Woman files lawsuit claiming she was imprisoned beyond sentence
Emma Holmes served her time in the custody of the Mississippi Department of Corrections. All 30 years of it. But when she thought it was time for her to be released, she was told she was not eligible.
MDOC officials could not document all the time Holmes spent in Grenada County Jail for the crime for which she was later convicted, so she had to stay locked up for 235 days longer than her sentence. Or so she believes, and she’s filing suit to be compensated for that time.
Holmes was 33 when she was sentenced as a habitual offender convicted on a drug charge. Now 67, she is trying to catch up on the 30 years she wasn’t able to be with her five children. The youngest was just over a year old when she was sent to prison.
After her arrest, she spent time in custody in the Grenada County Jail. That time was supposed to be applied to her sentence, but only 300 of the 535 days she spent in jail was credited to her. That left 235 days — approximately eight months — that were not taken off the end of her sentence.
Now, she wants that time back.
Holmes’ attorney Arthur Calderon filed a federal lawsuit asking for unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for the two-thirds of a year she was kept in prison beyond what she believed was her official release date, claiming her Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under the law was violated.
Court records show MDOC in 2009 had a notarized document that verified the time she was supposed to be credited, but when prison officials contacted the Grenada County Jail in 2016, the jail had no record of Holmes’ time there. MDOC refused to credit that time to Holmes.
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statues in Washington, D.C.
“I’ve been here 21 years and quite honestly, I had never seen that until Sen. Bradford Blackmon had brought it to my attention,” Clark said. “All citizens have embraced the (new) flag, and I think it would be the ideal symbol to replace the Confederate picture with the Mississippi flag.”
Another legacy lawmaker, Blackmon, D-Lexington, who replaced his father Edward Blackmon this year in the Senate, said he filed a bill to replace the painting in the Capitol’s rotunda ceiling, which also displays other religious and historical images. He too had never noticed the painting.
That bill, SB 2217, would direct the Mississippi Department of Archives and History to remove the painting and create a commission consisting of governor appointments, the director of the MDAH, a member of the Mississippi Arts Commission and several lawmakers, to decide what should replace it.
“Coming off a few years removed from taking down the state flag with the battle emblem inside of it, there’s a lot more representations of Mississippi that can go up there, and that’s what led me to draft a bill,” said Blackmon.
Blount and Simmons both said they would vote for Blackmon’s bill, but they are heavily focused on lobbying to create a commission of their own to replace Davis and
George with more modern representations of Mississippi.
“There are a number of changes that need to be made in Mississippi,” Blount said. “It’s a problem.”
Senate President Pro Tem. Dean Kirby, RPearl, who chairs the Rules Committee where both Senate bills were sent, told the Clarion Ledger he has spoken with Blackmon, and he will consider bringing his bill forward.
“It’s definitely something I will discuss with my committee,” Kirby said.
Since Kirby took over the Rules Committee in 2020, no bills regarding the removal of Confederate paintings or statues or the establishing of commissions to discuss them have made it out of his committee.
According to MDAH records, when the current State Capitol was built in the early 1900s, the original ceiling did not include depictions of the confederate battle flag. The building was later renovated and restored in the 1980s, a project that cost the state $19 million, according to MDAH records.
In 2021, Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, signed legislation to replace the state’s former flag, which also depicted the stars and bars of the Army of Northern Virginia battle flag flown during the Civil War, with one showing a magnolia flower.
The traditional Confederate battle flag never flew over Mississippi as a state flag during the Civil War. Mississippi’s flag in that era featured a magnolia tree as its dominant symbol.
Over in the in the Mississippi House of Representatives, Rep. Robert Johnson, D-Natchez, told the Clarion Ledger he is sponsoring a bill to replace the two statues as well, but instead of creating a commission to oversee the replacement, he is asking the legislature to approve placing famous civil rights activist Fannie Lou Hamer and Hiram Revels, the first Black man in the United States Senate.
“Those two Confederate leaders, I don’t think are appropriate representations of the state of Mississippi, and I think we ought to have some statues of people who represent how we move forward,” Johnson said.
However, these pieces of legislation may be falling on deaf ears.
Johnson said he had spoken with first year House Speaker Jason White, R-West, about his bill and that White responded positively toward the idea.
Friday morning, White’s Communications Officer Taylor Spillman said he had no such meeting. White declined to comment on whether he would support removing the painting in the rotunda or replacing Davis and George in Washington D.C.
“We are focusing on education and Medicaid right now,” Spillman said.
Johnson’ bill, House Concurrent Resolution 12, was sent to the Rules Committee, which is chaired by Rep. Fred Shanks, R-Brandon.
When asked to speak on the bills introduced by Johnson and Clark, who also serves as his vice chair, Shanks declined to comment.
Sen. Walter Michel, RRidgeland, who vice chairs the Senate Rules Committee, said he would not vote to replace the paintings in the Capitol building.
“I’m not interested in moving that,” Michel said. “I like it, it looks good. It’s a beautiful painting up on top of the ceiling of the rotunda so I’m not interested in moving that bill.”