Photos by Ronni Mott
The bell rang for fifth period at Greenwood High School, and James Marshall walked to class. The 17-year-old wore his throwback Dave Wilcox jersey that his mom had bought him, a bright red 49ers uniform from 1964 with three-quarter sleeves that reached below his wrists. On the way, he spotted his friend Jarvis Williams, who was telling a group of boys about his tattoo.
"James, come over here and show us your tattoo," Williams shouted across the hallway.
Marshall headed toward the group, and lifted the loose sleeve on his left arm up to his elbow, bunching the number four—one half of Wilcox's 64—around his shoulder. In looping cursive letters stacked like a totem pole, the word "James" curved along his inner arm and stopped three-quarters of the way down, the spot where Wilcox's sleeves would have rested on the linebacker's body.
Marshall had never played football, though it was his childhood dream, because of chronic asthma and a weak chest. In eighth grade, a baseball to the sternum ended his brief encounter with sports. He had played baseball for three years, and after the injury his mother wouldn't allow anything else. With his sleeve up, his inked arm looked slighter and more delicate than a football player's. At 5'9" and 170 lbs., he could have played tailback or wide receiver, but not many other positions. He didn't clench his hand into a fist but tucked his fingers back against his palm as he showed the other boys his tattoo.
He had no idea what would happen next.
'Assaulting the Police'
Casey Wiggins, a 26-year-old white police officer of stocky build and slightly above-average height—about 5'11", judging by video footage—was patrolling the hallways of the now-majority African American high school by himself on Dec. 6 when he saw Marshall and his friends. Wiggins had not completed police academy training, and was required to be under supervision by a fellow officer at all times, but today he was alone. As he approached the group of three boys, all black, he thought he saw Marshall try to hide something in his left hand.
A teacher making plans on a desk calendar inside the teacher's lounge heard a thud outside the door. He walked over and opened it to see what had happened. As soon as he did, Wiggins stumbled backward into the lounge, grabbing at Marshall's jersey and bringing him down with him, as captured by a security camera in the teacher's lounge.
Stunned by the fall, Marshall tried to steady himself and stand up. He held his hands limp and to his side. Wiggins, balancing himself with one arm on the ground, unholstered and then aimed his gun at Marshall's face. Wiggins would later report that he reached for his firearm because Marshall was grabbing him. Upon seeing Wiggins' gun, Marshall put his hands up and backed out of the lounge. Students who had gathered at the doorway cowered away at point-blank range.
Re-holstering his weapon, Wiggins led Marshall from behind down the crowded hallway, causing one girl to scream and run away. Stopping in front of a security camera, Wiggins slammed Marshall's head against the wall. Scanning the crowd of students around him, he held Marshall's head in place with his left hand as he unholstered his pistol for a second time. Once he retrieved his gun, he placed it in the coup de grâce position at the base of Marshall's neck.
Wiggins then pulled Marshall away from the wall, and wrapped his arm around his neck in a chokehold. Marshall, lethargic and unresisting, fell limp as Wiggins choked him. Wiggins would later report that Marshall was resisting "the entire time." A girl pleaded for Wiggins to stop before a school official escorted her away. After Wiggins let go of the chokehold, Marshall—now out of sight of the security camera—dropped down to his knees because his head had begun to hurt. Wiggins placed his knee on top of Marshall's head and told him he wished nobody else was around, so that he could "whoop (his) little ass," Marshall reported later.
Wiggins refused to let Marshall speak with Greenwood High School principal Percy Powell. Instead, he took him outside, where by Marshall's count at least seven police cars were waiting, arrested him, spread his legs and searched him.
His mother, who had received a phone call from another student that a police officer had pulled a gun on her child, arrived in Marshall's father's Silverado truck. She couldn't believe what had happened. Usually bound to the house by heart problems, diabetes, asthma and arthritis, Jacqueline Blackshire had traveled the one and a half blocks in a state of emergency.
When she saw Marshall handcuffed with his legs spread near a squad car, she jumped out of the truck and ran toward her child.
"Why are you messing with my son's leg?" she asked an officer.
"We're searching him," he replied.
The officer then showed her what they had found on Marshall: four quarters and a cigarette lighter.
"Mama, the police pulled a gun on me," Marshall said.
"What police pulled a gun on you?" Blackshire said.
The officers wouldn't let Marshall answer.
"What do y'all got him handcuffed for?" Blackshire asked them.
"Assaulting the police," one of them said.
As Marshall stepped into the back of a squad car, he saw his classmates outside staring at the scene.
"The whole school (was there)," Marshall said. "Everybody was hollering, people running. It was two days before my birthday."
'A Very Scary Situation'
Many people who saw the security video on the news believed that Marshall, whose twice-his-size jersey enveloped Wiggins in a flash of red, had thrown the officer to the floor. News reports did little to diminish this perception, referring to the incident as a "scuffle" or "altercation" without providing context or explaining that, upon close inspection of the video, it is clear that Marshall does not "scuffle" with Wiggins.
Upon learning Marshall's version of what had happened in the hallway, which she had never heard in the media, Children's Defense Fund regional director Oleta Fitzgerald said, "It wasn't portrayed that way."
Marshall tells the story like this: Wiggins grabbed Marshall and another boy in the group from behind and threw them against the door to the teacher's lounge.
In his incident report, Wiggins says it was the other way around: that the shorter and scrawnier Marshall threw him against the door behind him, which was cracked open. In fact, the door was shut closed. Only when the teacher inside opened the door to investigate a noise in the hallway did the door open and Wiggins and Marshall stumble through.
For Wiggins' version to corroborate, a miracle had to have happened: At the exact moment that Wiggins' body struck the door to the teacher's lounge, the teacher had to have opened it. Instead, Marshall says that Wiggins grabbed him by the arm and pulled him off the door toward his body. As he drew him closer, Wiggins, with his back to the door, kicked at Marshall's ankles to bring his feet out from under him. When the door opened, the officer's weight was balanced against the door, and he fell through, bringing the student with him.
Because Greenwood High School has not released video footage from the other side of the door—a hearing is set for Feb. 16 to determine whether footage from all 12 security cameras is public record; the Jackson Free Press has requested all the videos—it is impossible to know whether Wiggins or Marshall's version of the beginning of the incident is correct. In this type of case, at least in front of the judge, the police officer's version usually carries more weight. However, the events in the teacher's lounge and further down the hallway played out clearly and—most significantly—on camera.
"It didn't seem to me like the officer had a problem where he had to use a gun," Fitzgerald said. "What I saw was a very scary situation. An officer with a gun drawn, with all those students standing around—it was a godsend that no one got hurt."
Three corroborating witness accounts obtained by the Jackson Free Press indicate that on Sep. 16, 2006, Wiggins may have assaulted another unarmed black 17 year-old while arresting him for theft, without probable, cause at the Pizza Inn. Various accounts alleged that Wiggins shoved the student into the restaurant's door and threatened to kill him. These reports mirror Marshall's claim that when Wiggins had his gun pointed at him, the officer said, "I'm going to kill you." Witness accounts from Sep. 16 also alleged that Wiggins arrested and assaulted, by slamming a car door on her foot, the mother of another student, after she maintained that the students had paid for their food. For fear of reprisal, these witnesses wish to remain unnamed.
The Boy Next Door
On Dec. 6, the day of Marshall's arrest, Reginald Dean was the shift supervisor at the Greenwood Police Department. An African American veteran on the force for over 20 years, Dean had risen to the rank of captain. He lived in an economically modest neighborhood near the high school, halfway between Interstate 82 and the railroad tracks, where several of his neighbors held grudges against him for helping to arrest their children. He knew of but had never worked with Wiggins, who had served on the Greenwood Police Department for roughly six months as an uncertified police officer. Like other neighbors' boys he had seen arrested over the years, he knew Marshall because he lived near him—in this case, right next door. This coincidence, Dean believes, would eventually lead to his suspension from the force.
Dean says he saw Wiggins "push" Marshall into the report room along with four or five other police officers to file an incident report. He said that he suggested to Wiggins that he separate from Marshall and fill out his paperwork in the lounge, because he had heard shouting emerge from the report room. He does not know who said what to whom. Later, he retreated to his office.
Shortly afterward, Marshall's mother arrived. Too angry to contain herself, Blackshire remembers walking up to the group of officers and asking, "Which one of you damn police pulled a gun on my son?'"
She remembers Wiggins, whom Blackshire did not yet know was the officer who had pulled his gun twice on Marshall, approaching her and saying, "If you don't get out of here, interfering with the police investigation, I'm going to lock you up.'"
"He was yelling at me," Blackshire said. "He was talking smart to me. And I said, 'No, who was the police officer who pulled the gun on my child?' He really was yelling at me, telling me, 'If you don't stop getting out of hand,' this and that."
Like her son had done earlier, Blackshire backed away from Wiggins into a hallway, where she sat as the officers questioned Marshall.
After Blackshire waited outside for half an hour, Sgt. Archie—the Greenwood Police Department refused to provide "any kind of information" surrounding the Marshall case, including Archie's first name, to the Jackson Free Press—told Blackshire that he wished to speak with her, Marshall and Marshall's father, James Blackshire, across the street at the detective's department. After reviewing video footage from Greenwood High School, she said that Archie told her that her son would not be charged with assaulting an officer.
"He said, 'Mrs. Blackshire, I reviewed the tape, and it did not show that James did anything wrong. He did not put his hands on the police man.' He said, 'James, I reviewed the tape and (Wiggins) pulled a gun on you twice—once, twice.' So I said, 'Why are they trying to charge him with assault?' So he said, 'I don't know, but he's not going to be charged with assault.'"
When Dean emerged from his office, he saw Archie bringing Marshall back to the police station from the detective's department across the street.
"What do you want to do with James Marshall?" Dean said Archie asked him once he had brought him back to the patrol division.
After consulting with Archie, Dean decided to follow standard procedure in releasing Marshall, a minor, to his parents pending further charges. "Take your child home," he told Blackshire. "(Marshall) hasn't assaulted anybody. If anything comes up, we'll let you know."
'Like An Animal'
The next day, Dec. 7, Marshall and his mother signed a criminal affidavit against Wiggins for assault and battery. On Jan. 15, Grenada attorney Carlos Moore filed a $1 million civil suit on Marshall's behalf against Wiggins, Police Chief Henry Harris, Mayor Sheriel Perkins and the City of Greenwood, in addition to a federal criminal complaint through the U.S. Department of Justice, alleging assault and battery, wrongful imprisonment and negligence. Three days later, he raised the amount of the suit to $2 million, adding the Greenwood Public School District, Superintendent Leslie Daniels and Principal Powell as defendants.
"The Defendants were grossly negligent and/or wanton in failing to monitor the actions of Officer Wiggins and/or Chief Harris. They further negligently and/or wantonly failed to train Officer Wiggins to properly protect, interrogate, detain, accost, or arrest the Plaintiff and other similarly situated minors or students," Moore stated in the lawsuit.
Mitchel Creel, Casey Wiggins' attorney with offices in Greenville and Hattiesburg, responded: "It's frustrating as a lawyer to see this. It gives me a pretty good idea of why courts are backed up like this when cases like this are allowed to go to trial." Creel said that Wiggins is unavailable to comment on the allegations at this time.
Harris reassigned Wiggins from Greenwood High School but kept him on the police payroll. Harris has refused to comment on any aspect of the case, as has City Attorney James Littleton and school attorney Richard Oakes.
Wiggins will face a probable-cause hearing in March. Creel said he felt confident in the Greenwood Police Department's ability to internally regulate its officers and insists his client did "nothing wrong."
Marshall's attorney, though, says the failure to punish Wiggins was racially motivated. "If a black officer had done that to a white child, I'm 99 percent sure that officer would be dismissed from the force that day. But (in this case), you have a white officer doing it to a black child," he said.
"He didn't have to treat my child like an animal," Blackshire said. "I feel like that was wrong. And I feel like no one wanted to do anything about it. 'Cause he's a black kid, and the officer is white. He's still working. He don't need to be up there; he might do another child the same way."
On Jan. 29, nearly two months after Marshall's arrest, Chief Harris suspended Dean for five days for "assisting an offender." Harris told Dean that a felony charge had been in place against Marshall for assaulting an officer, yet Dean said Archie did not notify him of any felony charges on Dec. 6.
"I got suspended for five days, and Wiggins is still on the job and being paid," Dean said in a telephone interview from his house, next door to Marshall's, while serving his suspension. "I think Chief Harris feels like I'm trying to help (Marshall). I don't have any dealings with that boy."
"You can only lock a kid up for two reasons: if he's a danger to public safety or will not show up to court. (Marshall) did not meet either criterion. To release him is not unusual," said Ellen Reddy, director of the Coalition for the Prevention of Schoolhouse to Jailhouse, based in Jackson.
"Officer Wiggins, Chief (Harris), and even the child—they all have due process rights. Those processes should be in place. Those are rights that should be afforded through the school board and police department," Reddy added.
Chief Harris has not confirmed whether felony charges for assaulting an officer ever existed against Marshall, and will not comment on his suspension of Dean. In a further twist, the Greenwood Commonwealth, a daily newspaper there, reported on Feb. 2 that an arrest docket in the Greenwood Police Department contained white correction fluid over the Dec. 6 entry for James Marshall, except for the letters "JUV," presumably an abbreviation for "juvenile." The paper reported that his name and birthdate—12/8/88—are visible through the correction fluid.
The article fueled suspicions of Dean's involvement with Marshall, and of an attempt to fabricate such an involvement. The newspaper stated: "Capt. Reginald Dean, who has been suspended for five days for releasing Marshall to his parents after the incident, denied any involvement with the whiting out of the entry in the docket."
Creel, Wiggins' attorney, has said he plans to refer to the whited-out arrest docket at Wiggins' probable cause hearing.
Several readers posted inflammatory responses on the Web site under the story. In one post, "Long Gone" wrote: "The sad thing is, there are many good people living there of all races. It's just that the bad seem to be black and taking over."
"Informed Citizen" criticized Dean personally, saying: "Captain Dean is a poor excuse for an officer, and has disgraced the department, and Officer Wiggins. Captain Dean should be put out on the street, and save us that taxpayers money. (sic)"
In another, "Keep the faith, officer" wrote that Dean "better get him a lawyer now. They are getting ready to try to hang you."
"Give Marshall 2 million (lashes that is)," wrote "J.D."
Commonwealth editor/publisher Tim Kalich said he saw no reason to delete any of the comments. "I review all the Web comments personally myself, and for the most part I let people say what they want to say as long as it's not slanderous, libelous or in bad taste," editor/publisher Tim Kalich said.
"Joanne" of Carrollton wrote: "I still say anyone can go to Greenwood and break the law and if you are black, you got it made. If you are white you can be 'whited-out.' Ha, ha, ha."
In addition to the harassment in print, Marshall said his mother received several hateful phone calls at her house. One caller called her a "rich bitch" before hanging up.
"It makes me real mad. I've tried to ignore it," Blackshire said.
"It's just a sad situation. Folks are saying he's just after money, but we didn't ask to be put in this situation. He didn't ask to be treated like he was. It was a very serious offense," attorney Moore said.
Creel says the case is "silly." "Every time I wake up, I hear more baloney. Every time I turn around, someone else comes up with some wild theory," he told the Jackson Free Press.
"Someone's just trying to make a little money, that's all," he said.
Get Rich Quick?
The two prevailing opinions of Marshall are that he is a criminal who was acting up and deserved punishment and that he is using his arrest as a ploy to get rich quick. The first charge was magnified when media sources brought up Marshall's "pending" robbery charges. The Commonwealth ran an article on Jan. 14 with the headline, "Marshall still facing charge in robbery arrest."
The charges stemmed from a June 2006 incident, in which Marshall was accused of stealing a classmate's $80 necklace. According to Moore and Marshall, a grand jury cleared Marshall of all charges. District Attorney Joyce Chiles, whom the Commonwealth quoted saying that charges still exist, did not return phone calls for comment.
Nsombi Lambright, executive director of ACLU Mississippi, said that the over-incarceration of black males "leads to the perception of when you see young black men, you automatically think they're going to be involved in crime." One study by the U.S. Department of Justice determined that, if trends continue, one in three black males born in 2001 will be incarcerated at some point in their lives.
Several bloggers on the Commonwealth Web site suggested that Marshall's demand for justice—and compensation—reflects black privilege in Greenwood, a majority black city that has recently elected its first black mayor and police chief, and a city in which whites fought viciously against civil-rights reforms in the 1960s (the county cut off food commodities at one point for poor blacks trying to register to vote).
Whites opposing "race-mixing" then often used the excuse that blacks are more prone to violence. That rhetoric is still around.
"Is all the publicity about this one incident because we have a black mayor and black police chief?" asked Greenwood resident Lenny Strong in a letter to the editor published in print editions of the Commonwealth. Then, in nearly the same breath, he wondered aloud "what the latest statistics on shootings, stabbings, and other crimes in Greenwood are and what population holds the highest rating."
Frank Brown, professor of education at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, does not dispute that crime statistics are disproportionately high among blacks. But he argues that this is a reflection of societal powerlessness, not racial inferiority, and certainly does not indicate any type of racial privilege.
"Even in places where the black population is 5 or 6 percent, they're almost half of the jail population," Brown said. "That has racial and ethnic connotations. Who has the most advantages in society? (Blacks) have the fewest advantages, and the fewest opportunities to reap the rewards of a wealthy country, across the board."
In his report, "The Color of Discipline: Sources of Racial and Gender Disproportionality in School Punishment," Indiana University professor Russ Skiba found that these racial disadvantages—not inferiorities—existed within the system of school punishment.
"Despite the ubiquity of findings concerning the relationship between race and behavior-related consequences, investigations of behavior, race and discipline have yet to provide evidence that African American students misbehave at a significantly higher rate," Skiba wrote. "Whether based on school records or student interviews, studies have failed to find racial disparities in misbehavior sufficient to account for the typically wide racial differences in school punishment. If anything, African American students appear to receive more severe school punishments for less severe behavior."
Skiba writes that fear may also contribute to overreactions in punishing black male students. Wiggins' note on his incident report that Marshall became "very hostile" may conform to this model. "Teachers who are prone to accepting stereotypes of adolescent African American males as threatening or dangerous may overreact to relatively minor threats to authority, especially if their anxiety is paired with a misunderstanding of cultural norms of social interaction."
A 'Bad Kid' or a 'Bad Cop'?
Greenwood resident Kelly Kornogay expressed concern about the issue of safety in schools, across racial lines and beyond the case of Wiggins and Marshall. She wondered whether Marshall would prove to be a "bad kid," as news reports have indicated, whether Wiggins really was a "bad cop" and whether it even matters in the end.
"I think the city should use this as a chance to re-evaluate the whole situation of allowing anyone with a gun in school," she said.
The fact that an inexperienced police officer pulled his gun so quickly and easily—twice—on an unarmed teen in a crowded school is, of course, the worrisome elephant in the room.
Ellen Reddy said she objects to weapons inside schools, regardless of who carries them. "We wouldn't even consider giving officers guns in our schools (in Hinds County)—Mace is bad enough," she said.
"When we say 'safe schools,' schools have to be safe for everybody. The situation (with Wiggins) could have gotten a lot more volatile than it did. That was just a scary situation. School boards have to consider the implications of having police officers in schools."
Lambright, of the ACLU, recommended that school districts adopt scientifically based behavior modification programs that look at addressing disciplinary issues in non-punitive ways that don't criminalize students.
If police officers are included in these programs, they must be adequately trained and regulated, she said. "Are they really there to protect, or are they simply increasing the incarceration rates of children?" she asked. "It becomes so easy, when there's a school-related incident, like a fight, a disciplinary issue, if an officer just happens to be there to intervene, it may lead to assault charges, it may lead to resisting arrest, it may lead to disorderly conduct."
A major problem in Mississippi may be the lax oversight, to date, of police officers in schools, especially those not trained well enough to handle the situations they are likely to confront—like a group of kids in a hallway with one of them holding something unknown in his hand.
Robert Davis, the director of Law Enforcement Standards and Training for the Department of Public Safety, told the Greenwood Commonwealth that Wiggins should not have been patrolling that school alone; he should have been under the direct supervision of a certified police officer, he said.
Even then, though, the mere presence of the officer in the school may be overkill. Many juvenile-justice experts warn that having police officers in school, period, may create more problems than they solve.
In the Justice Policy Institute's report, "School House Hype: School Shootings and the Real Risks Kids Face in America," the authors warn that hype over school violence may be causing the wrong kind of response, specifically singling out the trend toward putting armed police officers in schools since the highly publicized school shootings of the 1990s
"Yet data compiled in this report have shown that more than 99 percent of juvenile homicides are committed outside of schools. The vast majority of youth homicide victims are killed by adults," the authors write. They add that it is difficult to understand how "adding more law enforcement officers to schools is a priority except as a response to generally shared misconceptions about homicides in schools."
The ACLU's Lambright directly blames the presence of that police officer for the situation that followed. "What happened to James Marshall wouldn't have happened if an officer was not at Greenwood High School," she wrote in a statement she released about the incident.
'I Wanted to Faint'
On Jan. 23, Marshall met with the Jackson Free Press for an exclusive interview in the Greenwood Leflore Hospital lobby. He was there because his long-time girlfriend, Nadia Gilmore, had just given birth to their 6 lb.-4 oz. baby boy, Kyron. The soft-spoken new father, whose loose clothing belies a diminutive build, remained by Gilmore's side for the entire birth.
"I wanted to faint," he said, his sharp jaw breaking into a broad smile. "It was terrible. It felt like she wanted to crush my hand."
Throughout the interview, Marshall appeared nervous, frazzled, as he told the story of what happened to him on Dec. 6. "I can't even concentrate for talking to people about the situation. And it could have gotten my friends killed, let alone myself," he said.
He brightened up when talking about sports, though, and said that he had met Gilmore on the sidelines of a Greenwood High School football game in 2003.
"She's been kind of stressed out, with the baby and what's going on," Marshall said of Gilmore. "I've just tried to keep her focused."
When asked about his childhood, Marshall said that he had everything he always wanted. "But I always wanted to play football. I just couldn't," he added.
Instead, he turned to cooking. The aspiring chef has already completed a two-year trade certification in culinary arts at the Greenwood High Vocational Technology Center, and plans to earn a degree in culinary arts at the Mississippi University for Women.
One day he hopes to open up a soul-food restaurant in Greenwood that would serve "everything," including his favorite dish, pot-boiled shrimp.
"He was a respectable young guy, came to class every day," Emma Dunlap, his culinary arts teacher, said later.
Two weeks after Kyron's birth, at a follow-up interview, Marshall appeared less weary and in good spirits. He said that the attention had died down in school. Now, he was able to focus on other things, like his new baby.
"It feels alright to be a father," he said. With four nieces and three nephews, he was used to looking after kids.
When asked how he was dealing with allegations that he was just trying to make money with his lawsuit, Marshall said: "I've just been trying to keep my composure. It's hard, but I'm just trying to maintain.
"I got a son to look after now."
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