Incumbent Republican U.S. Rep. Steven Palazzo faces challenger Jackson County Sheriff Mike Ezell in Tuesday’s runoff for the GOP primary for the 4th District House seat, serving South Mississippi.

Palazzo, facing a crowded field of Republican challengers in the midterm primary, received about 32% of the vote; Ezell about 25%, forcing a runoff.

The two candidates spoke with Mississippi Today ahead of the runoff and a scheduled Friday debate on Coast television station WLOX.

Here is some background on the candidates, what they believe the top issues are and what differentiates them from one another.

The candidates

Ezell, who grew up in Pascagoula, is a 42-year veteran law enforcement officer in South Mississippi.

He started his career with the Pascagoula Police Department, working his way from jailer to chief of detectives, then served as chief of police for the city of Ocean Springs. He was elected sheriff of Jackson County, a post he has held since 2014.

Ezell has a degree in criminal justice from the University of Southern Mississippi and is a graduate of the FBI National Academy.

Palazzo, a Coast native, is a certified public accountant who ran his own business before taking his current office. He is a former state legislator, and has held the 4th District U.S. House seat since 2011.

Palazzo is a Marine Corps veteran and serves in the Mississippi National Guard.

Voters’ issues

Both candidates said inflation — particularly soaring gasoline prices — is the top issue they hear from 4th District residents as they campaign.

“The cost of energy is off the charts,” Palazzo said. “It was to be expected — President Biden when he was on his campaign said we would end our reliance on fossil fuels. Well, guess what? Now we have $5 a gallon gas. He cancelled Keystone pipeline on day one, killing hundreds of thousands of jobs, and many of those were in Mississippi, where we have pipe manufacturers.”

Ezell said he hears from constituents: “Gas prices, grocery prices, not having groceries in some stores. I’ve talked with some of our trucker friends and they said the fuel prices are killing us, making it hard to get our goods to the stores. People are very upset about this.”

Palazzo said illegal immigration, with attendant human trafficking and drug smuggling is another major issue for South Mississippi.

Ezell said high taxes and overregulation are also major issues.

Policies and proposals

Both candidates said they would push for deregulation, particularly on the energy sector.

Ezell said he would work to get fertilizer and other costs down for Mississippi farmers “so they can make a profit.”

“There are so many regulations out there right now,” Ezell said. “… We need to work with like-minded conservative people in Congress to get some policies in place to make life better for people, like getting grocery prices down … We need to see about cutting the gas tax, for the truckers who get the goods to the stores … We’ve just got to remove some of these regulations so that we can help people earn a living.”

Palazzo said: “As someone who’s worked offshore, I know the importance of American energy — drill here, drill now. We need to unleash American energy resources and get America back to being energy independent, and I think we can do that.”

Palazzo said he would also push to re-start plans to build a U.S. southern border wall and increase military spending, and protect tax cuts and jobs legislation passed in 2017.

Candidates list accomplishments

Palazzo said his accomplishments as a congressman include, “I was able to secure $1.4 billion for the border as the homeland security negotiator on the Appropriations Committee in 2019, and we were building the wall two years ago and securing America.”

“With the ships we build at Ingalls (shipyard) we’ve been able to secure $26 billion for 26 different ships in 10 years, and that is so vital to our national security, but also to our quality of life here, because of the dependence we have on those jobs created locally,” Palazzo said. He said he has also worked to keep federal flood insurance affordable for homeowners on the Gulf Coast and worked to support the state’s military installations, including for upgrades at Camp Shelby near Hattiesburg to expand training.

“The number one driver of the economy in South Mississippi is federal spending,” Palazzo said. “We have to admit that to ourselves, but it’s good federal spending — national security, NASA programs, NOAA to help predict storms — and every bit of that goes through my committee where I sit on Appropriations.”

Ezell said: “Some of my greatest accomplishments are being a husband and a father and a grandfather … I started working in the jail, and worked my way all the way up to chief of detectives at Pascagoula. During that time, I was a competitive shooter, and got to travel all around the southeastern part of the country to compete and shoot and learned a lot of techniques from other officers. I also graduated from the FBI’s national academy, where I excelled in all fields of training and received an award for physical fitness and attention to duty. I am also proud of that. During my time at the Pascagoula Police Department, I went to night school at USM and got a degree in criminal justice. That was a big thing for me. I was only the third person in my family to get a college degree.”

Ezell said that as sheriff, Jackson County was the first in the state to open its own crime lab, to avoid backlog problems faced by the state lab and “to save taxpayers money and help all the surrounding agencies in our county have a crime lab.” Ezell said under his tenure his agency has also recently opened its own shooting range and training facility.

“When I first took over as sheriff, the former sheriff had been indicted and removed, and all the police chiefs came to me and said, ‘Mike, help us rehabilitate and get this (narcotics) task force back together,’ which we have done and now have a highly respected organization,” Ezell said. “We have our own budget, and don’t have to depend on seizures or anything like that for funding.”

What differentiates them?

Ezell said one thing that differentiates him from Palazzo is, “I will be available. You won’t have to look for me.”

Palazzo has for years faced criticism for not being very visible or accessible in his district.

“What I’ve heard so many times around this district is we don’t know where (Palazzo) is at,” Ezell said. “Where is our representative? We don’t know where he’s at, we can’t talk with him, he won’t call us back. I will be available. I will be in the district and I will return your phone calls … General rule 101 with the sheriff’s office is if you call, somebody better call you back and if not, I’m going to be asking you why did you not call that person back. That’s just a common courtesy, be it a sheriff or police officer or state representative or congressman.”

Palazzo said his experience and seniority in Congress, and relationships he’s built over years are needed for the 4th District.

“Most importantly, I have a proven, conservative voting record,” Palazzo said. “My opponent has no record where he has ever cast a vote on issues that matter most for South Mississippians, whether it’s pro-life, whether it’s pro gun, pro military or pro business. For 12 years I’ve been serving South Mississippi and I have a proven record of delivering for them on all those issues.

“… Seniority is important in the military and it’s important in Congress,” Palazzo said. “That’s how you get on the key committees and get key assignments.”

He said that should Republicans retake the House this midterm, he would be in line to be the chairman of the Homeland Security subcommittee of Appropriations where he can push for building a border wall.

Recently, all other Republican challengers in the first primary vote threw their support behind Ezell. U.S. House Republican Whip Steve Scalise of Louisiana in a trip to South Mississippi endorsed Palazzo.

The two candidates have agreed to a televised debate, scheduled for 7 p.m. Friday on WLOX-TV on the Coast.

“I’ve been to multiple debates, Steven Palazzo has not been to any of them,” Ezell said of this election cycle.

Palazzo said: “I think it’s important for voters in South Mississippi to see the contrast.”

The winner of the June 28 GOP runoff will face Democratic former longtime Hattiesburg Mayor Johnny DuPree and Libertarian Alden Patrick Johnson in the Nov. 8 general election.

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Mississippi again leads the nation in teen births despite declining rates both in the state and across the country. 

Mississippi’s rate dropped significantly over the past two decades but still lags behind the rest of the country. In 2020, the most recent year for which data was available, teenagers in Mississippi gave birth at a rate of almost double the national average, according to th4e Centers for Disease Control and Prevention data.

Advocates and a former state senator point to Mississippi’s unchanging – and in their view, lackluster – sex education law. 

Though the curricula for core subjects like math and science are reviewed and updated every five years, the Mississippi Department of Education has not approved any new sex-ed curricula in over a decade. 

Josh McCawley, deputy director of Teen Health Mississippi, a policy and advocacy group focused on the sexual and reproductive health of teenagers, said this inaction means Mississippi’s sex ed content is wildly out of date, with issues like consent and relationship violence largely absent.

“It’s really difficult to do really good sex education in 2022 when you’re working with curricula that was written in the 1990s,” McCawley said. 

Even if more curricula were approved by the state education department, there’s no guarantee schools would switch to a new one.

“Once a school picks a curriculum, they tend to stick with it,” said Scott Clements, state director of MDE’s School Health Programs.

Many of Mississippi’s teen mothers are 18 or 19 years old and out of reach of the primary school system. The birth rate among that age group is three times higher than that of 15- to 17-year-olds. 

While reforming Mississippi’s sex education policy is an important piece of the puzzle, McCawley said the need to address major issues like intergenerational poverty means it’s not the end-all, be-all for addressing the state’s high teen birth rate.

“It’d be great if there was one solution, but unfortunately, there’s many contributing factors that create an environment in which Mississippi has the highest teen birth rate in the country,”  McCawley said. “It’s going to take a lot of people from a lot of different sectors: education, health, social services, housing. It will take a lot of factors to address what we’re seeing.”

The national teen birth rate has declined 75% from its 1991 peak, a trend attributable to lower rates of sexual activity among young people and the increased use of contraception. 

The birth rate for teenagers ages 15–19 dropped in 31 states but increased in Mississippi in 2020. Rates among the states ranged from a low of 6.1 per 1,000 births in Massachusetts to a high of 27.9 in Mississippi. 

Mississippians, however, are less likely to use highly effective forms of contraception like intrauterine devices (IUDs) and implants. As of 2018, the number of patients at publicly funded Title X clinics who used such contraception was just 7%, compared to 18% nationally. In recent years, people have sometimes struggled to reach the clinics over the phone and have waited months for an appointment or been told that it’s up to the doctor on staff to determine what kind of birth control they receive.

Lawmakers passed the state’s sex education law in 2011, which required each school district to choose between  “abstinence-only” or “abstinence-plus” curricula. All must stress that abstaining from sex is the only method that offers foolproof protection from out-of-wedlock pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections. 

Attempts to change the law to require the curricula be medically accurate or evidence-based have failed. One of those attempts was by former Sen. Sally Doty, a Republican from Brookhaven and one of the few Republicans who supported changing the law.

Doty introduced the “Personal Responsibility Act” in 2016 which passed through the Senate Education Committee but was never brought up for a vote. The bill would have required sex ed curricula be evidence-based and would have also required that sex ed be taught twice in primary school, once in middle school and once in high school. The 2011 law did not set specific age requirements.

Doty, who is now the executive director of the Mississippi Public Utilities Staff, still supports those changes being made. She also advocates for changing to an opt-out rather than opt-in policy, ending the segregation by gender for sex ed instruction and removing the curricula requirements in state law that prevent evidence-based curricula used in other states from being used in Mississippi.

“I don’t think sex among teenagers is different in Mississippi than in any other state,” Doty said. 

Doty said that the absence of comprehensive sex ed in schools, or parents providing it at home, is detrimental to a teenager’s development, and means that many young people are only getting their sex education from pornography on the internet. Doty said that inaction by the Legislature isn’t helping either. 

“There’s some real problems with the law as it stands … it’s a difficult situation to talk about. But I don’t think anyone can look at the numbers in the state, and say that we don’t need to talk about it,” Doty said. 

Some of the restrictions in the state law also place an undue burden on school districts, according to McCawley. Mississippi’s law requires parents to opt-in their child to sex ed, which creates a logistical barrier that keeps kids with parents who support sex ed out of the classroom.

“If a student isn’t opting in, it’s mostly not because of parental disagreement, but because of the lack of efficiency of getting permission slips home and back,” McCawley said. 

Keeping boys and girls separate during sex ed instruction places another burden on schools that especially harms rural, short-staffed school districts, according to McCawley. 

The law also bans the demonstration of condoms and other methods of contraception. Teachers can tell students how to use them, but not show them. This has led to creative workarounds by advocates like Sanford Johnson, who went viral in 2012 for a video where he teaches students “how to put on a sock.” 

While Johnson, now the executive director of Teach Plus Mississippi, a nonprofit that trains teachers in understanding education policy, believes that more comprehensive, sex-positive services and resources are available to young people now than there were a decade ago, there’s a lot of work to be done. According to the sate health department’s 2015 Youth Risk Behavior Survey, 54% of Mississippi high school students have had sexual intercourse, and 39% did not use a condom the last time they had sex. 

Johnson says policy that treats young people like they’re not worthy of the truth contributes to these risky behaviors. 

“We know what works,” Johnson said. “When you present kids with all the information, they are going to make better decisions.” 

Eleven sex ed curricula were approved by the state education department in 2011. Of 142 public school districts in the state, 80 have chosen abstinence-only instruction and 62 have chosen abstinence-plus, according to current data from MDE. 

The approved curricula vary in substance and tone. The Game Plan curriculum, currently in use by Wilkinson County School District, was co-developed with former professional basketball player A.C. Green and is sports-themed. 

The REAL Essentials WAIT curriculum is currently used by 12 school districts and describes the proper use of a male condom as an “at risk” behavior for contracting HIV/AIDS. The curriculum includes activities like an STD crossword puzzle and prompts for classroom discussions like: “When it comes to sex, men are like microwaves and women are like crockpots!”

Ninety school districts teach Choosing The Best curriculum. Of those, 61 are using an abstinence-only version and 26 are using an abstinence-plus version. Abstinence-plus curricula teaches students about the risks and failure rates of contraceptive methods that aren’t abstinence.

The second most popular curriculum is Draw The Line/Respect The Line, an evidence-based, abstinence-plus curriculum currently in use by 26 school districts across the state. 

The contents and quality of sex ed instruction vary by district. While two districts might be using the same curriculum, there’s no guarantee that they teach the same lessons. The state sex ed law lists six components of abstinence-only instruction but does not require each be covered. 

While organizations like Teen Health Mississippi and Mississippi First have lobbied for legislators to update the state’s sex ed law for years, no action has been taken. The law was re-authorized as written in 2016 and 2021.

“The state Legislature really doesn’t want to touch something like sex education until they have to,” McCawley said. 

Another concern among advocates is that Mississippi’s sex ed law, as imperfect as it is, isn’t being followed. McCawley said that the sense of urgency and level of oversight that existed after the law was passed isn’t present anymore, and it’s likely many districts are no longer in compliance with the law.

“As time has gone on, the oversight has decreased, and districts have really caught on to that,” McCawley said. “They kind of realized that they can do whatever they want, if anything, and there’s going to be no repercussions for that.”

Clements, whose office oversees sex ed compliance, said that monitoring is done every three years but hasn’t occurred since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic. Monitoring will resume next year and includes reviewing which curriculum is being used and which teachers are providing the instruction. 

With all the challenges schools have faced due to COVID-19, sex ed hasn’t been a top priority, he said. 

“Unfortunately, like a lot of things with COVID, the focus has been making sure kids can get to school.” Clements said. 

Mississippi Today reporter Isabelle Taft contributed to this story.

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Jasmine Cleark-Gibson left teaching last month after seven and a half years in the classroom. It was time for a change. The lack of autonomy in her job made her feel like “she couldn’t fix things anymore,” and the myriad of responsibilities placed on her as an educator also left her with no bandwidth to care for her own children. 

“I found myself with nothing left to give to the people who are supposed to matter the most to me,” Cleark-Gibson said. “I was looking for a work-life balance that all people are trying to grasp, but nobody is respecting teachers enough to give them.” 

Mississippi has suffered from a critical teacher shortage for years, one that has only recently been measured. The Department of Education announced in December 2021 that there were over 3,000 certified teacher vacancies, a staggering figure considering that there are about 32,000 teachers across the state. 

Teachers and policymakers have long emphasized the need for competitive salaries to attract more teachers to Mississippi, a goal that saw progress this year when the Legislature passed the largest teacher pay raise in Mississippi history, putting Mississippi teachers above the Southeastern average.  

Despite these improvements, teachers in Mississippi are still leaving the classroom to teach in other states or take jobs in other fields. Data from the Mississippi Department of Education shows 5,800 teachers left their district at the end of the 2020-21 school year, or 17% of all teachers. These teachers may have moved between districts or left the profession entirely — this distinction is not captured in the MDE data.

Cleark-Gibson found her way to teaching through an alternate route program at Mississippi Valley State University, and taught English in the Leflore County School District, Midtown Public Charter School, and the Hinds County School District. 

She said she loved helping students reach the “lightbulb moment” and building relationships with students, since “they don’t care about the content until they know you care about them.”

But the pressures that are put on teachers — like countless meetings that take time away from lesson planning and the responsibility to be in tune with each student’s social and emotional well-being — left Cleark-Gibson overwhelmed. 

For Chevonne Dixon, a fifteen-year veteran of the Mississippi public education system, the time constraints were still a real concern, but the biggest factor was money. Dixon is a resident of DeSoto county but drives across the border to teach in Memphis, where she makes more and gets paid twice a month. 

“During the pandemic, I started filling out applications and I saw that I could actually live off of what I would be making in Memphis … so it was an easy choice for me,” she said. 

Dixon also highlighted the pressure that student loans put on teachers to seek higher-paying opportunities, something that Mississippi First K-12 Policy Director Toren Ballard has also been researching. Mississippi First published a report in January that found over half of Mississippi teachers were considering leaving the classroom within the next year. 

They surveyed 6,500 Mississippi teachers, data Ballard has continued digging into and has noticed some stark disparities. Teachers with student debt are twice as likely to be SNAP recipients and over twice as likely to not have $400 in case of an emergency. 

But that student debt also isn’t distributed evenly across the state. Ballard found that one in four teachers in F-rated districts owe over $100,000 in student debt, while only 4-5% of teachers in A and B-rated districts do. Poorly rated districts are also more likely to have teachers not return year-over-year, according to the data from MDE. 

“Teaching in Mississippi, obviously everyone’s salaries are low, but it’s a very inequitable profession even given that,” Ballard said. “People are experiencing wildly different financial realities.” 

The Mississippi First report found that over 90% of teachers thinking about leaving the classroom cited salaries as their reason, but respect from administrators came close behind. Amelia Watson, who taught for two and half years in the Petal and Pearl Public School Districts, said she was stretching herself thin to be the teacher she, and school leaders, wanted her to be. 

“I was meeting the expectations of my administrators, but it was nearly impossible to do so during contract hours,” Watson said.  “I wasn’t willing anymore to sacrifice my free time and my mental well-being, unpaid, for a job that doesn’t celebrate our achievements.” 

Watson said her husband and co-workers noticed her mental health declining during her third year, which led to her resignation. She has considered going back, but has found a great deal of stability in the boundaries of her current job as a recruitment coordinator, and said she wasn’t sure teaching would ever be able to give that to her. 

As for Dixon, the teacher in Memphis, she’s not planning to leave the profession any time soon. When asked if the most recent pay raise made Dixon reconsider taking a job out of state, she said no. She said that the salaries still aren’t where they should be, and that getting paid once a month necessitates being a strong budgeter — but if Mississippi were to fix those things, she would return. 

“My (plan) was to teach and retire in Mississippi, but I can’t afford to,” she said.

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The Institutions of Higher Learning Board of Trustees has decided that Delta State University president William LaForge’s last day will be at the end of this month, marking a sudden end to a nine-year tenure that oversaw budget instability, some progressive initiatives at the university, and sharp declines in enrollment due to the pandemic. 

Though the trustees made the decision at the board meeting last week, LaForge wrote in a lengthy campus-wide email that IHL did not tell him until “just prior” to sending out a press release Monday night. 

“I am very disappointed in the decision, but I accept the outcome and am fully prepared to move on,” he wrote. 

Through a university spokesperson, LaForge declined to talk with Mississippi Today, but he wrote in his email to the campus that the reason IHL gave for his departure was primarily financial. 

“The very basic explanation I was provided was that the IHL Board thinks a leadership change is warranted because the comparative state of the university from the time when I began my service in 2013 until now is not favorable — especially with respect to enrollment metrics and financial sustainability,” LaForge wrote. 

IHL did not provide its own reason for the move, and the trustees did not discuss the decision publicly at the board meeting last week. In IHL’s press release, Tom Duff, the board president, noted that “these are challenging times for higher education.” 

The board also announced that it had named E.E. “Butch” Caston as an interim replacement. Caston has held multiple administrative positions at Delta State University and Mississippi University for Women. 

“I appreciate Dr. Caston’s willingness to take on the role of interim president and feel certain that he will be able to address many of the issues facing Delta State at this time, including declining enrollment, fiscal challenges, and infrastructure,” Duff said. 

LaForge will be the first university president to depart after IHL made its presidential search process more confidential through a series of policy changes earlier this year. In April, the board voted to make it so search committee members are anonymous, even to each other, and to decrease the role that campus advisory groups play in selecting the president. 

Faculty are concerned these changes will make university presidents less accountable to students, faculty and staff. 

LaForge came to the university in 2013 with no experience in higher education. He had primarily worked in politics as chief of staff for Sen. Thad Cochran and as a lobbyist, but he had also served as president Delta State’s alumni association. 

“This is a career direction change for me,” LaForge said in 2013. “I have not been in higher education administration and I hope to be able to translate the skill sets I have.”

LaForge’s tenure has been marked by cyclical budget cuts. The first round came about a year after he took office. In fall 2014, the university announced about $1 million in cuts, eliminating a slew of academic programs and shuttering the print version of the campus newspaper. Twenty-four positions were terminated. Students and faculty held a mock funeral in protest, the Clarion Ledger reported.

The announcement came just a few months after the university announced a higher-than-anticipated fundraising haul.  

Delta State has seen several progressive endeavors under LaForge. In 2014, the university won a national social justice award for its first “Winning the Race” conference which brought former Gov. William Winter and Rep. Bennie Thompson to campus. More recently, students and faculty held an on-campus screening of a documentary about the 1969 sit-in that led to police arresting dozens of Black students. More than 500 people attended. 

Faculty led much of those initiatives, though, and the administration has been slow in other efforts. In late 2016, Delta State was the last public university in Mississippi to stop flying the state flag that contained the Confederate emblem. 

“I wish to make it clear that this university is making an institutional decision on this issue because the state government has declined to change the flag,” LaForge said at the time. “This is a painful decision in many respects because this is a highly charged emotional issue for many people.” 

More recently, many students, faculty and alumni have signed a petition calling on LaForge’s administration to rename the Walter Sillers Coliseum – the basketball arena named for the white supremacist founder of the Delta Council. The petition asked for the arena to be renamed in honor of Luisa “Lucy” Harris, the first Black woman on Delta State’s women’s basketball team who died earlier this year. 

LaForge has not publicly commented on the petition. His wife, Nancy, spoke at Harris’ funeral, which was held in the Coliseum. 

The university has struggled to weather the pandemic. Enrollment has dropped by 27% since fall 2019 – the largest drop of any school. In fall 2020, Delta State was the only university to raise tuition rates. 

Earlier this year, LaForge’s administration was still concerned about the budget. Minutes from a February 2022 cabinet meeting show the executive committee “has been reviewing all potential budget savings and cuts; discussing ways to reimage (sic) core programs and growth areas; and, talking about ways to realign the budget to highlight the university’s priorities.”

At IHL’s meeting last week, the trustees were briefed on each university’s budget and finances. One of the budget documents that trustees reviewed showed that Delta State has just 40 days cash on hand, the lowest reserve in the system. Delta State is also the only university facing a negative return on total assets, which means it is losing money on investments.  

In his campus-wide email, LaForge wrote that his family plans to return to northern Virginia. The appointment as university president was a homecoming for LaForge, who grew up in Cleveland, Miss., and attended Delta State as an undergrad. His father, a history professor at Delta State, is honored with a library on campus. 

“I will be forever grateful to Delta State University for all it has given me in life,” LaForge wrote. 

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Mississippi is set to become the first state where prison officials can choose how a person sentenced to death is executed. 

Starting July 1, the Department of Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain and two deputy commissioners will decide the method of execution for incarcerated people: lethal injection, gas chamber, electrocution or firing squad.

“This statute throws it all into the hands of the Mississippi Department of Corrections without guidance and restrictions,” said Ngozi Ndulue, deputy director of the Death Penalty Information Center. 

Twenty-seven states have the death penalty. Ndulue said most use lethal injection as the primary execution method and some have backup execution methods if lethal injection isn’t available. 

Cain has witnessed several executions as the former warden of Louisiana’s Angola State Prison and Mississippi’s most recent execution as the corrections commissioner. 

“The courts are the ones who decide the penalties for crime, not MDOC,” he said in a Friday statement. “We just hold the keys. When the court orders me, I am required by Mississippi statute to carry out the sentence.”

The law does not specify how MDOC officials are supposed to decide what execution method to select. 

Ndulue said this can lead to decisions being made in an “internal, non-transparent way.” There are considerations, including whether lethal injection drugs are available and there are protocols and training of how to use other forms of execution, she said. 

Mississippi is also a state that has a lot of secrecy about its execution protocols and how it obtains lethal injection drugs, she said. 

“This is something the public doesn’t have a lot of insight into,” Ndulue said. “What is actually going on?”

MDOC officials will have this new responsibility through House Bill 1479 proposed by Rep. Nick Bain, R-Corinth. He chairs the Judiciary B Committee and is vice chair of the Judiciary En Banc Committee. 

Bain said the governor and attorney general’s offices asked for the legislation to be filed because the state was having difficulty obtaining lethal injection drugs to carry out death sentences. 

The previous version of the law, passed in 2017, said if lethal injection was not possible due to unavailable drugs or a legal challenge, an incarcerated person could be put to death by gas chamber. Electrocution was the next option if lethal gas was unavailable and the last alternate was execution by firing squad. 

Lethal injection remains Mississippi’s preferred form of execution, according to legislation. 

“We put language in the final draft saying it is our policy, as the Legislature, that lethal injection be chosen,” Bain said. “That gives (the commissioner) the idea that we want lethal injection and that should be the way to do it.”

Within seven days of receiving a warrant of execution from the Mississippi Supreme Court, the MDOC commissioner must inform the prisoner of the method in writing. 

Ndulue said the law could lead to last minute legal action about executions. For Mississippi’s most recent execution, there was less than 30 days between the execution being issued and being carried out. 

States have argued they need backup methods of execution because of challenges of obtaining lethal injection drugs, she said. 

Ndulue said some drug manufacturers have objected to their drugs being used for executions. Some states have resorted to getting lethal injection drugs from overseas or going to compounding pharmacies to have the drugs made, she said. 

Lethal injection has also been called into question through legal action. 

An ongoing federal civil lawsuit filed in 2015 on behalf of three people serving on death row in Mississippi argues the state’s lethal injection protocol violates their right to due process and violates the Eighth Amendment, which prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. 

Mississippi and other states have used a mix of three drugs including an anesthetic during executions. 

The lawsuit claims compounded or mixed drugs could be “counterfeit, expired, contaminated and/or sub-potent” and could result in prisoners being conscious throughout their execution and subjected to “a tortuous death by suffocation and cardiac arrest.” 

The bill that goes into effect next month specifies the lethal injection drugs used in execution must be “a substance or substance in a lethal quantity” rather than one containing an anesthetic, paralytic agent and potassium chloride, as the 2017 version of the law laid out. 

From the early 1800s to 1940, all Mississippi executions were by hanging, according to MDOC. Execution by electrocution took place from 1940 to 1952, followed by the use of a portable electric chair moved from county to county. Lethal gas executions took place between 1954 and 1984. 

Mississippi carried out 35 gas chamber executions between 1955 and 1989, according to MDOC. 

Between 2002 and 2022, 18 people were executed by lethal injection in the state, according to MDOC.  

All executions are performed at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman, which is where death row is. 

For women, executions happen in a facility designated by the MDOC commissioner, according to state law. The one woman serving on death row is at the Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Pearl. 

Mississippi’s most recent execution was that of David Neal Cox on Nov. 17, 2021. 

He was convicted on multiple charges, including the murder of his estranged wife, Kim Cox, and the sexual assault of his then-underage stepdaughter in front of his dying wife in 2010 in Union County. 

The post New law gives MDOC commissioner choice in how people are executed appeared first on Mississippi Today.

Re-entry provides a path to second chances and is one of the key pillars of the criminal justice system.

These types of programs give former offenders opportunities to find fulfillment through work. Finding value in work helps reduce recidivism rates and improve public safety. However, finding meaningful work outside of prison comes with its own set of struggles. In a report done by the Institute for Justice, 40 out of 43 professions examined included restrictions toward individuals with a criminal record.

“About 50 percent will return to jail if we’re not providing them the tools they need, but that’s 50 percent who will make it and we need to pour into them,” said Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey.

Recidivism is an issue for both the government and the community. The government is having to put more money into prisoner care, Mississippi alone spends around $360 million dollars per year on the prison system. With the local community, it means higher crime rates and higher taxpayer expenses.

The high rates of recidivism are often due to the fact of ex-inmates not being able to conquer society basics upon release. Securing housing, transportation, employment, and education necessary for an advanced life is nearly impossible to do alone.

These individuals trying to re-enter society have spent decades incarcerated and are trying to navigate the simplest things that we find to be the basics of everyday life. Experiences like using an iPhone, choosing their own food, or finding transportation can be extremely overwhelming.

“A lot of support needs to be put in place for the first two months so they can through those trip hazards. We can make sure those supports are in place. Making sure people have access to education and gainful employment opportunities,” Alysha Judkins of FWD.us says.

A large part of former inmates re-entering society involves re-entry programs. Reintegrating inmates back into society requires space for transition. These programs offer job training that is crucial to ensure stable income and housing. It helps individuals sort out confusion and find purpose in a new society.

“Re-entry needs to begin the day you enter. We need to get away from warehousing individuals. Re-entry needs to work on the three important things: housing, transportation, and employment,” said Scott Peyton of Right on Crime.

Support within these programs also involves support through mental health issues and drug abuse, this helps to identify the root of the issues that first lead them to crime in the first place. Re-entry helps guide individuals to resist or avoid counterproductive situations in relation to their recovery process.

“Re-entry is essential for quality of life, building your family, building the community, and self-worth. Re-entry helps build those four qualities we all want,” said Peyton.

Re-entry programs help ensure individuals entering back into society live safe, healthy, and law-abiding lives.

“When you pour into people, give them the tools and support they need, we can restore hope,” said Judkins, “People tend to make bad choices when they don’t think they have another option. It’s our job to restore that hope.”