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Shooting shows pitfalls of closing old cases BY ALLEN G. BREED AND HOLBROOK MOHR Associated Press
PELAHATCHIE — On a late-fall evening 46 years ago, gunfire shattered the revelry at a nameless juke joint in this rural crossroads. When the smoke cleared, Joseph Robert McNair, a black father of six, lay at the feet of the community’s white constable. That McNair was dead, and that Luther Steverson had killed him are about the only details on which folks around here agree. Five months ago, the U.S. Department of Justice — which has been looking into scores of civil rights-era deaths — closed a reinvestigation of McNair’s shooting and informed family members that there was nothing to prosecute. But The Associated Press has found a number of people whose eyewitness accounts conflict with the official finding that Steverson fired just once in self-defense. In response, the FBI made some more inquiries, but the agency insists that the witness accounts it has are “irreconcilably inconsistent,” and that the case remains unprosecutable. Local authorities, saying they trust the bureau’s judgment, consider the case closed. But it’s far from solved, say others, including McNair’s three surviving children. In their minds, crucial questions — such as exactly where McNair was hit, and by how many bullets — remain unresolved. The only way to reconcile the conflicting stories, they agree, would be to exhume the body. “I would like to know,” says Patsy Morrow-Whitfield, who was just 10 when neighbors led her and her siblings to the field where her stepfather lay. Still, she added, “It’s almost moot to me. Because the people that would get the great satisfaction out of this, other than my brother there and me and my sister, has already passed.” The dispute over McNair’s death illustrates the challenges — and high stakes — of seeking the truth so long after the fact. ■■■
McNair’s was one of 124 civil rights-era deaths that the Justice Department has reviewed since launching its “Cold Case Initiative” in 2006. Congress turned up the heat in 2007 with the Emmett Till Unsolved Civil Rights Crime Act, setting aside millions of dollars “to ensure timely and thorough investigations in the cases involved.” His case was among more than six dozen the Southern Poverty Law Center referred to the DOJ in February 2007. Steverson shot McNair on Nov. 6, 1965, as he said he was attempting to serve a warrant on the 27-year-old laborer for nonsupport of his and his wife Myrtle’s six children. In a recent phone interview, the 84-year-old Steverson, who lives in nearby Pearl, told the AP that he had driven out to Pelahatchie — about 20 miles east of the state capital of Jackson — with town Marshal Cooper Stingley and Night Marshal Pat Wade to serve his warrant. He said he was riding in the back seat,
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the warrant in his shirt pocket and his .38-caliber service revolver in its holster on the seat beside him, when they came across McNair at the juke joint off Highway 80. “I jumped out,” the former constable said. “And I didn’t have time to grab my regular service gun.” Steverson said he pulled out his “safety piece” — a two-shot, .22 Magnum derringer — and ran after McNair. When he caught up with him in a field of waist-high grass, he said, McNair wheeled and knocked him down. “He said, ‘You’ve tried to kill me. I’m going to kill you,”’ Steverson said. “And he started down on me. It looked like he had a knife. Of course, I was laying on my back trying to get up, had the gun in my hand and I shot him.” He said the bullet struck McNair square in the chest. “It blowed him backwards,” Steverson said. He and the others searched for a knife, he said, but never found one. Soon afterward, Steverson was cleared in a hearing before a justice of the peace. In late May of this year, the case became one of about 80 officially closed by the Justice Department following reconsideration. “After careful review of this incident, we have concluded that the federal government cannot now bring a prosecution against the officer,” Paige M. Fitzgerald, deputy chief in charge of the cold-case effort, wrote in a letter to McNair’s family. “Again, please accept our sincere condolences.” But after obtaining a copy of the FBI letter through a Freedom of Information Act request, the AP went in search of potential witnesses. Reporters located six people who say they were present when the shooting occurred, or in its immediate aftermath, and who dispute Steverson’s version of events. While varying in some significant details, their accounts converge on some key points: Two say they saw McNair fleeing, not lunging, and at least four remember hearing multiple gunshots, not one. “That man was shot down in the back like a damn dog!” Connie Harris, 63, told the AP in a late October telephone interview from her home in Pelahatchie. “I’m not telling you what people say; I’m telling you what my two eyes seen.” Harris, who was 14 at the time, said she and some friends were on their way to the high school for a “record hop” when she saw Stever-
son and McNair, both of whom she knew. “Why you doing this? I ain’t did nothing,” she remembered McNair saying. When his pleading did no good, she said, McNair “broke out running.” Harris said Steverson fired two shots, and McNair “fell on his face.” Annie Hoard, 62, who was with Harris, said she also heard McNair pleading, then heard two distinct gunshots — though she did not see the shots fired. John Lee Hoard, 72, described a different perspective. He and McNair were drinking at the bar, he said, when Steverson arrived and told McNair that he was under arrest. “Joseph told him he hadn’t did nothing,” Hoard, McNair’s third cousin and Annie Hoard’s brother, told the AP in a telephone interview. John Hoard said McNair ran out the back door, with Steverson in pursuit. He said he saw the constable fire at McNair’s back, then watched his cousin fall. The FBI said it had interviewed “no less than 11 civilian witnesses” before its initial decision to close the case. None of the people the AP found and spoke with had been contacted by agents. In its letter, the FBI told the family that it had located one person who claimed to have been there that evening. That man, who was not identified, told agents that he heard two gunshots. These accounts echo a contemporary report located by the AP in the files of Mississippi Sovereignty Commission, the organization through which the state spied on its own citizens as part of its effort to resist desegregation. According to the 1965 memo, outlining an unnamed informant’s statement to the commission, a witness said Steverson “shot McNair once in the back, and then in the head as he was lying on the ground.” The informant said the FBI was investigating. But the letter to the family said agents had been unable to locate a file on the decades-old case. During the reinvestigation, Steverson told agents that he had been “charged, tried and acquitted of murder,” which, if true, would mean he couldn’t be retried on the state level. But the FBI told the family it could find no public records or news reports of any formal charges. In a local library, The AP found documentation of a coroner’s inquest and a justice of the peace hearing, however. In a Nov. 8, 1965, article, the AP quot-
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ed Jackson funeral home director Fred Banks, who was black, as saying that McNair “was shot in the front only. Two inches down from the collarbone and slightly to the left of center.” Banks’ son Karl, now a county supervisor, said his late father would not have been intimidated despite the charged racial atmosphere of the time. “He would have called it just like he saw it.” The late Coroner Dempsey T. Amacker, who was white, said the same thing as Fred Banks during a hearing before Justice of the Peace Walter Ratcliff the following week. Public records of the hearing are unavailable and may have been destroyed, local officials said. “J.P. Court Here Rules ‘Justifiable Homicide’ in Shooting of Negro,” read the headline in the Nov. 11, 1965, edition of the weekly Rankin County News. The hearing concluded that no crime had occurred. But conviction after conviction in these old cases has proven that such results cannot always be taken at face value, said historian David T. Beito. “There are certainly many examples that you could point to in Mississippi in that period of deception by authorities, of authorities circling the wagons to protect each other,” said Beito, a professor at the University of Alabama. For his part, Steverson told the AP he was never worried. When the agents who visited his home asked if he still had the gun with which he shot McNair, he said he produced the derringer and even let agents photograph it. Regardless of what some witnesses have claimed, he said his conscience is clear. “I know what happened,” he said. “It was a necessary thing. If it had been my brother, I would have had to done the same thing.” McNair’s stepdaughter, Morrow-Whitfield, said her mother never got over the killing. Still, she wonders if pursuing the case is even worth it. “It would be like an empty victory, you know,” she said. Steverson “has lived his life. He’s an old man now. And all it is, is going to be just facts.”
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Faye Switcher Bonds Funeral services for Faye Switcher Bonds, 76, of Corinth, are set for 2 p.m. today at Wheeler Grove Baptist Church with burial at Forrest Memorial Park Cemetery. Mrs. Bonds died Friday, Nov. 25, 2011, at her residence. Born March 18, 1935, she was a retired factory worker. She was a member of Wheeler Grove Baptist Church. She was preceded in death by her father, Claudie Lee Switcher; her mother, Mabel Inez Gammill Switcher; and two brothers, Charles Switcher and Sammie Switcher. Survivors include her husband, Joe Edward Bonds; two sons, Mike Bonds and wife Rhonda Bonds of Belmont, and Jeff Bonds and wife Helen of Corinth; one daughter, Shelia Harris and husband Lynn of Corinth; nine grandchildren, Shaun Harris and wife Felicia of Corinth, Whitney Kilgore and husband Doug of Burnsville, Conner Bonds and wife Gina of Rienzi, Chelsea Bonds of Belmont, Austin Bonds of Belmont, Wendy Fowler and husband John of Twin Cities, Ga., Sonya Voyles and husband Bobby of Russelville, Ala., Jennifer Johnson and husband Jeremiah of Booneville, and Heather Essary of Corinth; 15 great-grandchildren; 3 great great-grandchildren; one brother, Larry Switcher and wife Pat of Corinth; other relatives and a host of friends. Bro. Kara Blackard and Bro. Ray Bennett will officiate. Visitation began Saturday and continues today from 11:30 a.m. until service time at Wheeler Grove Baptist Church. Magnolia Funeral Home is in charge of arrangements.
Landlords face new fees in Tupelo Associated Press
TUPELO — Tupelo landlords have been sent letters informing them of a new ordinance that will raise their business costs starting Jan. 1 and what fines they face if they don’t comply. City officials tell the Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal reports 750 rental property owners received the letter, a registration form and new fee schedule. The new ordinance requires rental property owners to pay an annual $25-per-unit registration fee and submit to housing inspections every two years. Landlords who keep utilities in their own name will get inspected every six months. Each of the first two inspections are free, but owners who repeatedly fail them must pay $100 to $400 for subsequent visits. After the fifth consecutive failure, landlords will be brought to court. Inspections also will be required anytime a unit changes tenants. Landlords who fail to register will be fined $350 per unit. Those who register late also face a $10-perunit penalty for each month they’re past due. Tupelo has about 5,100 rental units, according to the most recent census. Officials say the program aims to clean up blighted rental property and improve the general health of all neighborhoods. Proponents also hope it will decrease the overall percentage of rental units and encourage more home ownership. It’s the second version of the original program launched in January 2007. That version charged landlords $10 a year if they owned one to three units, $30 annually for four to 10 units, and $100 annually if they owned more than 10. Landlords who already have paid those fees for the current fiscal year will be exempt from the new fee schedule until Oct. 1.
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