuilding on the Coast to greet workers during their shift change. She said she stood by her record working on the issues voters have spoken to her about on the campaign trail.

“As I travel throughout the state, there’s one thing that you know: people want a safe border because they want a safe country,” Hyde-Smith said. “People want solid economic policies because they want the dignity of a job. People want to be able to worship the way they want to worship with their families.” 

Colom says he is the fighter Mississippi needs

Colom over the weekend made final pitches to voters in Itta Bena, Southaven, and Jackson. On Monday, he was scheduled to appear in Meridian, DeKalb and Macon. 

Appearing at a Powers in the Pews event at Anderson United Methodist Church in Jackson on Sunday, Colom repeated his promises to fight for raising the minimum wage, advocate for access to rural healthcare and push back on attempts to weaken voting rights for Mississippians.

In the final days of his campaign, his pitch to Mississippians, including Republicans, was to argue that voters have been betrayed by a president who pledged to stay out of foreign wars, lower gasoline prices and tame the rising cost of goods. 

“My message to every Republican voter in Mississippi is it’s time you got a fighter that’s going to actually hold the president to the commitments he made to Mississippi,” Colom said. 

The Democratic nominee said that politicians like Hyde-Smith and Republican Gov. Tate Reeves have divided Mississippians and disparaged Democrats as a tactic to gain more votes. But he said Mississippi will never reach its full potential unless politicians learn to work together. 

“That’s what they don’t understand,” Colom said. “That division and distraction have always held Mississippi back. We’re only going to reach our potential if we understand that we have to do it together. I truly believe that there’s nothing wrong with Mississippi that can’t be fixed with what’s right about Mississippi.” 

As a closing argument, he told Mississippi Today that voters should ask themselves which U.S. Senate candidate has tried to earn their vote and lay out a policy plan for the next six years. The Democrat believes he’s the only candidate who has met voters face-to-face, while Hyde-Smith has hidden from them. 

“She has not done one ad or one speech about what she’s said, what she’s going to do for Mississippi. Not one,” Colom said. “It’s clear she hasn’t campaigned. She refused to debate. She lies constantly.” 

Colom was joined by Mississippi U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, former Massachusetts U.S. Rep. Joe Kennedy III, Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington, NAACP President Derrick Johnson and Mississippi NAACP President Charles Taylor. 

Kennedy told the crowd he’s invested in the Mississippi Senate race because of his family’s history with the Magnolia State, particularly when his grandfather, U.S. Robert Kennedy, made a historic visit to the Mississippi Delta in the 1960s to shed a spotlight on the abject poverty and malnutrition that Black citizens in the region were experiencing. 

“Almost 60 years ago, my grandfather came to the Delta to see what Mississippi was,” Kennedy said. “On Tuesday, we get to show the world what Mississippi is.” 

If Colom is successful on Tuesday, he will be the first Black person to represent Mississippi in the U.S. Senate since Reconstruction, and the first Black U.S. senator from the state elected by popular vote. 

Kennedy said that after Reconstruction ended, it slammed the door shut on Black citizens being able to vote. No Black person has mounted a successful U.S. Senate campaign in the state since then. But, he said, Mississippi gets to “pry that door open again” on Tuesday.  

The election is Tuesday, and polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m.

Hinds County Court Judge Johnnie McDaniels’ signature was all the district attorney and public defender needed. 

It was a Friday afternoon in August when attorneys from the offices pitched the judge an unusual proposal: Release some three dozen people from the crowded Hinds County Detention Center. 

Each of the detainees faced nonviolent charges, had not been indicted and had spent at least 100 days in jail. 

But McDaniels wouldn’t agree – at least not immediately. 

Instead, the judge would issue an order days later, declaring that crowding alone did not justify a defendant’s release. He directed the attorneys to submit requests case by case.

The attorneys would comply over the next few weeks, ultimately seeking release of 19 defendants. McDaniels would grant release to 13, according to his docket.

But hearings in September did little to cut into what was then roughly 200 people jailed without indictment. Instead, they exposed deeper failures in Hinds County’s criminal justice system: defendants remaining behind bars despite being granted release and prosecutors struggling to account for cases that had languished for months, sometimes years. 

While defendants are presumed innocent and have rights to a speedy trial, prosecutors and defense attorneys rarely invoke constitutional protections during the hearings. This is because the right has effectively been abandoned in Mississippi, one of a handful of states without a fixed deadline for obtaining an indictment after an arrest. 

The collaboration between prosecutors and public defenders represented a blip in Hinds County, where concerns about community safety have overshadowed the plight of defendants in the deadly detention center in Raymond. 

“Now, I’ve heard of this happening on the planet earth, but not in Hinds County,” said Matt Steffey, a Mississippi Christian University School of Law professor who helped write the state rules of criminal procedure. “In fact, most of my career, what I’ve heard is the opposite: the difficulty of getting the DA to agree and the judge to set reasonable bonds.” 

State Public Defender Andre de Gruy questioned why the effort was necessary. He noticed the jail population jumped last summer but did not know why: Were more people being arrested, or were prosecutors failing to move cases through the system? 

“Why are nonviolent offenders sitting in jail for months?” he asked.

McDaniels, who declined to be interviewed for this article, had similar questions. 

“That’s the giant elephant in the room, so to speak, as it relates to these matters,” he said during one of the hearings. 

A bewildering path to freedom

Another issue: Interim Hinds County District Attorney Brad McCullouch overstated the results of his office’s release efforts, according to a Mississippi Today review of records.

In a recent interview, McCullouch said his office had secured the release of 74 people jailed without indictment on nonviolent charges – far more than the 19 defendants whose release the office sought in collaboration with the public defender. 

McCullouch’s list of 74 reflects all defendants with felony charges released from jail from July 1 to Sept. 28, including 15 people facing violent charges and defendants whose release were unrelated to the DA’s efforts. 

The DA acknowledged he did not know the number of people released during the same time last year. Still, he believes his office’s efforts are paying off. 

“People have been coming in, but nobody has been getting out,” he said. 

Daniel Ray Boyd Collom calls himself one of those nobodies. 

Collom, 36, entered the Raymond Detention Center in October 2025 and faced charges of burglary and failure to appear. 

He slept on the floor. He said other detainees carried knives and set fires that left cell blocks covered in soot.

Months went by. He lost hope of ever getting out.

Then on Friday, Aug. 28 – nearly a year after he was locked up – officers loaded Collom into a van and dropped him off on a sidewalk in downtown Jackson.

He said no one told him why he got out. 

“I have no idea, no clue, not even the slightest inkling,” he said. 

To Collom, his freedom seemed as bewildering as his confinement.

A backlog of cases and a promise to act

A little over a month earlier, McCullouch stood in the federal courthouse in downtown Jackson. It was the very day the governor would appoint him district attorney after former Hinds DA Jody Owens pleaded guilty to a federal corruption charge and resigned.

McCullouch made a promise to U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves: He would release people facing nonviolent charges from the jail.

Conditions at the Raymond Detention Center, which the judge oversees through a long-running consent decree, were as bad as ever. Days earlier, an 18-year-old had been stomped to death, a video of his final moments going viral. 

The jail was also crowded. The number of unindicted detainees had barely budged from October 2025, when the federally appointed jail receiver, Wendell France, had asked Owens to “expeditiously resolve” pending cases. 

About a month after appearing before Reeves, McCullouch attempted to make good on the promise. His office asked the public defender for a list of defendants facing nonviolent charges. This yielded 60 names, from which prosecutors selected 32 candidates for release. 

By the time prosecutors presented the cases to McDaniels, most of the defendants had been in jail for at least 150 days. 

Charlie King, a new prosecutor leading the release effort, told the judge some of the defendants had yet to be indicted because the DA’s office couldn’t proceed until it obtained the complete investigative file, even though prosecutors have sometimes taken cases to the grand jury without one.

“In the past,” McDaniels noted, the DA “would just kind of sit around and wait until law enforcement sent the file over.” 

King said he could not speak to Owens’ decisions. 

“The lack of file,” King said, “is unacceptable.” 

Judge presses prosecutors for answers

Once a person is arrested in Mississippi, the justice system offers few chances at freedom.

The first opportunity typically comes during an initial court appearance, when a judge decides whether to give a defendant a bond and sets an amount. If they cannot afford the amount, a defendant can ask for a lower bond after a probable cause hearing. 

If those efforts fail, defendants can find themselves in a no man’s land while waiting for a grand jury to review their charges.

The path out usually runs through one judge: Johnnie McDaniels. 

He presides over all unindicted criminal cases. His power comes from a 2023 standing order, issued by Hinds County Circuit Court Senior Judge Winston Kidd. 

In evaluating requests for release, judges in Mississippi have discretion to determine if a defendant poses a danger to the community and how likely they would be to return to court. 

In the first case the district attorney’s office presented from the public defenders’ list, McDaniels questioned why prosecutors wanted to release a man charged with possessing a firearm as a convicted felon.

King cited poor jail conditions. 

“You were in my chambers,” McDaniels, sitting behind a plexiglass barrier, told King. “I think I was pretty clear the idea of what may be happening with jail overcrowding is not going to compel this court.”

The judge asked if the DA’s office would still seek the man’s release if there weren’t an issue with jail crowding. 

“I have to hear persuasive arguments, not political arguments,” McDaniels added before granting the request. 

To reach his decisions, McDaniels considers not only the details of an offense but also a defendants’ ties to the community and their character.

“I’m not sure the facts of this matter,” the judge told the public defender, Ginny Kramer, after she asked him to release a 27-year-old father of two who had a job lined up cleaning cars at a showroom. Before his arrest, he had been working to earn a GED at a community college. 

McDaniels wanted to know what property the man was alleged to have stolen. 

In another case, McDaniels learned that a defendant who had been unindicted and in jail for nearly two years on DUI and drug charges was now in a wheelchair because he had broken his leg while incarcerated.

“He’s been through a lot while in jail,” Kramer told the judge.

McDaniels was unmoved, asserting that statistics showed people arrested for DUI had likely driven under the influence at least 40 times before being caught.

“How does the ailment,” McDaniels asked, “prevent him from driving around under the influence of alcohol?” 

Release orders don’t always mean freedom

Throughout the hearings, the judge returned to the question of why the DA’s office had yet to indict defendants they now wanted released. 

“It appears all the other parties … did their job,” McDaniels said after hearing the case of a woman charged with first-degree arson. “And at that point, nothing else happened.”

McCullouch acknowledged in an interview that his office needed to indict cases more quickly. 

He hopes whoever wins Tuesday’s special election for district attorney will continue changes he made to the grand jury unit, including hiring a prosecutor focused on clearing unindicted cases.

That employee, Greta Kemp Martin, combs through jail logs every day to find cases that need to be indicted. 

The five candidates for Hinds DA agree the backlog of unindicted cases needs to be addressed, though they differ on how best to do so. 

But people keep slipping through the cracks. 

Dennis Green is among them.

He has been in jail since December 2024, accused of burglary, malicious mischief and violating parole. McDaniels had ordered him released in June 2026 and then again in September, after the DA’s office brought his case back up. 

A recently released defendant, 59-year-old Jerry Jefcoat, had been in jail since April 2026 on charges of failure to register as a sex offender. But the DA’s office said it couldn’t find the police officer who filed charges, preventing prosecutors from presenting the case to the grand jury. 

“We are still unable to ascertain who the ‘Williams’ is that is listed as the investigator,” Martin said. 

Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones, whose department had oversight of the jail until the federal government stripped it of control, declined to be interviewed.

The DA’s office told Mississippi Today that the judge had not denied any of its requests for release. But a review of court records showed otherwise.

McDaniels denied four motions. In three, the judge wrote the defendants had already been indicted.

Yet, court records show no indication any of the three defendants had been served with their indictments, despite remaining in county custody.

De Gruy, the state public defender, said the failure was emblematic of more breakdowns in the system. 

“Presumably, the prosecutor has a copy of the indictment,” he said. “They could hand it to the bailiff, and the bailiff could serve the person. It could happen in the courtroom. I just cannot understand how people can be indicted, in jail and the indictment not served.” 

De Gruy, who remains skeptical, said he had recently noticed the jail’s daily population counts declined, suggesting the DA’s office’s new approach might be producing results. 

“But are you going to do it again?” he asked. 

Starting next year, Mississippi families can get a break on their taxes for donating to scholarships that will largely benefit private schools, experts say. 

The federal program, created by President Donald Trump’s 2025 “One Big Beautiful Bill Act,” will give people a break on their taxes for contributing to scholarships that can pay for education expenses at private schools, charter schools or public schools. Experts expect most of the money will flow toward private schools and families who could already afford, or were on the cusp of being able to afford, a private school education. 

Proponents of school-choice policies — which are aimed at giving families more educational options, often funding those choices with public money — say it’s a win for the state. 

But school-choice opponents argue the policies siphon money away from the public education system, which must serve every child, and force Mississippi into a program its residents have already said they don’t want. 

Republican state lawmakers, led by House Speaker Jason White, made a full-court push to expand school-choice policies in Mississippi earlier this year. However, House Bill 2, his lengthy school-choice bill, passed by a thin margin in the House and was killed by the Senate. 

Before that, in January, Gov. Tate Reeves announced that Mississippi would be participating in the federal tax credit scholarship program starting in 2027. States must opt in to that program. 

Douglas Carswell described it as an “awesome” program that allows the state to correct the Senate’s failure to expand school-choice options. He heads up the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, a conservative think tank that backs the expansion of school-choice policies.

Nancy Loome, a public school advocate and founder of The Parents’ Campaign, disagrees with Reeves’ decision. 

“Voters made it clear when House Bill 2 was debated in the 2026 legislative session that they don’t want this,” she said.

How does the federal tax credit program work?

The federal program allows taxpayers to contribute up to $1,700 each, or $3,400 for a married couple filing jointly, to an organization that awards school scholarships.

The governor designates scholarship-granting organizations, or SGOs, to award money to a school to cover costs of a child’s education. Taxpayers can’t direct their money to a particular student or school, but SGOs can focus on a particular group of students, like students who attend religious private schools. 

Reeves has not yet finalized his list of SGOs for Mississippi, according to the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, which is tracking and publishing the state’s eligible SGOs. The governor’s office did not respond to multiple requests for comment. 

Donors will get a dollar-for-dollar tax credit, a break on their taxes equal to the amount they contribute, which is about three times as much as people receive from donating to a children’s hospital or other causes. 

Families who earn up to 300% of the area’s median income qualify to participate in the scholarship program. That’s six figures in Mississippi, or about $150,000. 

Paige Shoemaker DeMio, a senior policy analyst at Center for American Progress, a progressive policy and research institute, said the people who will benefit those most from the tax credit program are wealthy and owe $1,700 or more in taxes. Research about existing state tax credit scholarship programs back that up. 

“Statistically, people who are higher income owe that much in taxes,” she said.

There’s no set amount for the scholarships. The scholarship-granting organization sets the amount. 

And across the country, school-choice scholarships and vouchers provide anywhere between $4,000 to $9,000. Nationally, private school tuition averages about $13,000. That means while federal scholarships may make it easier for families on the cusp of being able to afford private schools, that education still may be unaffordable to the neediest families.

Will federal tax credit scholarships help students from low-income families?

There’s no requirement to prioritize the scholarships for low-income students. A majority of private school vouchers across the country go to students who could already afford and were attending private schools, according to research.

Carswell recognized the reality that the scholarships may miss low-income students. 

“We need to ensure that we have SGOs that provide access to private education for low-income families, too,” he said. “That’s why we need a broad range of SGOs that offer smaller schools, and not just established ones, access to the new source of funding.”

However, the governor has little power to tailor the program to the state’s students, Shoemaker DeMio said.

The federal regulations require Reeves to approve any SGOs that meet the minimum requirements. He can’t impose additional reporting or standards.

The lack of transparency and reporting requirements is a “huge lost opportunity,” said Mike Petrilli of the Fordham Institute, a national conservative-leaning education policy think tank.

“It’s very much a light touch,” he said. “We may never know if this is making a difference for kids.”

How will tax credit scholarships for private schools affect public ones?

There’s been some movement nationally to use the program to divert money to public schools, including public charter schools, Shoemaker DeMio said, but it’s tricky to understand how that would play out. Public schools do not charge students to attend. 

And the federal guidance regulating that part of the program hasn’t been made public yet, she said. It’s also unclear how much it will cost states to administer the program, which could include monitoring fraud, reviewing audits and other duties. 

The U.S. Department of Treasury estimates the tax-credit scholarship program, which begins all over the country in 2027, will cost taxpayers $26 billion in its first three years. That would make it the federal government’s largest education expense — more than Title I, which ensures that economically disadvantaged children receive a high-quality education, and the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act, which guarantees children with disabilities receive an equitable education.

“We’d be spending as a country more on private schools than any other (public education) program,” Shoemaker DeMio said. That could mean spending less on public education in the future, which could be especially detrimental to a state like Mississippi that heavily relies on federal funding. 

But most concerning to DeMio is that Mississippi voters have already rejected school-choice programs through legislative action. 

“Any time school choice has been on a ballot, it has failed,” she said. “This is clearly not a popular program, but people have now found a way to get around the voters and ignore what Americans want. It’s incredibly frustrating.”

Tuesday’s midterm elections will determine control of both chambers of Congress.

In Mississippi, a U.S. Senate race tops the ticket, which includes contested general elections for all four of the state’s U.S. House districts.

We want to make sure Mississippians have all the information they need to vote. That’s why we’ve answered some frequently asked questions about voting and election day. 

When can I vote on election day?

Polls will be open from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. on Tuesday. Anyone in line by 7 p.m. can still vote after closure time.

What do I need to bring to the polls?

All Mississippi voters are required to present a photo ID. If you do not present an acceptable form of photo ID, you are entitled to cast an affidavit ballot, but must then present an ID at your local circuit clerk’s office within five business days. For voter ID information or help obtaining valid identification, call 1-800-829-6786.

Mississippi 2026 midterm elections guide: Who’s running? What are the issues?

How do I find out where I vote?

To find your polling location, view sample ballots and see who your current officeholders are, go the the secretary of state’s My Election Day page.

How do I check to see if I’m registered to vote?

You can check your voter registration status through this portal on the Secretary of State’s website. You can also contact your county circuit clerk’s office for registration verification. For your circuit clerk’s address and contact information, go to the secretary of state’s County Election Information page here.

CHECK YOUR STATUS: Counties have purged some voters from their rolls recently. Confirm your status as a registered voter here through the secretary of state’s office.

How do I vote absentee?

Absentee voting began on Sept. 19. Mississippi does not have standard early voting like many other states do, but the state allows for absentee voting in person and by mail under certain circumstances, including for students attending schools away from their homes, people who will be away from their residence due to work or “any qualified elector who is required to be away from his or her residence within the county on election day for any reason.” Those who are 65 or older also can vote absentee by mail or in person. For more information on how to vote absentee, go to this page on the secretary of state’s website.

Who do I contact if I experience problems while trying to vote?

You can call the Mississippi Secretary of State’s Elections hotline at 1-800-829-6786 

You can also email ElectionsAnswers@sos.ms.gov.

Read more about Tuesday’s races in Mississippi:

SENATE: Mississippi midterms: Colom trying to capitalize on economic discontent. Hyde-Smith trying to tie him to far left

HOUSE 1st DISTRICT: Mississippi midterms: Trump weighs heavily in 1st District contest between Kelly, Johnson

HOUSE 2nd DISTRICT: Mississippi midterms: Thompson takes on repeat 2nd District Republican challenger as redistricting fight looms

HOUSE 3rd DISTRICT: Mississippi midterms: In traditionally red 3rd District, Guest faces political newcomer farmer from Shubuta

HOUSE 4th DISTRICT: Mississippi midterms: In 4th District race, Ezell touts FEMA and Coast Guard wins. Hulum bets on Trump backlash

Creatures of all shapes and sizes and icons from the past, present and future put aside their differences to gather under an overcast sky for the Belhaven Boo, the Jackson’s neighborhood’s annual Halloween fair Saturday.