MY STORY

I was arrested on the scene of the wreck and charged with armed robbery, aggravated assault, and grand larceny. A month later I was released on an $85k bond.

While on bond, I was being investigated by state detective David Lindley of the Starkville Police Department. What I did not know is that although he was diligently working the case, his motive behind his commitment wasn't solely because he wanted justice. On January 1, 1998, Detective David Lindley had been "placed on 6 months’ probation for wearing his clan robe on duty". See (The Ku Klux Klan in Mississippi: A History by Michael Newton, 2009). Detective David Lindley was a Ku Klux Klan member. Naive to those facts, I was a free man who was willing to accept whatever punishment was acceptable for the crime I had committed.

Everything changed on May 14, 1999, On this day, I was arrested for federal carjacking and use of a firearm based on the charges that originated from the same state armed robbery, aggravated assault, and grand larceny that I was bonded for. Furthermore, the federal complaint warrant had been pursued by nonother than Ku Klux Klansman Detective David Lindley based on those same state charges.

With the state prosecution still proceeding, in November 1999, I was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in the Federal Bureau of Prisons. Not shortly after, in February 2001, I was sentenced to an additional consecutive 20 years with the Mississippi Department of Corrections. In hindsight, I have found that I had two obstacles to face during that trial that I was not fully aware of...

First, I was being prosecuted by District Attorney Forrest Allgood, who had a profoundly serious local reputation for suspected white supremacy ties. The infamous D.A., who had been elected since 1989, was tough on crime and notorious for giving lengthy sentences to blacks. He was known for obtaining convictions in the shadiest ways. For those reasons, many of his convictions have been overturned.

Speaking of shady and overturned convictions, he was mentioned recently in the trending series The Innocence Files. The mention was the first two episodes about two black men, Brewer and Brooks, wrongfully convicted of the rapes and murders of two little girls in Mississippi. With proof of their innocence, he still refused to admit that he had wrongly convicted both men based on faulty forensic evidence and hearsay. After almost two decades in prison, one of the men on death row, they were finally released.

Proof of sentencing disparities due to race, is that on March 19, 1999, a 19-year-old white Mississippi State University student named Lindsay Kathryn Welch, gave birth to a baby; the baby was still alive. She clipped the umbilical cord, washed the baby's body, checked it for a pulse, after discovering there was not one, wrapped the baby, placed it in a plastic bag and placed it outside in a garbage can, where it remained until April 12, 1999, almost a month later. The body was discovered by local police, due to a tip. Welch was arrested for capital murder. She lost at trial to District Attorney Forrest Allgood and was sentenced to only 8 years in the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

After years of controversial outcomes against blacks, in 2015, Forrest Allgood was finally defeated by a black opponent for his long-held district attorney position. This was a major victory for the 16th judicial district. But in 2001, I was up against Forrest Allgood in rare form.

Second, the victim's father is a white state court judge in Mississippi. I strongly believe that his status influenced the outcome of my legal situation.

With all the above adversities, weighing heavily against me as an indigent black man, I was sentenced separately in both jurisdictions and given a total of 40 years for a crime where the victim did not suffer any serious injury.