Mississippi is violating the U.S. Constitution’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment by permanently stripping voting rights from people convicted of some felonies, a federal appeals court panel ruled in a split decision Friday.
Two judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel ordered the Mississippi secretary of state to stop enforcing a provision in the state constitution that disenfranchises people convicted of specific crimes, including murder, forgery and bigamy.
If the ruling stands, thousands of people could regain voting rights, possibly in time for the Nov. 7 general election for governor and other statewide offices.
Mississippi Republican Attorney General Lynn Fitch expects to ask the full appeals court to reconsider the panel’s 2-1 ruling, her spokesperson, Debbee Hancock, said Friday.
The 5th Circuit is one of the most conservative appeals courts in the U.S., and in 2022 it declined to overturn Mississippi’s felony disenfranchisement provisions — a ruling that came in a separate lawsuit. In June, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would not consider that case, allowing the 2022 appeals court ruling to stand.
The two lawsuits use different arguments.
The suit that the Supreme Court declined to hear was based on arguments about equal protection. Plaintiffs said that the Jim Crow-era authors of the Mississippi Constitution stripped voting rights for crimes they thought Black people were more likely to commit, including forgery, larceny and bigamy.
The lawsuit that the appeals court panel ruled on Friday is based on arguments that Mississippi is imposing cruel and unusual punishment with a lifetime ban on voting after some felony convictions.
“Mississippi stands as an outlier among its sister states, bucking a clear and consistent trend in our Nation against permanent disenfranchisement,” wrote Judges Carolyn Dineen King and James L. Dennis.
Under the Mississippi Constitution, people convicted of 10 specific felonies — including murder, forgery and bigamy — lose the right to vote. The state’s attorney general expanded the list to 22 crimes, including timber larceny and carjacking.
when you go to prison and pay the price that society says your supposed to pay by serving your sentence, you get released. you’re done. How is it just that you have your right to vote permanently stripped from you?
if you were convicted of a violent crime and were proven not to be able to be trusted with a firearm, I can understand not being able to ever own a gun again, and a felony record already makes it next to impossible to find a decent job or decent housing. but to never vote again? that’s just petty and vindictive, not just. These people, whatever their crime, hav paid their debt to society.
You shouldn’t lose it in jail either. The worst people are still part of society and deserve the right to vote.
I hadn’t really considered that, however I could see a convincing argument being made for that… such as:
people are incarcerated not only as a punitive measure (which I disagree with; prison should be rehabilitative and to serve to protect society form dangerous criminals, not simply to punish). doing incarceration, certain rights are severely curtailed to this end, but what purpose does it serve to suspend the right to vote other to disenfranchise what are primarily people of color? when this result is highlighted (ad the majority of this who advocate for this right to be withheld also happen to hate PoC) the dots are easy to connect.
The purpose is to disenfranchise black people, because racism. But even without the racism they are still.part of society and deserve the right to vote.
There is one complaint that they will skew local elections when jails are in remote areas, but that can be solved by having their residence match whatever it was at the time of their incarceration.
it could also be solved by jailing fewer people and for shorter periods of time…
While that should also happen, it wouldn’t solve losing the ability to vote forever on a conviction.
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oh, I know— it’s the last ass-fucking on the prison pipeline— and why it’s so important that people who have paid their debt to society get their lives back afterward.
Here in Brazil, people can vote while still in jail serving sentence. On top of that, asking any job candidate for their criminal records is illegal, unless the job is on a financial institution, like a bank. Third parties (like an HR department) can’t access criminal records due to privacy protections contained in out constitution and laws.
Man, the Brazilian constitution of 1988 is such an amazing document. More countries should have modern constitutions!
eh, do you really want people convicted of forgery to vote? seems like it’s setting a bad precedent.
murder? yeah you lost your rights to vote, deal with it. had to look up what bigamy is, and I wasnt aware that was even a felony.
it’s not a matter of what you or I want; it’s a matter of justice, of what’s fair and what’s right.
murder? yeah you lost your rights to vote, deal with it.
and why should they? they’ve paid their debt to society.
nope - if you take someone else’s life then you’re punished for the rest of yours. it’s called Justice.
not according to the law. it’s uncommon for those convicted of murder to get life sentences. a life sentence is only available in almost all states for First degree and Second degree murder cases when aggravating circumstances were involved and when a plea-bargain wasn’t reached (rare), and most muted cases, themselves aren’t first-degree murder anyway.
most people convicted of murder serve between 20-40 years.
it’s called Justice.
no, that’s vengeance, and that is not justice.
that’s just your interpretation. I follow an older law - an Eye for an Eye.
It’s not an “interpretation”, it’s the definition of the word:
vengeance
noun
- Infliction of punishment in return for a wrong committed; retribution.
- Punishment inflicted in return for an injury or an offense.
…
Eye for an Eye
That’s against the law in the United States (and pretty much everywhere else) and will land YOU in prison.
For all your posturing, you don’t actually care about the law at all. You just want to hurt people that you don’t like.
I want everybody including people still serving their sentence to be able to vote, mainly because I don’t want it to be possible for disenfranchisement to be an ulterior motive for criminalizing things the political opposition does. (For example, marijuana prohibition.)
willingly and knowingly breaking the law is a crime, regardless of if you agree with the law.
but I agree with you on naturally occurring plants - cannabis and poppy should be perfectly legal, but thc concentrate and opiate derivatives should be illegal. even hard alcohol should be regulated.
willingly and knowingly breaking the law is a crime, regardless of if you agree with the law.
even our founding fathers said that unjust laws shouldn’t be followed… and here you are, commenting all over this post about how much you disagree with this legal ruling… it seems you’re only happy when it’s laws you happen to like.
but thc concentrate and opiate derivatives should be illegal.
why? because you personally don’t like them?
even hard alcohol should be regulated.
it has been for over a century. you know what has, consistently, decreased the consumption of alcohol (and opiates, btw), specially in minors? Legalizing cannabis… in all forms. It’s even caused a drop in use of cannabis in minors due to regulation and education in places where it’s been legalized.
when you make something illegal, it doesn’t stop people from using it. it just pushes it onto the black market where impure versions are distributed without care or concern for who buys it. and that’s dangerous.
Hope you or your family don’t get falsely accused or convicted of any of those felonies then. Seriously, some people don’t understand, once you strip rights from one group of people, it’s only a matter of time until either they or their families either fall into that group, or the group gets expanded so large that they will inevitably be included in it. If you don’t think you’ll end up in that group, you’re either incredibly conceited, or you probably deserve to be in jail in the first place. Seriously why would people who benefit from disenfranchisement ever want to stop?
oh, we’ve got a felon in the family. useless bastard, he’s been in and out of prison his entire miserable life - hence my opinion. thank God he’s not allowed to vote, with the piss poor choices he makes. honestly, that whole side of the family is fucked.
oh, we’ve got a felon in the family. … hence my opinion.
so, you admit that you’re speaking from a heavy personal bias, not from a place of reason. and, just because you clearly have strong feelings a negative judgement towards this family member, you believe all felons should be treated this way.
and that’s precisely why you shouldn’t be making these decisions for others. in a court of law, a judge would recuse themselves for having such a bias, jurors would be dismissed, and it would be grounds for appeal for a defendant because the law recognizes that such a judgement is fundamentally unfair. so should you.
lol and you’re claiming you have no bias?
roflmao, literally. wow fucking lol.
lol and you’re claiming you have no bias?
where did I say that? I’m just not using it to justify ruining the lives of strangers,
