In the coming legislative session, Mississippi prosecutors want to expand the death penalty to cover mass shootings and terrorist attacks.
The expansion of the death penalty to cover mass shootings is on top of the list of bills the Mississippi Prosecutors Association has sent to the state Legislature for consideration, said Ninth Circuit District Attorney Ricky Smith, who serves on the legislative committee and is past president of the association.
“We’re trying to make the killing of two or more persons in a single instance capital murder so that the death penalty may be used,” Smith said.
The proposal is a response to mass shootings across the county, specifically acts like James Holmes’ July 20, 2012, attack on a movie theater in Aurora, Colo.
“Right now in Mississippi, that would not be a death penalty eligible case,” Smith said.
Current capital murder statutes cover the killing of a peace officer, firefighter or county, municipal, state of other officials. It can also include murder purported by an inmate serving life in prison, a killing caused by a bomb, or any killing by any person engaged in the commission of rape, burglary, kidnapping, arson, robbery, sexual battery, child molestation, or child abuse.
The death penalty is also legal under Mississippi law for treason or hijacking of an aircraft.
Mississippi has 47 men and one woman on death row, according to Mississippi Department of Corrections records.
Warren County is listed as the place of conviction for only one death row inmate, Alan Dale Walker. Walker was convicted and sentenced to death here in 1991 for the 1990 rape and killing of a Long Beach woman.
James Cobb Hutto was sentenced to death in 2013 in Hinds County for the killing of a woman he abducted from a Vicksburg casino.
Prosecutors also want to take an opportunity to rework some parts of a massive criminal justice overhaul that went into effect last July by making felony shoplifting easier to prosecute and updating legal definitions, Smith said.
Under the law that went into effect July 1, shoplifting is only a felony if an offender has stolen more than $500 in merchandise on three or more occasions.
“As long as the perpetrator steals less than $500 every time, it can never be a felony,” Smith said.
The association is proposing to make any third-offense shoplifting a felony, he said.
The prosecutors’ association also wants to remove a value limitation on felony auto theft. Under current law a vehicle must be valued at more than $1,000 for its theft to be a felony, Smith said.
“We think that’s punishing the poor,” Smith said. “We would like to amend that back to any vehicle of any value would be a felony.”
Other proposals include removing aggravated domestic violence from a list of expugnable crimes, defining a technical violation for revocation hearings and extending a 21-day requirement for holding revocation hearings.