Jerry Mitchell

Six officers pleaded guilty last year to assaulting two Black men and shooting one of them in the mouth during a raid on their home.

The state ignored or was unaware of allegations of jailhouse rape, brutal beatings and corrupt acts by sheriffs and their deputies, even when there was ample evidence to examine.

Mississippians say they’ve been shocked with Tasers, beaten with batons, pistol-whipped and waterboarded by Rankin County deputies, for decades.

They barged into homes in the middle of the night, then held people down while they beat and choked them, witnesses said. For years, signs of the violence went ignored.

Powerful figures in Mississippi, including the attorney general, two judges and a future congressman, learned how a sheriff lied to spy on his girlfriend. They all kept his secret.

Sheriff Eddie Scott has been the top lawman in rural Clay County, Miss., for more than a decade despite repeated allegations.

As abuse allegations in a rural jail piled up, criminal inquiries dragged on or went nowhere. No one scrutinized how the sheriff ran his jail.

In “Race Against Time,” the Mississippi journalist Jerry Mitchell chronicles four key cases of racist violence from the 1960s and his role in unearthing damning new evidence.

A lawyer for James Seale said her client planned to appeal his conviction on kidnapping and conspiracy charges.

Mississippi Judge Marcus D Gordon refuses to let Edgar Ray Killen out of prison while he appeals his conviction in killing of three civil rights workers by Ku Klux Klan in 1964; Killen's manslaughter conviction in June 2005 was hailed as long-awaited victory for civil rights movement and redemption for small town of Philadelphia, Miss (M)