A Mississippi judge reversed his own ruling a week after finding a prominent civil rights lawyer guilty of multiple criminal charges in an overturned verdict that drew comparisons to injustices of the Jim Crow South.
Attorney Jill Collen Jefferson, president of the civil rights law group JULIAN, also works as a professor at Harvard Law School while serving as a crusader for racial justice across the country.
However, her activism got her into hot water in Holmes County, Mississippi, where she was arrested in June 2023 after she filmed a traffic stop by the Lexington Police Department, whose officers had been accused of rampant misconduct, including violence, racial profiling, harassment, witness intimidation, and corruption in one of the nation’s poorest counties.
As a result, Jefferson was jailed for several days just as Justice Department officials arrived in Holmes County to speak to the community about their experiences with the local police force.
Last week, Jefferson went on trial on four misdemeanor charges related to her June arrest, including unlawful use of a mobile phone while driving, obstruction of a public roadway, failure to comply, and resisting arrest.
Her legal team presented evidence that included Jefferson’s testimony and video recordings that refuted the police version of events, but Judge Marcus Fisher of the Holmes County Justice Court found Jefferson guilty on three counts while clearing her on the charge of unlawful use of a mobile phone.
The judge issued a fine as well as a scathing rebuke of Jefferson’s actions, which defense attorney Michael Carr described as sounding like “a pre-prepared script.”
As Jefferson’s lawyer prepared her appeal, he noticed irregularities in Fisher’s ruling and noted that, after a week, the judge had also failed to submit his decision to the Circuit Court for reconsideration.
At that point, Carr requested the official documentation of Jefferson’s conviction from…
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