This article is part of a collaborative investigation into Mississippi’s Deadly Prisons.
During a routine prison shift change at the Marshall County Correctional Facility in Mississippi, the deadly attack unfolding on Unit Charlie 2’s security monitors went unnoticed.
When a new crew would take over for the outgoing guards, the security team would be preoccupied with mundane tasks away from the monitors, a lawsuit and testimony later recounted.
At some point during that shift change, John Lowe was severely injured from the beating he received inside the unit’s shower area and was found by security 10-minutes later, bleeding on the tile floor. He died two days later on July 13, 2021.
County prosecutors had the evidence they needed for a murder charge. The security cameras had recorded the beating. A grand jury indicted a suspect a little over a year later.
Then, for the next three years, the case was effectively forgotten by prosecutors and the prison system.
A phone call, then the indictment resurfaces
Lowe, who was serving a 15-year sentence for armed robbery, was one of at least 43 incarcerated people killed inside Mississippi prisons since 2015.
In most other cases, the suspects were never charged by local prosecutors, a team of Mississippi news reporters found. Only six people have been convicted in connection with prison killings over the past 10 years.
Outside of court, the private company that ran the Marshall County prison for the state settled the lawsuit filed by Lowe’s family for an undisclosed amount. The agreement requires the family to keep specific details of the case confidential.
The suspect in Lowe’s death, Terry McCline, was indicted on a murder charge in October 2022. He is currently serving 75 years for armed robbery, carjacking and conspiracy, and won’t be eligible for release until he is 98 years old in 2076.
Typically, McCline would have been officially served the indictment, would have gotten a lawyer, and, ultimately, would have headed to trial, where a jury or judge would have decided his fate.
But McCline was never served the indictment to start the process.
A grand jury had indicted McCline during the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic, which significantly restricted the operation of the state’s legal system.
McCline’s dormant indictment was resurrected only after a Clarion Ledger reporter asked Marshall County District Attorney Ben Creekmore what happened to the case.
Creekmore said he then realized McCline was never served with the murder charge. The serving of the indictment, Creekmore noted in a June 3 email to a reporter, would happen “ASAP.”
On Aug. 13, McCline was taken from prison, brought before a judge in the county courthouse and handed the indictment. He pleaded not guilty.
McCline has not responded to requests to speak with him. He is the only person indicted in connection with Lowe’s murder.
Creekmore said while it is his office’s responsibility to make sure every indictment is served, the Mississippi Department of Corrections should have followed through, too.
“What you’re identifying is probably that we need to have a better system in place to make certain they get served quicker,” he said.
MDOC investigators brought him the murder case to present to a grand jury in 2022, a year after the murder, Creekmore said. But by then, McCline had been transferred to another MDOC facility outside the county. Because he was no longer in Marshall County, he could not be served with the county grand jury’s indictment, Creekmore said.
Creekmore said the indictment got lost during the court backlogs caused by COVID-19. The process to indict MDOC inmates is difficult because incarcerated people can’t be served inside a prison, he said.
“There are other issues as well. If somebody is safely kept [by MDOC], it doesn’t just jump off the page and say, ‘Hey, this is something that needs to be taken care of,’ unless I get a call from a victim’s family, law enforcement, the judge,” Creekmore said, “or an investigative reporter.”
MDOC spokesperson Katelyn Head said that it is partly MDOC’s responsibility to ensure indicted prisoners are served because it works with county DAs “when [MDOC] knows” a prisoner has been indicted. MDOC took over operations at the Marshall County prison from the private company two months after Lowe’s murder.
Head also said that McCline was moved to another prison after the killing, but before his indictment. Moving a suspect to another facility is a standard security practice, she said.
Gaps in oversight
At the time of the attack, guards were working for Management & Training Corporation, a private company that managed the prison for the corrections department in 2021. Security staffers routinely left shift change duties undone at several MTC facilities, which included watching the monitors and checking cells, said Chuck Mullins, an attorney who represented Lowe’s parents in their wrongful death lawsuit.
In Lowe’s case, deposition testimony showed guards were not in the control tower at the time of Lowe’s attack, Mullins said.
The 25-year-old Lowe was found on the shower floor shortly before 6:30 p.m. on July 11 and put under medical observation for most of the night. He had skull fractures, scratches and bruises to his head, face and neck, according to video footage and details cited in the lawsuit.
In a recent interview, Lowe’s family members said they viewed the prison security camera footage and saw about four men attacking Lowe in the shower.
“You could see [there were] multiple [people], from what I could see, after watching the video that many times,” Lowe’s brother, Justin, said.
Their lawsuit also stated that “[v]ideo footage captured several inmates attacking” Lowe in “plain view.”
“The reason why the inmates chose that particular time, and based on the deposition testimony … is that that was during [a] shift change,” Mullins said. “[Guards] would leave their post to go do rounds so the inmates knew no one was going to be in the control tower during that time … They had that kind of knowledge.”
Five hours after being found, Lowe was transported from the prison to a nearby Oxford hospital and then 75 miles to a Memphis trauma center. He died the next day.
Lawsuit settles
The wrongful death lawsuit against MTC was settled out of court in late 2024 for an undisclosed amount.
The lawsuit initially requested a jury trial for the family’s claim, which asked for more than $75,000 in damages.
If the suit had gone to trial, it could have brought prison records about security staffing, video footage of the murder and more into the public eye.
Mullins declined to disclose the amount the family received in the settlement, citing the confidentiality agreement. MTC also declined to disclose the settlement amount or discuss Lowe’s murder case. In court records, MTC made no admission of wrongdoing.
The Lowe family settled because they felt they could not prove at trial that MTC neglected its responsibility of keeping incarcerated people safe, Mullins said.
“There was nothing to indicate to MTC or their employees that [Lowe’s murder] was going to happen,” Mullins said.
Wanda Bertram, a spokesperson and researcher for the Prison Policy Initiative, a nonprofit criminal justice think tank focusing on prisons, said prison operators in other cases have used the defense that, without prior knowledge of an act of violence, there isn’t much in the way of liability. MTC made the same arguments in court papers, saying that it followed the law at all times.
Prisons generally do not prioritize prisoner-to-prisoner security, opting to invest in ways to respond to violent incidents, rather than prevent them, she said.
“Fundamentally, even if it is technically a security matter when someone in prison kills another person, that’s not really the type of security that prisons are interested in providing,” Bertam said.
Who was John Lowe?
Before prison, Lowe was looking forward to starting a career. His family never thought he would end up in a Mississippi prison.
“He was a great brother,” Justin Lowe said recently. “I couldn’t ask God to bless me with a better one, because he was that and, mentally, he challenged me all the time … He just stayed on me and [encouraged me] to stay in my books.”
John Lowe grew up in the Greenville area, competitively boxed at a local gym and helped take care of the family.
“We started out [boxing] when I was about 9, he was 10,” Justin said. “Then we won the Golden Gloves together. And then he kind of just faded out, but he kept me going [with it].”
Before his arrest, Lowe was working toward obtaining his GED and eventually a welder’s license.
“He seemed like he had made up his mind before [his arrest], that he was going to focus on what he’s supposed to do,” his father, John Sr., said.
Lowe was a fan of gospel, R&B and rap music, Justin said. Some of Lowe’s favorite artists include Tupac Shakur, whose music touched on culture, racial politics and the lives of Black men in America.
In prison, Lowe’s parents said he was an avid reader and drawer, and continued his education to stay busy.
Justin and John Sr. both said they are glad the murder case is finally moving forward, but said it almost feels like too little too late.
The real justice, they said, would have been preventing Lowe’s death in the first place.
“They didn’t make [the murder case] a priority,” Justin said with tears in his eyes. “The situation still makes me very emotional. They could’ve done more. His life was taken under supervision … I can only sit and wait and pray that my brother gets the justice he deserves.”
