This article is part of a collaborative investigation into Mississippi’s Deadly Prisons.
The Mississippi Department of Corrections will review more than two dozen unprosecuted homicides inside its prisons, as well as deaths where causes were ruled as “undetermined,” following an investigation by several news sites, including The Marshall Project – Jackson and Mississippi Today.
“All the deaths that we’ve had since 2015, we’re going back to revisit,” Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain told the reporting team. “There is no statute of limitations, as you know, on homicide.”
Cain’s comments follow an investigation by a team of Mississippi reporters that revealed at least 43 people died by homicide inside Mississippi prisons since 2015. Total murder convictions in those cases? Eight, including two guilty pleas that came after the news stories were published.
The prison homicide investigation involved reporters and editors from The Marshall Project – Jackson, Mississippi Today, The Clarion Ledger, Hattiesburg American and The Mississippi Link.
A prisoner advocacy group said revisiting past homicides won’t address the key reasons for the deaths in the first place — chronic understaffing of security officers.
Revisiting past homicides is “sort of closing the door after the horse has left the barn,” said David Fathi, director of the ACLU National Prison Project. “What the commissioner also needs to do is figure out why this is happening and what to do to stop it.”
Deaths officially categorized as homicides this year appear to have reached their highest level since 2020, when a gang war pushed that year’s total to at least nine killings.
Forty-one-year-old Aaron Harrison became the sixth person killed in a state prison this year when he died on July 3. A medical examiner later ruled that Harrison, incarcerated at East Mississippi Correctional Facility, was killed by blunt force trauma.
A nurse practitioner at the prison noticed bruising on Harrison while treating him for a possible drug overdose before he died, according to an incident report obtained by the news reporting team. Court records show that no one has been charged in Harrison’s death, but it is not unusual for homicide investigations to take up to a year.
State Rep. Becky Currie, who chairs the House Corrections Committee, asked a legislative committee last month — as the reporting team was about to publish its investigation — to look into all prison deaths for the past five years.
The Joint Legislative Committee on Performance Evaluation and Expenditure Review analyzes state agency programs and operations and can issue recommendations.
Even with recent deaths, she’s found that little information is shared with the families, the public and lawmakers when an incarcerated person dies.
“How can you say you’ll keep people safe if you don’t know what they’re dying of?” Currie asked.
Internal Investigations
The corrections department has its own criminal investigations unit and can refer cases to county prosecutors for further action.
Cain said the agency’s Criminal Investigations Division is now examining each death that was not referred to a district attorney’s office. About 25 people work for CID, which has been rebuilt since he took over corrections in 2020, he said.
“We’ve brought a lot more professionalism,” Cain said.
Each prison has an investigator who can respond quickly, and more investigators work out of the central office than before, he said. “That way we can keep the integrity and know what’s going on.”
He compared the investigators’ work on these homicides to working on cold cases. “They’re looking for answers.”
“We’re going back to visit all that to be sure that we haven’t left any stone unturned,” Cain said. “Every crime that is committed in the prison, no matter how small,” will be referred to a county prosecutor. “If he wants to throw it in the trash and not prosecute, that’s up to him.”
In the past decade, prosecutors indicted people in 16 of the 43 homicides, with eight guilty pleas. One case was dropped because the accused person died by suicide before his day in court. Another was dropped in light of evidence that supported the accused person’s claim of self-defense. The remaining six indictments, handed up between 2022 and June 2025, are pending trial.
The commissioner shared similar comments during a Sept. 24 legislative budget hearing, but lawmakers did not ask him follow-up questions about the investigations. Among those in attendance were House Speaker Jason White and Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.
When reached by the reporting team, the offices of Hosemann and White, along with the state auditor’s office, declined to comment.
The state Senate Corrections Committee chairman, Sen. Juan Barnett, did not respond to requests for comment about the team’s findings and Cain’s remarks.
In addition to the 43 homicides, another 21 prisoner deaths since 2015 have been ruled “undetermined” by the state medical examiner’s office. That means medical examiners were not able to come to a conclusive answer about how a person died. An undetermined death could be a homicide, suicide, accidental, or a natural death.
For example, Richard Weems’ 2022 death was ruled undetermined, but medical examiners noted his body showed signs of blunt force trauma. An incarcerated person told the Mississippi Free Press in 2023 that he saw Weems being beaten.
Asked if MDOC planned to review deaths marked as undetermined, Cain replied, “We’re going to look at all of them.”
Cain said prison security has been improved in recent years with more video cameras, six narcotic detection dogs, a drone detecting system and enhanced video on the prisons’ fences to stop drugs from being thrown over or dropped by drones. According to the U.S. Department of Justice, the abundance of illegal drugs in MDOC facilities has led to extortion and violence, the department’s 2024 investigation found.
Staffing Shortages Lead to Violence, Advocates Say
One of the key problems the news investigation identified is the chronic understaffing that leaves incarcerated people vulnerable to violence.
Fathi called the staffing levels in Mississippi prisons “a five-alarm emergency.”
Corrections spokesperson Kate Head said in a statement that staffing “is central to safety and security.” The department continues to address the shortages and strengthen staff accountability, she told the news team.
Since Cain took the helm in 2020, the starting salary for a correctional officer increased by about $13,000, beginning at $40,392. Still, it is hard to hire and retain staff for such dangerous jobs.
About 30% of the funded corrections officer positions were vacant, Deputy Commissioner Nathan Blevins told lawmakers at the budget hearing in September.
“No prison can operate safely with that kind of staffing,” Fathi said, “It’s not safe for the incarcerated people, it’s not safe for the staff… it’s not safe for anybody.”
Homicides in the prisons often happened when corrections officers were not watching.
For instance, Ronnie Graham was killed at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Rankin County in 2021, but his battered body was not discovered by a corrections officer for at least five hours. In another case, Jonathan Havard was strangled to death earlier this year at Wilkinson County Correctional Facility. However, his body was only discovered after an unidentified parent called to tell the prison officials that he had been killed, according to prison records.
Compounding the staffing problems is the growing prison population. Since December 2021, the number of state prisoners has increased from about 16,800 to 19,300, returning to pre-pandemic levels. Cain said the increase is largely due to high rates of recidivism.
About 47% of people released in fiscal year 2021 returned to prison within three years, according to state corrections data.
“If we do a better job of getting them employable, then that’s the whole key to recidivism and not coming back,” Cain said in the legislative hearing. “Recidivism is killing us.”
Cain’s promise of new investigations into unsolved homicides sparked hope for a mother who lost a son.
Janice Wilkins, the mother of Denorris Howell, who was killed in the Mississippi State Penitentiary in Parchman in 2020, said she is grateful that her son’s case will be reviewed.
“It means a whole lot to me,” she said. “Once they review everything, they should move forward.”
