IAPE Evidence Blog

Hat­ties­burg Amer­i­can, hattiesburgamerican.com
BYLINE: Tim Doherty, tdoherty@hattiesburgamerican.com

Lamar County, MS

Facil­ity set to open by end of year

Work con­tin­ues on the Lamar County Inmate Work Cen­ter in Purvis. The 54-bed cen­ter will house non-violent offend­ers and help relieve crowd­ing at the main jail. Pho­tos by Matt Bush | Hat­ties­burg American

PURVIS — A 54-bed work cen­ter that will house non-violent offend­ers is expected to be fin­ished by year’s end.

The Lamar County Inmate Work Cen­ter is not only expected to help relieve crowd­ing at the main jail but also take some strain off the county budget.

“By the end of the year, we hope to have it up and run­ning,” Lamar County Sher­iff Danny Rigel said.

The project began late last year, with the relo­ca­tion of the county’s family/children ser­vices depart­ment. The con­ver­sion of the facil­ity adja­cent to Mul­berry Street about 50 yards north of Lamar County Law Enforce­ment Com­plex then began

“We’ve com­pletely remod­eled it,” Rigel said. “We’re keep­ing the cost down by using county work­ers and inmate workers.”

County Admin­is­tra­tor Chuck Ben­nett said $200,000 had been set aside for the con­ver­sion in the 2010 – 11 bud­get, though a por­tion of that money will carry over into the 2012 fis­cal year that starts Oct. 1.

“This will go into the next bud­get year, but we’re doing it in-house, and we’re (pay­ing) it as we go,” Ben­nett said.

An inmate worker preps walls at the Lamar County Inmate Work Cen­ter being built in Purvis. 

Much of the inte­rior work and util­ity instal­la­tion has been com­pleted, includ­ing a search room, prop­erty room and recep­tion room. A shower/bathroom pod on the west side of the build­ing is nearly fin­ished, with county crews installing roof and ceil­ing over that area.

“We’re here every day now, so a cou­ple months, maybe three, I’m hop­ing, and we’ll be fin­ished,” said Frank Macias, build­ing and grounds direc­tor for the county. “We’ve got all the mate­r­ial, so there shouldn’t be any­thing to hold us up anymore.”

Bed­ding, fenc­ing, sur­veil­lance and alarm sys­tems will be among the final steps before inmates are moved into the building.

The exte­rior also will be land­scaped, Rigel said.

“The last thing we’re going to do is to try and make it as aes­thet­i­cally pleas­ing as pos­si­ble, so it doesn’t look like a jail from the out­side,” Rigel said. “Hope­fully, the gen­eral pub­lic is not going to know there’s any difference.”

But Rigel also stressed that the barracks-like cen­ter will be every bit as pro­tected as the jail.

“It’ll be con­nected to the jail and as secure as the jail,” Rigel said. “It’s going to be alarmed. It’s going to be wired. It’s going to be fenced.

“But we’re also going to be able to save money by being able to use the main, sup­port facil­i­ties already in the jail, like the laun­dry, the kitchen, that type stuff.”

The county’s jail, which opened seven years ago, can house 164 inmates. As Lamar County’s pop­u­la­tion grew fol­low­ing Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina, jail cells began fill­ing up as well. The jail aver­ages about 130 to 140 pris­on­ers a day, Rigel said.

“It’s going to free up a lot of bed space,” Rigel said of the cen­ter. “We’re going to be able to house about 54 inmate work­ers when it’s up and run­ning, fully up and run­ning, and that’ll allow more room in the main jail, which is where we house the vio­lent offenders.”

That will buy the county time to con­sider future inmate hous­ing solu­tions, Ben­nett said.

What the cen­ter also is expected to pro­vide is a deeper pool of work­ers that can be used by the county.

Inmates work out­side the jail on a vari­ety of details already. Two, seven-man crews pick lit­ter from county roads. Oth­ers are used for projects at county-owned build­ings and grounds. The county uses inmate labor to clean high school foot­ball sta­di­ums after games as well as help dur­ing the county’s “white goods” col­lec­tion on the weekends.

“It’s the worker you see out in the county now on trash detail, at the cour­t­house, pub­lic build­ings, for main­te­nance, jan­i­to­r­ial, san­i­ta­tion, that kind of stuff,” Rigel said.

In addi­tion to help­ing build the inmate cen­ter, inmate labor also com­ple­mented county work crews on the recent decon­struc­tion of the inte­rior of the county’s old Cir­cuit Cour­t­house. Ben­nett esti­mated that the county saved hun­dreds of thou­sands of dol­lars by using in-house and inmate labor.

Down the road, inmate labor could sup­ple­ment county work­ers in areas such as san­i­ta­tion and build­ing and grounds.

“Obvi­ously, there are costs,” Ben­nett said. “You have to feed them and house them and pro­vide them with med­ical care, but it’s not the same as pay­ing a $100 a day. It may be $20 a day.

“So, long term, it’ll help out with (county labor) costs, sea­sonal work and also take some of the (pop­u­la­tion) pres­sure off the jail a lit­tle bit.”

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

hattiesburgamerican.com
BYLINE: Jesse Bass, Amer­i­can Staff Writer

Hat­ties­burg, MS

Hat­ties­burg Police Department’s evi­dence locker was raided by bur­glars Aug. 20. After the heist, an undis­closed amount of mar­i­juana was dis­cov­ered to be miss­ing. Police made 10 arrests dur­ing the inves­ti­ga­tion, including:

- Fel­isha Tay­lor, 32, of Hat­ties­burg, a house­keeper at the police depart­ment; charged with pro­vid­ing con­tra­band (elec­tronic device) to a state inmate and receiv­ing stolen property

- Vic­to­ria Shabazz, 40, of Hat­ties­burg, an employee at the city’s Action Cen­ter; charged with pro­vid­ing con­tra­band (elec­tronic device) to a state inmate

- Melinda Burke, 36, of Gulf­port; charged with com­mer­cial bur­glary, con­spir­acy to com­mit bur­glary and con­spir­acy to pos­sess a con­trolled sub­stance with intent to distribute

- Raphael Park­man, 26, of Gulf­port; charged with com­mer­cial bur­glary, con­spir­acy to com­mit bur­glary and con­spir­acy to pos­sess a con­trolled sub­stance with intent to dis­trib­ute, pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance with intent to distribute

- Troy Wolver­ton, 47, of Lau­rel, a for­mer jail inmate; charged with grand larceny

- Rod­ney J. Burke, 20, Gulf­port; charged with com­mer­cial bur­glary, con­spir­acy to com­mit bur­glary and con­spir­acy to pos­sess a con­trolled sub­stance with intent to dis­trib­ute, pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance with intent to distribute

- Melinda Buford, 36, of Gulf­port; charged with com­mer­cial bur­glary, con­spir­acy to com­mit bur­glary and con­spir­acy to pos­sess a con­trolled sub­stance with intent to distribute.

- Paul Pet­tis, an escaped Mis­sis­sippi Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions inmate, charged with com­mer­cial bur­glary, con­spir­acy to com­mit bur­glary, pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance with intent to deliver and con­spir­acy to pos­sess a con­trolled sub­stance with intent to deliver.

- Cheryl Fluker, 39, of Hat­ties­burg, who worked in the city’s Action Cen­ter; charged with acces­sory to bur­glary after the fact and pro­vid­ing con­tra­band (elec­tronic device) to a state inmate.

- Tyson Lee Gaines, 25, of Gulf­port, a state inmate; charged with con­spir­acy to com­mit bur­glary, pos­ses­sion of a con­trolled sub­stance with intent to deliver, con­spir­acy to pos­sess a con­trolled sub­stance with intent to deliver, pos­ses­sion of con­tra­band and two counts of com­mer­cial burglary.

What­ever happened?

After being indicted on the con­tra­band charge, Fel­isha Tay­lor pleaded guilty June 3. She was ordered by Cir­cuit Court Judge Robert Hel­frich to com­plete 500 hours of com­mu­nity ser­vice and received a five-year sus­pended sentence.

What’s next?

Wolver­ton cur­rently has no indict­ment on file in the For­rest County cir­cuit clerk’s office, but as for the other eight, Forrest-Perry County Dis­trict Attor­ney Patri­cia Burchell said all have been indicted, have attor­neys and have been sched­uled for trial.

“There should be a dis­po­si­tion in those within the next cou­ple months,” Burchell said.

Com­ing up, Fluker and Shabazz are sched­uled for trial June 20. Gaines was set to be tried June 1, but pre-trial dis­cov­ery issues caused his date to be changed to July 27.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

Hat­ties­burg Amer­i­can
BYLINE: JIMMIE E. GATES

Hat­ties­burg, MS

Local law enforce­ment agen­cies say they lack both the space and exper­tise to store DNA evi­dence that a new state law requires them to preserve.

The law that went into effect in March says the evi­dence from crim­i­nal cases must be kept — but doesn’t say where.

Agen­cies had hoped the Mis­sis­sippi Crime Lab would pre­serve and store DNA evi­dence for them after their cases were resolved.

But the lab also doesn’t have the capac­ity either.

“Maybe in the future we can keep it when we get a (new, larger) place to store it,” state Crime Lab Direc­tor Sam How­ell said last week. “We don’t have the stor­age space now.”

Holmes County Sher­iff Willie March, newly installed pres­i­dent of the Mis­sis­sippi Sher­iffs Asso­ci­a­tion, said the Crime Lab is the best place to keep evi­dence no longer needed for active investigations.

“When we get a con­vic­tion, as far as we are con­cerned, the case is over. … We are keep­ing it in our evi­dence room, but we don’t know if it’s the right place or tem­per­a­ture for pre­serv­ing DNA evi­dence,” March said.

Mississippi’s 82 coun­ties han­dle DNA evi­dence in dif­fer­ent ways. Some may not col­lect DNA in all inves­ti­ga­tions because it is too costly.

The new law says that if DNA evi­dence is col­lected as part of the reg­u­lar inves­ti­ga­tion into a crim­i­nal case, it is to be pre­served. The evi­dence would be kept while the felony crime remains unre­solved or the time the per­son con­victed of the crime remains in custody.

There is no spe­cific penalty out­lined in the DNA bill for not pre­serv­ing DNA evi­dence, but it’s expected that sanc­tions could be sought in court on behalf of inmates.

“We had a brief­ing with the dis­trict attor­ney down here to try to under­stand the new law,” Jef­fer­son Davis County Sher­iff Henry McCul­lum said. “We have to make sure we hold it in our pos­ses­sion for a period of time. The way it is look­ing now is every­one will be respon­si­ble for stor­ing their own.”

Jack­son Crime Scene Inves­ti­ga­tor Charles Tay­lor said Fri­day he didn’t even know about the law.

Tay­lor said Jack­son has always sent cer­tain items to the state Crime Lab for test­ing and receive them back once the test­ing is complete.

Will McIn­tosh, staff attor­ney for the Mis­sis­sippi Inno­cence Project, said he can under­stand law enforcement’s con­cern about DNA or other bio­log­i­cal evi­dence pil­ing up and becom­ing unman­age­able, but he said it shouldn’t be a worry because the law allows for a small sam­ple to be kept instead of an entire item. He cited as an exam­ple keep­ing a frac­tion of a mat­tress with DNA evidence.

The bill also allows DNA evi­dence to be destroyed after a period of time if notice is given to all par­ties and they agree to it, McIn­tosh said.

A 23-member task force that helped craft the leg­is­la­tion said the cur­rent Crime Lab isn’t equipped to han­dle the addi­tional vol­ume of evidence.

The task force report didn’t man­date a cen­tral­ized loca­tion for stor­ing DNA evi­dence but sug­gested the state Crime Lab in Jack­son as the most suit­able location.

Sen. Kelvin But­ler, D-Magnolia, who co-sponsored the leg­is­la­tion, said he has not heard any­one com­plain about the law. He said it is needed, but did not have an answer to solv­ing the preser­va­tion issue.

“Other states are doing it, and I feel it some­thing we need. In the long run it’s going to help us all,” But­ler said.

McIn­tosh said the most impor­tant thing was to get a law passed that pre­serves DNA evi­dence and allow inmates to peti­tion for testing.

“We are plan­ning to file soon (on behalf of some inmates) under the law,” McIn­tosh said of the national, state and New Orleans offices of the Inno­cence Project.

The 2008 releases, based on DNA tests, of inmates Kennedy Brewer and Levon Brooks, both charged with mur­der, spurred the leg­is­la­tion. Brewer had been on death row.

It was through the national Inno­cence Project that Brewer and Brooks had their con­vic­tions over­turned. The Inno­cence Project often uses DNA to exon­er­ate indi­vid­u­als wrongly convicted.

In 2005, an effort was made to reopen the case of Richard Chap­man, who was 16 when he was charged with rap­ing and rob­bing a Jack­son woman. He was con­victed and sen­tenced to life in prison in 1982 on the rape charge. He was sen­tenced to serve four years on the rob­bery charge.

Chap­man said he was with his mother at the Mart 51 Shop­ping Cen­ter on Terry Road when the alleged rape occurred.

The New Orleans Inno­cence Project, which han­dled some Mis­sis­sippi cases, tried to reopen Chapman’s case and received a court order to have city, county and state offi­cials search for evi­dence in Richard Chapman’s case, but no evi­dence surfaced.

It was deter­mined that bio­log­i­cal sam­ples and other evi­dence were destroyed by an April 19, 1985, court order.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org