From Midnight to Guntown: True Crime Stories from a Federal Prosecutor in Mississippi

3. Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs

173 3 CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL WRONGS Introduction When I joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office, because of my three years of civil rights experience with Legal Services during law school and my two years as law clerk for Judge William Keady during school and prison desegregation, U.S. Attorney H. M. Ray assigned me to do all the office’s civil rights cases, both criminal and civil. For a few years, we had only civil class actions, handled by the Civil Rights Division in Washington with me helping. First there was Gates, a monster class-action suit to desegregate Parchman Prison; then came Gipson, another monster classaction with over five thousand plaintiffs claiming discrimination in hiring by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Later came Papasan, a class action by school superintendents against Mississippi and the United States for frittering away during the Civil War all the lands set aside to support public schools. Most difficult was the famed Ayers case to desegregate and equalize Mississippi’s five white and three black state universities. The case lasted over three decades and outlived its plaintiff, its first trial judge, and numerous defendant governors and college presidents. When it was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, I ended up in Washington in the 174 Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs unique role of briefing U.S. Solicitor General Kenneth Starr as to its years of intricacies. Eventually my criminal civil rights cases began and with a vengeance. Nearly all of them involved alleged use of excessive force by officers against citizens in custody, either inmates or persons just arrested. From Marks came the allegation that an intoxicated sheriff tried to fire a bullet between an inmate’s ear and his head, fortunately missing both. The sheri ff then cut the crotch out of his jeans with a sharp knife in an attempt to get him to confess. We won a victory of sorts in the first trial. The jury hung up 6–6, which was the first case in the history of our district where an all-white jury did not acquit a white officer for abusing a black defendant. Then we began to win. Several Delta cross burners pled guilty. A white jury convicted the chief deputy sheriff of Tippah County of beating a seventy-year-old black arrestee. The black chief deputy sheriff of Marshall County pled guilty to abusing a black inmate by accidentally shooting him while beating him with an illegal sawed-off shotgun. Even that victory was not wholly popular. When the deputy got back from federal prison, a large integrated crowd held a parade and threw a party for him. The sheriff hired him back. It was discouraging, but at least we had the races agreeing on something: They liked officers better than inmates. Next, a Justice Court judge pled guilty to sexually molesting several poor and defenseless female litigants who had cases in his court, boasting about his handy “pecker pump” paid for by his social security. Then we got the big case. An anonymous informant from Parchman began reporting to us that guards had beaten an inmate almost to death. The warden and deputy warden were both allegedly present. It was our chance to put an end to the legend that beatings and killings of inmates at Parchman were commonplace and committed with impunity. With the help of master FBI interrogator and polygrapher Ed Lee of New Orleans, we got several guards to cooperate, resulting in several guilty pleas and jury convictions. We hoped it would help reduce the culture of brutality and silence that had so long ruled at Parchman. The legislature created a new, much more effective internal affairs unit headed by a retired FBI agent untainted by politics. Then we lost another trial. A young businessman from Columbus, after drinking several shots of foul-tasting Jaegermeister in a local dance club, staggered next door and kicked in the plate glass window of a Civil Rights and Civil Wrongs 175 department store. When police arrived, the drunk tried to resist, and officers beat the stew out of him, breaking several ribs and collapsing a lung. One officer repeatedly practiced his karate on the victim, kicking him numerous times all the way across the large showroom. The whole incident was captured on the store’s video surveillance tape...