MS Today: “For months, Chancellor Berrong, a 26-year-old in prison for assault and kidnapping, has been trying to tell authorities that he killed a man in a Mississippi jail seven years ago.
He told a prison guard that he had information about the crime, attempted to confess to a detective and gave a written confession to a prison warden, he said, but agents with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, the state agency that typically investigates in-custody deaths, took no action….
Previous reporting on the Rankin County Adult Detention Center, where Aycock died, revealed that for years, guards relied on some inmates as an attack squad to help keep order and to retaliate against trouble-makers.
A review of the initial investigation of the death reveals that authorities took steps that could have hindered a full accounting of what happened. Guards and inmates cleaned the cell where Aycock died with bleach before the state investigators arrived, according to four witnesses. In addition, the MBI’s investigation file contains no photos of the cell, no security camera footage and no notes from interviews with inmates.
Days after the death, MBI agents and the state medical examiner determined that Aycock died by accident after falling off his bunk bed — without documenting the evidence that led them to this conclusion.
Mississippi Today and The New York Times have uncovered evidence that supports Berrong’s confession and suggests that the authorities ignored or destroyed evidence that could have helped solve the case. His account is the latest allegation of wrongdoing by law enforcement in Rankin County, a Jackson suburb where sheriff’s deputies have been accused of torturing suspected drug users.”