The haunting images of Jessie Lee Williams Jr.'s beating death in the Harrison County jail are at last in the public domain. The so-called "video" is actually the visual testimony of hundreds of individual frames, taken every two seconds and then played with a result not unlike the earliest moving pictures.
The deadly violence visited on Mr. Williams has a surreal quality as you view jailers in their methodical taking of a man's life. The killing of Jessie Lee Williams is administered through a sickening sequence of merciless acts that included pepper spray, Tasers, kicks and blows of the fist, which left him an almost unrecognizable pulp when his virtually lifeless body was removed from the jail.
Since his senseless death in February 2006, the Sun Herald has relentlessly sought to report the truth of Mr. Williams' death, and of the deeper secrets inside the Harrison County jail where investigators have uncovered years of abuse against "hundreds" of humans inside the jail.
In this year-and-a-half we have published more than 170 news stories and editorials, which have helped whittle away at the barriers to the disgusting truth that lay behind those walls.
We have known that the ultimate truth was contained on the videotape of that deadly night in the booking area, and we have resolutely fought to have the tape released so that its owners, the people of Harrison County, could see for themselves what had transpired in their jail.
We have engaged in a significant legal battle that has taken us from state courts to federal. In the course of that battle, the Department of Justice seized all of the major public records of Harrison County related to the case, and, we believe, held them wrongfully from their rightful owners.
Even when the trial of Ryan Teel and Rick Gaston was concluded two weeks ago, the federal prosecutor put forward an oral motion, which sought to hold all of the many exhibits under seal, despite the fact they (including the videotape) had been presented in open court.
The Sun Herald then filed its latest motion in opposition to that effort and we expected these arguments to be heard some time last week. We were notified early last week that the government was withdrawing its motion, and that at long last the public would be given its right to know the truth that these public records disclose about the government that we the people have elected to represent us in the matter of county law enforcement and jails.
You may choose to view this evidence or not. It is there to see if you wish to do so. The tape is graphic, disturbing and represents the worst instincts of humankind.
Our unflinching efforts to obtain the tape, and to post it, are consistent with a newspaper's duty to fight on behalf of the public's right to know. In most cases, as in this matter, if we do not engage in that effort, no one else will. Certainly no one else did in this case.
So while it is an awful truth to see, this visual evidence of the madness that reigned in our jail is almost necessary to view to fully comprehend how completely order had been replaced by an out-of-control rogue force of jailers whose conduct has been more criminal than many of the inmates under their command and control.
The federal prosecutor says the jail probe continues, and that is good, for in reflecting on the many facts which are now known, it is difficult to believe that all of the guilt has been shown, and that full justice has been meted.
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