Last week, a judge made a surprising decision to overturn his own guilty verdict in the case of a Mississippi civil rights attorney who was arrested by the police for recording a traffic stop last summer.
Jill Collen Jefferson, the founder of the grassroots group Julian in 2020, was arrested by Lexington police in June. Her arrest came after she recorded officers conducting a traffic stop.
Julian was already involved in a lawsuit against the police department at the time, and her arrest occurred just nine days after the US Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division visited the small, predominantly Black city in response to numerous accusations of police misconduct and the use of excessive force.
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Judge Marcus Fisher of the Holmes County Justice Court found Jefferson guilty of several misdemeanors stemming from the incident on January 31st following a bench trial.
However, he reversed his own verdicts in a concise one-page decision, citing a comprehensive examination of the facts and evidence as the reason for the change.
Jefferson informed the local media that she was aware the verdict would be invalidated prior to the commencement of her trial. She observed that Fisher seemed to struggle with pronouncing the words, suggesting that he may not have been the author of the verdict.
Verdict Confusion in Jefferson’s Case
In Fisher’s verdict document, he stated that he was “resending” the verdict instead of “rescinding.” Jefferson’s attorneys stated that they interpreted his intention as “rescind,” however, the court did not provide any response despite multiple requests for comment.
“And at the conclusion of the trial, when it came time for him to deliver his verdict, he recited the contents of the paper word for word, even turning pages. It was evident that he had not authored the document, as he struggled to pronounce certain words in the verdict,” Jefferson shared with Mississippi Public Broadcasting.
Jefferson, who shared a copy of the decision on X, formerly known as Twitter, was involved in writing speeches for former President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign. The documents were verified by HuffPost through Jefferson’s attorney, Michael Carr.
Last month, Jefferson and other local civil rights attorneys filed another lawsuit against Lexington and its police department, detailing allegations of racist tactics and officer misconduct.
An investigation into the Lexington Police Department was initiated by the Department of Justice in November, in response to multiple allegations of police abuse and misconduct by officers.
Lexington is a town of around 1,600 residents, where the majority of the population is Black, accounting for 80%, while the white population stands at 18%, as per the 2020 census. In the past two years, the police department in Lexington has faced federal lawsuits filed by nearly 20 individuals of Black descent.
In 2022, a recording surfaced of the town’s former police chief, Sam Dobbins, making offensive remarks that included racial slurs, homophobic comments, and boasting about shooting a Black man numerous times.