New State Flag for Mississippi?

New State Flag for Mississippi?

JACKSON, Miss. — The change for the current design of the state of Mississippi flag is up for debate as the 2019 legislative session continues.

The current design displays the Confederate Battle emblem. Jackson resident and designer Laurin Stennis has already designed a new flag to represent Mississippi.

“In this day and age, a state flag is a logo,” she said. “It’s really about marketing and branding. And right now, our logo’s not working for us.”

Stennis is the granddaughter of former U.S. Sen. John Stennis.

“It’s ready to go,” she said. “People love it….it’s being embraced.”

She says the next step for the flag moving forward is up to lawmakers at the Capitol.

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Tennessee Moves to Put More

Inmates to Death

NASHVILLE, Tenn. — Tennessee is planning a wave of executions amid calls from inmates who have raised concerns about lethal injection.

Tennessee has been waiting more than three decades to pass sentence on death row inmates Donnie Edward Johnson, Stephen Michael West, Charles Walton Wright and Leroy Hall.

This year, all four may be executed The four are next in line in a an execution schedule that has suddenly put Tennessee among states with the most active death chambers. After going nine years without putting anyone to death, Tennessee executed three people last year, second only to Texas. In addition to the four this year, it has scheduled two more in 2020.

This relative surge is unusual in America, where new death sentences and executions have dropped to historic lows and public opinion is turning against capital punishment. There were 42 death sentences and 25 executions nationwide last year.

Much of the decline has to do with questions over the use of lethal injection drugs, the primary execution method in the 30 states that still allow the death penalty. Opponents say it is inhumane, and drug companies have resisted states’ attempts to use their products often obtained secretly, to end someone’s life. The developments have made it increasingly difficult for states to carry out death sentences, with only the most persistent finding ways to continue.

In the end, Irick was killed with a three-drug combination at was later described as torturous by a doctor hired by inmate lawyers and prompted the next two men on the execution list, Edmund Zagorski and David Miller, to instead choose to die in an electric chair, a method all but abandoned for its barbarity.

Tennessee’s execution schedule:

• May 16, 2019: Donnie Edward Johnson, 68, sentenced to death for murder in 1984

• Aug. 15, 2019: Stephen Michael West, 66, sentenced to death for murder in 1987

• Oct. 10, 2019: Charles Walton Wright, 63, sentenced to death for murder in 1984

• Dec. 5, 2019: Leroy Hall, 52, sentenced to death for murder in 1991

• Feb. 20, 2020: Nicholas Todd Sutton, 57, sentenced to death for murder in 1986

• April 9, 2020: Abu Ali Abdur-Rahman, 68, sentenced to death for murder in 1987.

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Deputies Seize $1 Million in Cocaine

BRANDON, Miss. — Sheriff’s deputies in Mississippi have arrested a Texas man and seized more than $1 million in cocaine during a traffic stop.

News outlets reported that a Rankin County deputy made the stop in Interstate-20 on Saturday afternoon. A search of the car found 75 pounds of cocaine.

The driver, 46-year-old Luis Carlos Alvarado of Odessa, Texas, has been arrested and charged with aggravated trafficking of cocaine. Alvarado is being held in the Rankin County jail in Brandon.

Carlos has not yet appeared in court and there is no word of an attorney for him yet.

The Mississippi Highway Patrol assisted in the drug bust.