MS bill would carve out separate judicial district for 80% of white residents in majority-Black city

[marmar]

(Guardian UK) Eighty per cent of the white residents in Mississippi’s majority-Black capital city would be included in a proposed new judicial district with hand-selected prosecutors and judges, an analysis by the Guardian has found, leading to further allegations of deliberate racial prejudice in a Republican-backed bill.

The measure would increase the geographic size of an improvement district in the downtown area of the city of Jackson from 7.8 square miles to 25 square miles. It would create a new unelected judicial district within the city, with two judges, two prosecutors and two public defenders.

The judges would be appointed by Mississippi’s chief supreme court justice, Michael K Randolf, a conservative who is white. The prosecutors would be appointed by the state attorney general, Lynn Fitch, a white Republican. The district would be policed with an expansion of the Mississippi capitol police whose chief, Bo Luckey, is white, in a role appointed by the Mississippi commissioner of public safety, Sean Tindell, who is also white.

“No serious person can look at this map and this data and claim the proposed CCID boundaries weren’t drawn to make sure as many white Jacksonians as possible get the ‘benefit’ of a special police force and court filled with hand-picked judges and prosecutors,” said Cliff Johnson, director of the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center.

Eighty-two per cent of Jackson’s residents are Black, but the new district would incorporate all of the city’s significantly populated white-majority neighborhoods. It would only leave about 5,000 white residents of Jackson living within the city’s remaining law enforcement boundaries. About a quarter of Jackson’s Black residents would be included in the district. ...........(more)

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/ng-interactive/2023/feb/15/mississippi-jackson-judicial-district-unelected-judges-prosecutors

[Diamond_Dog]

1. And the right wingers say there's no such thing as systemic racism ....

[MissMillie]

2. more of that "separate but equal" crap

decades later... they're still trying to make it stick.

Don't they realize that we can see right through this crap?

[kimbutgar]

3. I the DOJ steps in and stops this

This is a clear violation of the civil rights act.