North Mississippi Criminal Law Blog

Sometimes hiding a crime can be nearly as serious as committing one.

In a case that has been making headlines all over the country, the wife and mother of a Mississippi man accused of kidnapping and murder have been arrested for allegedly collaborating with him.

When people in Mississippi think about drunk driving accidents, they typically would assume that a drunk driver caused an accident and should be held criminally responsible. But what if the driver who caused the accident was not drunk, and instead crashes into another vehicle that is driven by a person who has been drinking?

This scenario recently occurred in a two-car crash. One driver mistakenly drove through a red light and into traffic. He crashed into a vehicle because of his negligent driving. He was not drinking and driving.

Prior to September 11, 2001, strip searches were generally prohibited for minor criminal offenses. However, now that there is a greater perceived threat to nationwide security, courts have granted increased discretion to jailers to maintain security, allowing strip searches even for minor offenses. In a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, a split court ruled that jailers may perform invasive strip searches, even on people accused of minor offenses.

The case stems from two strip searches of a man who was arrested for failure to pay a fine, which he had, in fact, paid. He had been a passenger with his pregnant wife behind the wheel who was accused of speeding, a traffic violation. Their four-year-old son was in the backseat. He was arrested for failure to pay a fine, strip searched, held in jail for six days without receiving a hearing, then transferred to another jail where he was strip searched a second time.

A student was shot to death at a dorm on the Mississippi State University campus. Two people have already been arrested for the death, and now police are going after a third. The two men who were already arrested have been charged with capital murder.

The student was reportedly shot multiple times late Saturday night outside a dorm room on the first floor of one of the male residence halls, not his own. He was likely visiting at the time. After police responded to the shooting, the man was taken to a local hospital, where he died.