Jackson Jambalaya

Jackson leaders and activists need to go ahead and realize that the citizens of Jackson are not exclusive to their governance and if they can’t can receive protection from their city government, they should also be able to look to the State for which they are also citizens of.

Thanks for nothing Cliff Johnson.

Of course they did. I think they'll take to the US Supreme Court.
They must love living with crime.
I'll never understand them. I hope they remember this if they or their loved ones are a victim of crime.

I guess when Jackson is one of the poorest cities in the USA, that also means it is one of the stupidest cities in the nation. Would the last one out, please cut the lights off, if the electric company hasn’t already done that. Don’t worry about cutting off the water.

This is an ivory tower lawsuit. The sponsors don’t live in Jackson and offer no solutions to our problems. They are doing this for themselves. But it’s hard to believe anyone’s career will be advanced by this tone deaf case. This whole appointed judges thing isn’t even permanent. It shouldn’t be controversial. Jackson needs all the help it can get addressing its problems of crime and decaying infrastructure, which aren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. It should be a law that no attorney who lives outside Jackson can challenge any attempt to improve Jackson.

@2:24 no they will be on WLBT asking for "justice for my baby, he/she didn't deserve to go out like that... He/she was just gettin' they life together".

You are a loser if you oppose curbing crime. Glad they made it official

Cliff Johnson is a bona fide sissy that lives in Water Valley and dumps his "moral superior" crap on all of the childish mush heads he can and who will listen. He is a sickening individual. WATER VALLEY and wants to stick his holier than thou arrogance in our crime ridden mess.

Apparently the University of Mississippi is supporting Cliff Johnson's work on this case with taxpayer funds.

https://law.olemiss.edu/faculty-directory/cliff-johnson/

For the love of God (or even satan, if that's your choice)! Stop trying to educate them and rationalize the decisions or actions of these people.

You're wasting your precious time even thinking about their reasoning.

The money pot for these radical, Anti-Americans is bottomless. They'll appeal the appeal of the appeal til the pigs come home.

And then when they don't get their way, finally, they'll march, demand, strategize, incite and light matches. Then they'll blame it all on ME (and you).

Have we not seen this multiple times?

“We’re coming before you today to say you don’t have the right to appoint our judges.”

This won’t end well.

Living in Jackson. The odds of your family members being murdered go up exponentially, you are in the city with the highest murder rate in the USA. You will tear up tires riding on roads unless you dodge all of the orange detour cones. You may or (probably) may not have water, and who knows if you do, if it is potable. I truly think those selling bottled water (you know, those clear bottles you can actually see through) are potentially good business people. Why is the city in debt, when they only have about 60% of the cops budgeted. I know there is overtime, but there is a reduction in health insurance, training, etc.

The Venn Diagram of poor and stupid people is a perfect circle.

Get it straight. The people of Jackson did not file the lawsuit nor are they appealing. The people of Jackson are mere pawns in a game played for the benefit of others. The sad thing is that those fighting this measure have the financial means to comfortably relocate when disaster comes, most Jackson residents do not.

Who is paying their legal fees?

The plaintiffs are all Jackson residents.

7:23 - Right on, Bro. The three plaintiffs are just ordinary Joe and Blow who have been offended to the point of exasperation and have decided, on their own, at their own expense, to file suit.

.00002 percent of Jackson residents are plaintiffs in this.

Wonder if the .00002 percent will show their faces so the rest of us can recognize them out and about.

Wonder if they 1) know any Vice Lords or GDs, 2) are related or good friends with any, and/or 3) if they own a property or are just renters?

I know a couple SPLC, ACLU, NAACP people. None of them live in Jackson with a child.

The plaintiffs are Jackson residents but they were solicited by the attorneys to be plaintiffs. The attorneys are behind the case—not the plaintiffs. That’s not illegal, but it looks bad where—as here—the case is mainly a vehicle for grandstanding attorneys.

Now they are appealing to the Mississippi Supreme Court. Although the Supreme Court is elected, most of the judges were originally appointed by the governor. Judges are appointed all the time in Mississippi when a sitting judge resigns or can’t complete their term. This case is silly.

My educated guess is the plaintiff lawyers decided to file the case before the bill language changed to where the appointed judges aren’t permanent. They then made a cardinal sin for lawyers of falling in love with their case and not recognizing when it’s gone south. It’s typically a mistake made by inexperienced attorneys.

The NAACP, ACLU , SPLC and University of Mississippi Law School individuals pushing this will NOT be personally impacted by
The outcome of this litigation, nor will their families.

What 8:12 said speaks volumes assuming it’s true or mostly true.

Guess what?

All Municipal (City) courts in Mississippi are APPOINTED judges.

The people do not VOTE on them.

Worker compensation judges are not elected.

Federal administrative judges are not elected

So Cliff what's the big deal about appointed judges?

They complain about the state not helping Jackson, but they won’t take the help here. Take the help. Jackson needs all the help it can get. These bozos are hurting Jackson residents in the name of ‘doing good.’

KF, you are correct, the "plantiffs" are all Jackson residents. But, lets be honest here. The "plantiffs" are three activists that were recruited to be "plantiffs" so that Johnson could get his case into court (Johnson of course having no standing on his own, nor does his McCarther Center).

The "plantiffs" are three individuals - two of which I know personally have been attempting to lead the parade on many different protests over the past several decades. But - they are not what a normal plantiff is; one who has been harmed and asking the court for redress.

These "plantiffs" are Jackson residents (first requirement to have standing). Otherwise, there is no standing on this issue. None that I know of have been to court in Hinds County over the past decade or two. None have been assaulted on the streets, carjacked, victim of the supposed Capitol Police brutality, anything.

Yes, they are very much kindred to the plantiffs in the federal court case - long time ones that argue that everything is racially biased (at least in their eyes looking through their black colored glasses) but other than that, they are nothing more than NE Jackson white liberals that want to help their allies raise more funds for the coffers, so their directors and staffs can make more money.

Simple formula.

Y’all are going nuts cutting and pasting from each other about lawyers who aren’t from Jackson but conveniently forgetting that the Chief Justice, who would be appointing these judges, doesn’t live there either.

And by the way, anybody who thinks Mike Randolph should be appointing anybody to anything has no idea what they’re talking about.

Wait, are the three plaintiffs employees of the NAACP, SPLC, ACLU, or something like that?

I had a feeling they were liberals in east or northeast Jackson.

SPLC…when you can’t hack it as a real Atty.

"1020 Losers" Love it!

Cliff Johnson is a fine person and a very good lawyer. His specialty is public interest law. Cases in that arena are almost never funded by the actual plaintiff. A good example was Brown v. Board of Education.

7:50 - That was a rather poor attempt to suggest this situation has merits similar to those of Brown.

1020 Losers. That says everything.

This case is the reverse of Brown v. Board of Education. In Brown the plaintiff was trying to change the status quo and improve things. The plaintiffs here are trying to maintain the status quo and defeat a bill that answers Jackson residents’ calls for help. What do the plaintiffs want?

Where was the outrage over appointed judges when democrats had power in Mississippi? Is anyone worried that Justice Randolph might appoint unqualified judges? No.

This case is political, but I don’t see any potential winners. If the plaintiffs win Jackson residents continue to lose. And why would the state want to try to help anymore when this is the response it gets?

@7:50 am

Who is paying Cliff to pursue this?

Because I have no idea, is it fair to ask the race of the plaintiffs, and occupations, if any?

10:12,

I am very worried Randolph will appoint unqualified judges. He was not qualified when he was appointed long ago, and he still isn’t qualified — maybe even less so. The fact that he is on the bench at all is a testament to the cronyism that has kept Mississippi lodged in the muck forever.

None of the supporters of this law who can’t stand non-Jackson lawyers challenging seem to care that the person who would appoint these new judges is not from Jackson either.

Put the shoe on the other foot for a minute. I can only imagine the foot stamping and howling if a democratic controlled legislature determined that Madison or Rankin County treated criminals "unfairly" with overly harsh sentencing, and decided to enact legislation appointing more "liberal" judges to fix the problem. Or decided to ban or seize every firearm in Jackson to curb gun violence. Nobody would stand for it.

IF (I don't know the answer) citizens of Mississippi have a state constitutional right to elected circuit court judges in all counties, that right is not diminished and can't be ignored because there is either an actual or perceived "problem" with the judges Hinds County citizens elected, or a backlog of cases.
Neither can Second Amendment constitutional rights be ignored and all firearms outlawed and seized in Jackson because we perceive or actually have a violent/gun crime epidemic. If Cliff Johnson was fighting for your Second Amendment constitutional rights, you would be supportive. And he sort of is doing exactly that. If you consider the merits of the argument, and not the precise constitutional right at issue, the argument supports protecting all constitutional rights, including those constitutional rights that you value. Whatever the constitutional rights are determined to be, it is important that they don't yield to feel good solutions (worthwhile or not) to hot button problems. Either constitutional rights are worth protecting, or they are not. The whole point of the right being enshrined in the state or federal constitution is to prevent legislative or executive interference with the right. If the courts find there is a state constitutional right to elected circuit court judges, I hope Cliff wins for these plaintiffs, and that there is case law restraining legislative interference with all constitutional rights including the ones I care about. Need more judges? Elect them in conformity with the constitution in a special election. No, I'm not Cliff, but I do care about my constitutional rights.

11:06, I’m all for looking at stuff from another person’s point of view, but do you live in Jackson. If so, where is this cave in Jackson that you live in where you are unaware of the crime in your city. Jackson is nuts. 2021 and early 2022 Jackson was super nuts. Crimes were taking place all over. A murder rate of about 1 in 1,000 is a super uncommon thing, but Jackson pretty much had it two years ago.

We’re going to have to agree to disagree on whether Randolph was qualified. You may not like him or how he rules, but he was a prominent and respected lawyer who was qualified. And the record on state court judges first appointed vs. first elected weighs heavily in favor of the appointed. It’s not close.

Conservative here and I agree with 11:06, even though there ARE appointed judges in the state.

I couldn't care less if HB1020 fails.
We cannot force an alcoholic to want to be sober any more than we can force Jackson to be tough on crime.

Let people enjoy the government they elected.
Jackson does not want to improve. Who are we to force them?

I don't begrudge the citizens of Jackson and their approval of the current judicial system. I also don't visit the city, so it does not affect me. C'est la vie.

2:54,

Prominent lawyer maybe, but respected -- it very much depends on whom you ask. He had one qualification (the only one that matters): he was Haley Barbour's buddy. His judicial opinions are a bad joke even among the lawyers whose clients he reflexively favors regardless of what the law says. I honestly have never heard a single positive review of his tenure from anybody of any political stripe in the Mississippi legal profession. Under his leadership the MSSC has hit an all-time low.

3:27 says, "Let people enjoy the government they elected.
Jackson does not want to improve."

And that comment has been posted another thousand times on this blog.

That would be fine if Jackson were an island that nobody else ever had a desire or need to visit or pass through. But that's not the case, is it?

We can't magically remove all state government offices from Jackson. We can't remove every reason people have for needing to drive into Jackson. And for those two reasons alone, some degree of safety is desirable.