Jerome Hearn was found dead in his vehicle in late October 2009 outside a vacant home on 23rd Street near Poplar Springs Drive in Meridian. 

Police arrested Danny McDonald and Georgio Rushing six years later, charging both men with murder and armed robbery.

More than eight years after Hearn’s death, McDonald spends his days in the Lauderdale County Detention Facility as he has for almost three years, still waiting for a trial.

McDonald’s trial has been rescheduled at least 10 times. He has had three different judges and three different public defenders assigned to his case since his arrest in 2015.

McDonald is an example of the many accused people in the Lauderdale County Detention Facility who have waited years for a trial date, delaying justice for victims and the accused alike and shifting the growing costs of their incarceration to county taxpayers, around $68 per day, per inmate.

Similar delayed cases include:

• Four teenagers accused in the Jan. 29, 2015 death of 94-year-old Eva Carmichael, waiting three years.

• Two men with mental illnesses, waiting nearly four years.

• A man accused of a 2014 rape, waiting more than three years.

• A man accused of a May 2015 motor vehicle theft and felony eluding, waiting more than 900 days despite being indicted for the crime within four months.

• A man indicted within one week after his arrest for allegedly receiving stolen property has waited more than 500 days in the county jail.

By the numbers

An analysis by The Meridian Star of the Lauderdale County jail dockets offers some insight into the status of cases in the court system. The analysis doesn’t include those who bonded out of the jail on their charges.

The August 2017 docket included 185 inmates and 428 separate charges, or roughly two charges per inmate. Some inmates, however, have up to nine charges against them while others have as few as one.

Of those 428 charges, 231, or 54 percent, have been indicted by a grand jury. At least seven of those indictments are probation violations and don’t have an indictment date.

Of the remaining 224 non-probation indictments, 55 percent, or 123, were indicted in 2017 while another 31 percent, or 69, were indicted in 2016. Twenty-one charges were indicted in 2015, or 9 percent; nine in 2014, or 4 percent; and two in 2013, or 1 percent.

This slowdown of the justice system means that, often, the jail is filled to near capacity, making maintenance of the 290-bed facility difficult. 

The state of Mississippi benefits from this system. Until a conviction, the county foots the bill for housing defendants. Once convicted, housing inmates becomes the state’s responsibility.

Not all defendants wait behind bars. In at least two cases, men accused of murder have been released on bond after requesting a lower bond amount from a judge. Neither had any legal progress in the most recent deliberations of the 10th Circuit Court.

Delayed cases affect investigators, county taxpayers and public defenders. In older cases, law enforcement officers must track down witnesses who moved away, retired detectives or family members who may have died. County residents pay to board and secure prisoners. Public defenders attempt to give each case its due diligence, but find themselves swamped by the number of backlogged cases.

Meanwhile, the families of victims wait for their ordeal to end.

Police found Hearn’s body, with numerous gunshot wounds, in his car at a home in the 2300 block of 25th Avenue on Oct. 30, 2009. 

Hearn’s sister, Christine Hearn-Henderson, said the family has been patient and has felt some closure when arrests were made. 

Still, Hearn-Henderson said, phone calls to the family about upcoming trials for the two defendants, McDonald and the now convicted Georgio Rushing, were always closely followed by a phone call about a delay.

“It’s a wait. I just don’t understand the process,” Hearn-Henderson said. “In my opinion, there’s been too many delays.”

Many reasons for delays

Investigations can be inherently slow to assure no one is falsely accused, but many contributing factors can stall the prosecution of a case.

• Law enforcement agencies depend on the State Crime Lab, which is responsible for processing evidence and performing autopsies. The lab is understaffed and overwhelmed with a backlog of cases from across the state.

For example, the Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Department and the Meridian Police Department are still waiting for results from high-profile 2017 cases, including a quadruple homicide in Toomsuba last February and a fatal armed robbery in October at Frank’s Drive-In in Meridian. 

• Crimes involving defendants with substance abuse problems can complicate the system, though drug courts have been developed to try to address those issues.

• Caseloads have increased and the severity or complexity of crimes has increased. The 10th Circuit Court now receives more than 1,800 new cases annually. Supervisors at the Lauderdale County Detention Facility say they have the most accused murderers behind bars in recent history, with roughly 25 people jailed for that charge.

• Finally, mental health evaluations, overseen by the Mississippi State Hospital in Whitfield, can take years. One doctor evaluates most of the defendants in the state and limited bed space makes it difficult for people with mental illnesses to seek treatment. 

A long investigation

The investigation into Jerome Hearn’s death seemed stalled from the beginning. Police arrested Ricky Deshun Thomas, 26, and Fredrick Moore, 32, within days of the 2009 murder. By 2011, however, the two men had been released and police sought new leads.

Exhibit A

990: The number of days Danny McDonald has spent in jail since he was arrested in 2015.

68: The number of dollars it costs to house an inmate at the Lauderdale County Detention Facility each day. McDonald has cost the county roughly $67,320 in jail expenses.

10: Number of times McDonald’s trial has been rescheduled.

3: Number of both judges and public defenders assigned to the case since McDonald’s arrest.

1,800: Approximate number of new cases the 10th Circuit Court receives annually.

25: Number of people accused of murder in custody at the Lauderdale County Detention Facility.

In an effort to produce leads, Hearn-Henderson offered a $20,000 cash reward for new clues in her brother’s death.

Tips arrived in January 2015 that led to the arrests of McDonald and Rushing later that year, police said. A grand jury indicted both men for murder and armed robbery in May 2016.

A state law says that the district attorney’s office must bring the case to trial within 270 days of an indictment. The defense attorney, however, may ask the presiding judge to grant a continuance.

McDonald’s former attorney, John C. Helmert Jr., moved from Lauderdale County to Washington County in 2017 to become a full-time assistant public defender. He continued to represent a few clients in Lauderdale County during the transition. 

Helmert thought McDonald’s trial, scheduled for Oct. 30, 2017, would be his last Lauderdale County case before he left for Washington County for good.

Helmert had filed subpoenas, a step toward trial, as far back as February 2017. In early October, Helmert filed a Motion for a Speedy Trial, a legal motion that attempts to speed up a delayed trial. Within a few days, the 10th Circuit District Attorney’s Office notified Helmert of new discovery on Oct. 2, saying it would be delivered to Helmert’s new office on Oct. 12.

That discovery was 600 pages of previously undisclosed documents.

Citing the untimely disclosure, Helmert asked to be excused and handed the case over to another public defender, Marvell Gordon, who declined to comment for this story. Bilbo Mitchell, the district attorney, also declined to comment.

Another path

The case of McDonald’s co-defendant, Georgio Rushing, took a different course. Rushing was arrested within weeks of McDonald and indicted the same day.

But on April 11, 2017, Rushing pleaded guilty to armed robbery and no longer faces the capital murder charge. Rushing, sentenced to 20 years, will serve eight years and have another 12 years suspended, receiving credit for the 578 days already spent in custody. He will spend five years on parole.

The county paid for nearly one-fifth of Rushing’s housing for his sentence, or $39,304. Rushing will spend his remaining 2,342 days in the custody of the state at the expense of the Mississippi Department of Corrections.

In Helmert’s subpoena lists in the trial of McDonald, Rushing was listed as a witness.

So while McDonald’s co-defendant serves his sentence in a state prison, McDonald continues to linger in the Lauderdale County Detention Facility at county taxpayers’ expense. Charged with capital murder, he is ineligible for bond.

All told, McDonald has spent 990 days in jail. According to a state-funded cost estimate from nearly a decade ago, it takes $68 in county taxes to house inmates at the LCDF.

Using this estimate, McDonald, one of 200-plus inmates, has cost the county roughly $67,320 for the last two and a half years.

The county could have saved roughly $24,500 if McDonald had gone to trial within 270 days of his indictment, as recommended by the law. (That $24,500 doesn’t include court fees accrued during his appearances or attorney time.)

Memphis activist Wendol Lee, the president of Operation Help Civil Rights Group, argued last summer that an innocent person might plead guilty and accept a plea deal after being held in jail for a prolonged period of time.

“If they’re held in there they might plead guilty even when they are not guilty,” Lee said in early August, citing McDonald as one of the county’s concerning cases. “We want this to stop.”

Victim’s family waits 

Meanwhile, the Hearn family continues their wait. Christina Hearn-Henderson, Jerome Hearn’s sister, described her brother as someone who loved spending time with his family and going to church.

“He was a nice, giving person,” Hearn-Henderson said. “Just a good guy.”

One particular frustration to Hearn-Henderson is the lack of communication and confusion about who to contact at the district attorney’s office. Hearn-Henderson credited the Meridian Police Department for keeping her updated on the case. 

When asked, Hearn-Henderson didn’t express any impatience or frustration. Rather, she said, she relied on her faith.

“I’m just going to pray my way through it,” Hearn-Henderson said. “I’m not even looking at or depending on the courts at this point.”