Hinds County District Attorney Jody E. Owens II walked briskly toward a crowd of TV cameras and reporters on the steps of the federal courthouse in Jackson last week to denounce what he called a “horrible example of a flawed FBI investigation” and an “assassination attempt on my character.”
Owens, the top elected law enforcement official for Mississippi’s largest county that encompasses its capital city, pleaded not guilty to multiple federal felony charges stemming from an alleged FBI bribery sting. He vowed to remain in office.
And indicted Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, who faces similar charges in the same case, pledged to remain mayor and continue his 2025 reelection campaign.
“We plan on fighting these charges. But right now, I’m going to get back to protecting Hinds County and being your district attorney that you elected us to be,” Owens told reporters last week after his arraignment in federal court in Jackson.
“I am not guilty, so I will not proceed as a guilty man,” Lumumba said.
For at least the last 50 years, it has not been unusual for top-ranking elected officials across the U.S. to keep their offices as they fight the charges, even after major felony indictments for corruption, according to legal experts interviewed by The Marshall Project - Jackson. Indictments are allegations, and the accused are innocent until proven guilty.
Public corruption investigations have become commonplace in the news. In 2022, the latest year available, there were 50 guilty pleas and seven trial convictions for public officials, ranging from a police chief to state senators, according to the Department of Justice’s Public Integrity section’s annual report.
Beyond Jackson, New York City Mayor Eric Adams is facing federal corruption charges and vowed not to step down. And although President-elect Donald Trump was convicted last year of 34 felony offenses in New York for a hush-money payment, voters returned him to the presidency Nov. 5, knowing full well about his convictions and other pending charges.
Public corruption in the country is as old as American politics, said Robert Collins, a professor of public policy at Dillard University in New Orleans. But cracking down on it has become an FBI priority in recent decades.
In 1978, Congress passed the Ethics in Government Act in the wake of the Watergate scandal that led to the resignation of President Richard Nixon. That same year, the FBI began its Abscam investigation into lawmakers taking bribes. The investigation involved undercover agents using a yacht and offering cash to a senator, six congressmen and a mayor for political favors and sponsoring legislation. The case led to 19 convictions, including long-time U.S. Sen. Harrison A. Williams Jr. of New Jersey, who resigned his seat only after he was convicted and was about to be expelled from the Senate.
More recently, in 2017, then-District Attorney R. Seth Williams of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, was indicted on 29 charges related to public corruption while in office, including bribery. He was accused of accepting gifts from businessmen, including a 1997 Jaguar and a trip to Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic. Williams, who once headed the city’s anti-corruption investigations as inspector general, initially pleaded not guilty, but changed his plea and resigned from office three months later. Williams admitted “that he accepted tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of concealed bribes in exchange for his agreement to perform official acts,” according to the Department of Justice. He served three years in federal prison and was disbarred.
More often than not, an indicted public official eventually resigns. And in many cases, prosecutors use the official’s elected position as a bargaining chip, offering a better plea deal or dropping charges altogether in exchange for a resignation, legal experts said.
“Whenever an indictment is brought, the FBI and the Justice Department that bring the indictments have the intention that that will cause that official to resign right away,” said Kenneth Katkin, a law professor at Northern Kentucky University. “Sometimes, they openly call for it.”
Corruption investigations can impede public officials from doing their jobs and often erode the public’s trust in their elected officials, Collins said.
In New Orleans, Mayor LaToya Cantrell has been surrounded by a federal probe for at least two years. Former police officer Jeffrey Vappie, who led her security detail, was indicted in July on a wire fraud charge. And a local contractor, Randy Farrell, was served a 25-count indictment in September on charges of wire fraud and conspiracy to commit wire fraud, with “Public Official 1,” who local media reports have identified as Cantrell. Cantrell has not been charged.
The cloud of the investigation has negatively affected Cantrell’s performance in the polls, Collins said. It has also affected city employees, who told Collins that it’s hard to conduct everyday business with the investigation looming.
In Mississippi, reactions to the indictments of the Jackson mayor and county district attorney have been mixed.
“You know, what we try to do is build trust, and what these indictments will do is send a message … Do not say you’re running for office to help people, and you’re trying to help yourself,” Councilman Kenneth Stokes said following the indictments. “If you’re going to help people, help people.”
Gov. Tate Reeves said, “Obviously, the allegations are serious and bring into question individuals’ ability to do certain jobs. We are monitoring it and watching very closely.”
Lumumba said in a video statement that he believes the investigation is a political move against him ahead of the 2025 mayoral race, a refrain also used by Trump, New York City Mayor Adams and others. Former U.S. Sen. Bob Menendez of New Jersey, a Democrat, said he was being targeted because he was a prominent Latino in government. A federal jury found him guilty this year of accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars in bribes, including cash and gold bars. He kept his seat but resigned after he was convicted.
Collins, the Dillard University professor, said that claims of political persecution are a standard defensive tactic.
“Almost every politician claims political targeting and political retribution, but whether or not they can convince the voters of that, I think it depends on the skill set of the individual politician, and it depends on the facts of the individual case,” Collins said.
In Jackson, former District Attorney Robert Shuler Smith, who preceded Owens, faced criminal conspiracy charges brought against him by the state in 2016 and 2017, as well as aggravated stalking charges in 2018, all while in office. He did not resign and was never convicted. At the time, Smith told Mississippi Today that people were plotting behind his back for political reasons.
Political prosecution is especially a common refrain in a majority-Black, Democrat-run city like Jackson, which has a notoriously strained relationship with its White, Republican state leadership. However, the FBI prosecution is led by the federal government, headed by Democratic President Joe Biden.
In his public statement, Mayor Lumumba did not refer to race, nor address who could be behind such political attacks. A friend of the mayor, Danyelle Holmes, however, told reporters at the courthouse following his arraignment that the prosecution was a direct attack on Black leadership and an attempt to discredit the mayor’s character. The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi did not respond to a request for comment.
In recent years, public corruption cases have become more complicated to prosecute and are overturned on appeal more than half of the time because of the gray areas that the political process creates, Katkin said.
In cases like Lumumba’s, where an official is accused of bribery in the form of campaign contributions, the legal landscape can get complicated.
Politicians legally ask for contribution money throughout their campaigns, and they often make promises to their constituents. Voters, including people and businesses who contribute to election campaigns, often tell politicians what policies they want enacted or what problems need to be fixed.
Asking politicians to take action is well within every constituent’s First Amendment right, Katkin said, which makes it difficult to enforce public corruption statutes.
“The ordinary operation of our American electoral campaign system can be painted to look like bribery in ways that often is persuasive to juries, but not persuasive to courts of appeals,” Katkin said.
A landmark U.S. Supreme Court decision that overturned the 2014 conviction of Virginia’s then-Gov. Bob McDonnell narrowed the paths for prosecutors to build a federal bribery case. McDonnell was convicted of charges related to $175,000 in gifts that he received from a local businessman seeking government research. The businessman never got anything in return.
McDonnell was convicted by a federal jury at trial. However, a unanimous Supreme Court decision reversed his conviction and narrowed the definition of an “official act” that could trigger a bribery charge. In short, the court said, if money is given but nothing is done in exchange for the money, there is no crime.
The justices said that leaving the broad definition of an official act up for prosecutors’ interpretations could harm the political process for fear of prosecution for common political acts.
In the Jackson indictment, the U.S. Attorney claimed that Lumumba’s “official action” was that he moved a development deadline to help the agents posing as corrupt developers. District Attorney Owens is accused of facilitating bribes to prompt Lumumba’s and Councilman Aaron Banks’ actions to help the developers. Banks has also pleaded not guilty and remains on the city council.
But in Mississippi and other states, a conviction is not always a bar to future political office. The Mississippi Constitution allows those convicted of tax evasion and manslaughter to hold office.
In 2007, Oliver Thomas, a New Orleans councilmember, pleaded guilty to bribery charges. He served three years in federal prison, returned home to New Orleans and built trust within his community for more than a decade before running for office again in 2021. He now serves on the city council.
Public policy professor Collins said Thomas’ immediate admission of responsibility to his constituents, coupled with his run in a majority-Black, low-income district composed of people more likely to have contact with the criminal legal system — and therefore more likely to be sympathetic to second chances — helped him to gain favor, and ultimately the most votes in the election.
