Mississippi 

9 Cases

Main Menu

Location

Defendant(s)

Date of Alleged Crime

Willis was convicted in 1997 of the armed robbery of Carl White, Jr., his wife Gloria, and daughter Jamilla at their home in Jackson.  During the robbery, the robber shot White in the leg, and since White later died of the gunshot wound, Willis was also convicted of his murder.  The Whites identified Willis as the perpetrator.  The gun used in the crime was also used in three other robberies committed within the same two-hour time frame.  However, Willis had a tight alibi for these crimes and the victims failed to identify him.  The same gun was also used in a fourth robbery committed four days prior to the crime.  The victims of this robbery identified Willis, but charges against Willis were dropped after DNA evidence from a rape committed during the crime implicated an unknown male who was neither Willis nor the victim’s husband.  During all five robberies, victims were shot in the leg.

At trial Willis was not allowed to present evidence from any of the other four robberies.  The jury who heard the compelling testimony from the murder victim’s family quickly convicted him.  Willis was sentenced to life plus 90 years imprisonment.  In 2005, Willis was granted a new trial on all charges.  In 2006, a judge found the Whites’ testimony to be inadmissible at the new trial, and upon a joint motion of the defense and the state, the judge dismissed all charges against Willis.

Maye, a black man, was sentenced to death for the murder of a white police officer.  One night while the 21-year-old Maye was drifting off to sleep in front of a television, a violent pounding on his front door awakened him.  It sounded as though someone was trying to break it down.  He retrieved his handgun and went to the bedroom where his 14-month-old daughter was sleeping and got down on the floor next to the bed.  He hoped the noises would go away, but they shifted around to the back of the house, where after a loud crash, Maye’s rear door was violently flung open, nearly separating it from its hinges.  After someone kicked open the bedroom door, Maye fired three shots.  The next thing Maye heard is someone scream, “Police!  Police!  You just shot an officer!”  Maye then dropped his gun and surrendered.  The shot officer, Ron Jones, was wearing a bulletproof vest, but one of Maye’s bullets hit him just below the vest and proved fatal.  Jones was the son of the town’s police chief.

Maye was severely beaten after his arrest.  Police denied this charge, but a press photo shows him with a swollen black eye.  Maye’s family was prohibited from seeing him for more than a week -- long enough for his bruises to heal.  Police had raided Maye’s duplex because a reputed drug dealer – a person Maye had never met – lived in an adjoining half of the duplex.  A confidential informant said there were large stashes of marijuana in both halves of the duplex.  Only the remains of a smoked joint were found in Maye’s duplex.  Maye had no criminal record and police did not know his name prior to the drug raid.  Maye’s conviction has provoked outrage not only by liberals concerned about racially charged Southern Justice, but also by conservative supporters of the right to bear arms.  Maye’s death sentence was overturned in Sept. 2006.  (Reason)  [4/07]

Will Purvis

June 22, 1893

Purvis was convicted of the murder of Will Buckley.  Buckley was a member of the Whitecaps, a tight-knit organization similar to the Ku Klux Klan.  Its members swore in blood never to reveal its secrets.  In early 1892, the Whitecaps had unmercifully flogged a black servant of Buckley.  Buckley had known nothing of the Whitecaps’ intentions and was absent.  Enraged at this uncalled-for violence and the secrecy with which it was carried out, Buckley decided to submit the whole affair and to expose the secrets of the Whitecaps to the next meeting of the Grand Jury.  At the Grand Jury meeting, Buckley’s evidence was presented, and indictments were brought against the three Whitecaps who were known to be most brutal in the attack.

On his way home from the Grand Jury meeting, Buckley traveled through a forest path with his brother Jim and the flogged servant, all of them on horseback.  While passing through a ravine a hidden gunmen shot Buckley dead.  The gunman then jumped onto the path, reloaded his gun, and shot at Buckley’s companions, but they escaped safely on horseback.  Suspicion fell on 19-year-old Will Purvis, as bloodhounds indicated the killer escaped in the direction of the Purvis family home.  Purvis admitted that three months previous he had joined the Whitecaps, but repeatedly professed his innocence of the crime.  At trial Jim Buckley identified Purvis as the shooter.  Purvis had alibi witnesses, but he was convicted and sentenced to death.

Purvis’ hanging attracted hundreds of spectators, as hangings in those days were still public events.  On Feb. 7, 1894, the rope was adjusted around Purvis’ neck and tested.  A deputy sheriff, seeing an ungainly length of rope dangling from the knot, cut the rope flush with the knot.  When everything was ready, the executioner used his hatchet to cut the stay rope holding the trap and Purvis dropped with a sharp jerk.  The knot, instead of tightening around its victim, untwisted, and Purvis fell to the ground, unhurt.

Dissension arose about whether Purvis should be hung a second time.  It began with an individual, Dr. Ford, who despised the Whitecaps, but believed Purvis was innocent.  Shouts from those nearby seemed to be evenly divided, but when a vote was taken by a show of hands, no one voted to resume the execution, and almost all voted for a stay.  After consulting an attorney, officials were prepared to resume the execution.  However, when Dr. Ford threatened to call 300 men from the crowd to stop the execution, officials relented and brought Purvis back to jail.

The question of whether Purvis should be hanged again was brought to the state Supreme Court.  The court ruled that the fact that officials had been careless in securing the knot was no reason that the law should be thwarted.  It ordered Purvis be hanged again.  In the town to which Purvis had been removed, indignation over the court ruling court ran high. On the evening before the scheduled July 1895 hanging, a group of friends abducted Purvis from the jail and hid him on a secluded farm.  His friends intended to keep him until they could be assured that his life would be spared.

In the following gubernatorial election, one of the issues was whether or not Purvis, if caught, should be hanged. The candidate in favor of modifying the sentence, A. J. McLaurin, won the election.  When he assumed office, Purvis voluntarily surrendered himself, and McLaurin, in accordance with his promise to the people, commuted the sentence to life imprisonment on March 12, 1896.  Two years later the state's star witness, Jim Buckley, who had identified Purvis as the murderer, stated that he might have made a mistake, and that possibly it was not Purvis whom he had seen.  Purvis was consequently given a full and unconditional pardon in Dec. 1898.

In 1917, another man, Joe Beard, became seriously ill and confessed to participating in the murder of Will Buckley.  He named his accomplice who shot Buckley.  Beard was supposed to shoot Buckley’s two companions, but lost his nerve, allowing them to escape.  Beard’s accomplice could not be prosecuted, because Beard died before he could sign a written confession.  Buckley’s killer lived alone in the woods and was never again seen in town.  In 1920, the Mississippi legislature awarded Purvis $5000 as compensation for his 4 years of wrongful imprisonment, 3 of which were at hard labor.  (CTI)  [12/07]

Brewer was sentenced to death for the rape and murder of his live-in-girlfriend’s daughter, three-year-old Christine Jackson.  Christine had been taken from her home in the early morning hours and found dumped in a creek.  An intruder could have entered the home through a broken window.  Brewer was the boyfriend of Gloria Jackson, the victim’s mother.  Christine had been sleeping on a makeshift pallet of sofa cushions at the foot of the couple’s bed.  In the morning, the couple discovered that Christine was gone.  Two other children were present in the home.

In 2002, DNA tests showed that the semen from the Christine’s rape kit did not belong to Brewer.  Despite the test results, the prosecution has held Brewer for years, although in 2006 he was allowed out on bail.  The prosecution plans to retry him on the grounds that he assisted the unknown rapist in Christine’s murder.  It has refused to compare the DNA test results against the state’s DNA database, saying there is no database, but the assistant director of the state crime laboratory, says, “We’ve been up and running on our DNA database for years.”  (NY Times)  [10/07]

Chambers was convicted of the murder of Sonny Liberty, a police officer.  Two Woodville police officers, James Forman and Aaron "Sonny" Liberty, tried to arrest a local youth named C. C. Jackson at Hayes’ Café, a bar and pool hall on First West St.  However, a crowd of 50 to 60 people gathered who frustrated their arrest attempt.  Forman radioed for backup and Liberty removed his riot gun, a 12-gauge sawed-off shotgun, from his patrol car.

After three deputy sheriffs arrived, the officers again attempted to make the arrest.  In the commotion, five or six pistol shots were fired.  Officer Liberty was shot four times in the back with .22 caliber bullets.  Before he died, he turned around and fired both barrels of his riot gun into an alley in the area from which the shots appeared to have come. The first shot was wild and high and scattered the crowd standing at the face of the alley. Liberty appeared, however, to take more deliberate aim before the second shot and hit a man in the back of the head and neck as he ran down the alley. That man was Leon Chambers.

One deputy would later testify that he saw Chambers shoot Liberty.  Another would testify that he could not see if Chambers had a gun, but saw him “break his arm down” shortly before the shots were fired.  However, officers at the scene made no effort to secure Chambers or search for the murder weapon.  The deputies said they thought Chambers was dead and attended to Liberty, who was taken to a hospital where he was declared dead on arrival.  Three of Chambers friends brought him to the same hospital to which Liberty was taken.  Chambers was later charged with murder.

At trial a defense witness testified that he was looking at Chambers when the shooting began and was sure that Chambers did not shoot Liberty.  There was also no proof that Chambers had ever owned a gun.

Besides this defense, Chambers’ attorneys tried to introduce evidence that another man, Gable McDonald, had shot Officer Liberty.  McDonald had left his wife and moved to Louisiana within days of the shooting.  When he returned to Woodville five months later, an acquaintance, known as Reverend Stokes, convinced him to give a sworn statement to Chambers’ attorneys that he had shot Officer Liberty.  Once McDonald’s confession was signed, he was turned over to police who put him in jail.  A month later, at a preliminary hearing, McDonald repudiated his confession.  The local justice of the peace accepted the repudiation and released him from custody.  The local authorities undertook no further investigation of his possible involvement.

McDonald had once owned a .22 caliber pistol, but claimed to have lost it many months before the shooting.  A lifelong friend of McDonald’s was willing to testify that he had seen McDonald shoot Liberty.  One of Liberty’s cousins was willing to testify that he had seen McDonald with a pistol in his hand immediately after the shooting.  Three other witnesses were willing to testify that McDonald had confessed to shooting Liberty prior to his confession to Chambers’ attorneys.  There was also another witness who disputed a recantation statement by McDonald that he was at a café several blocks away at the time of the shooting.

The trial judge largely thwarted attempts by Chambers’ attorneys to introduce evidence against McDonald.  The attorneys were able to call McDonald as a witness, but he stuck to his recantation.  They were not allowed to impeach his testimony by questioning him adversely.  The judge ruled that McDonald was not an adverse witness because he did not implicate Chambers in the murder.  The attorneys were also not allowed to call witnesses who heard McDonald confess to the murder, as their testimony was considered unreliable hearsay.  Chambers was convicted.

On appeal, the defense asserted that Chambers was denied due process because the trial judge barred much of the evidence that McDonald had shot Liberty rather than Chambers.  State courts denied Chambers’ appeal, but his appeal eventually reached the U.S. Supreme Court.  In Feb. 1973 the Supreme Court ruled in Chambers’ favor.  It ruled that McDonald was an adverse witness because his exculpatory recantation was inculpatory of Chambers and that Chambers’ right to confront and cross-examine an adversary did not depend on which side, prosecution or defense, happened to first call him as a witness.

The Court also noted prohibitions against hearsay were premised on preventing the introduction of unreliable testimony.  However, the proposed testimony in Chambers’ case was heavily corroborated and did not consist of self-serving statements of McDonald, as they were against his self-interest.  The state had asserted that allowing exceptions to the hearsay rule would subvert justice even when given against self-interest.  It gave the following hypothetical:

"If the rule were changed, A could be charged with the crime; B could tell C and D that he committed the crime; B could go into hiding and at A's trial C and D would testify as to B's admission of guilt; A could be acquitted and B would return to stand trial; B could then provide several witnesses to testify as to his whereabouts at the time of the crime.  The testimony of those witnesses along with A's statement that he really committed the crime could result in B's acquittal.  A would be barred from further prosecution because of the protection against double jeopardy.  No one could be convicted of perjury as A did not testify at his first trial, B did not lie under oath, and C and D were truthful in their testimony."

The Court noted that B's absence at trial was critical to the success of the justice-subverting ploy.  In Chambers’ case McDonald was present to testify.  The Court allowed exceptions to the hearsay rule in Chambers’ case.  It is not known if any attempt was made to retry Chambers, but he was reportedly released in 1973.  (Chambers v. Mississippi)  [7/07]