Their trial is over, but Joyce Jackson and LaRita Cooper-Stokes have little time to rest because their third election campaign this year begins now.
A 12-person jury on Friday unanimously awarded Jackson a new election, throwing out the results of a Jackson City Council Ward 3 runoff race because it was tainted by illegal behavior at the polls.
Special Judge Richard McKenzie ordered the council to set a new election date for within 30 days of Tuesday’s regular meeting. Cooper-Stokes will retain her council seat until the new election can be held.
Jackson said she wanted to show that elections in Jackson are poorly managed and fraught with illegal activity.
“It has to stop,” she said. “And I am the person to stop it.”
Cooper-Stokes, on the other hand, remained defiant in an address to the media afterward.
“LaRita Cooper-Stokes is still the councilwoman in Ward 3,” she said. “I believe that the lies that were told on the stand were evidently believable. But I believe that the truth will prevail.”
“We beat Joyce Jackson on Feb. 14. We beat Joyce Jackson on Feb. 28. And we will beat Joyce Jackson at the next election, if necessary,” she said.
Her husband, Hinds County Supervisor Kenneth Stokes, who had held the council seat for years before winning the county job, pledged that their attorneys would look into appealing the decision.
“We can’t allow the majority of the people to vote (for the winner) and have it overturned by bull-(expletive),” he said.
During the week-long trial, Jackson and a group of supporters testified at length that poll workers illegally assisted voters, coached them to vote for her opponent and allowed Cooper-Stokes’ supporters to campaign within 150 feet of the voting precincts.
One witness in her defense also testified that a poll manager described Jackson, who is of mixed racial heritage but identifies as black, as a “half-white (racial slur).” Jackson’s attorney, John Reeves, said that was evidence of racial discrimination by an election official, and violates the Voting Rights Act.
Many of the allegations stood unrefuted by witnesses from the other side. Just nine of 12 jurors were needed to throw out the election; all 12 ruled in Jackson’s favor.
Cooper-Stokes’ attorneys Imhotep Alkebu-Ian and Bruce Burton attempted to discredit Jackson and her witnesses, characterizing their testimony as lies from a “sore loser.”
“You will remember this case, because this is the case of the sore loser,” Alkebu-Ian told jurors. “(Her testimony) is made up. Her credibility, I submit, is wanting — to be polite.”
Two of the trial’s most pivotal testimonies were given by Jackson and Linda Anderson, whom a separate witness had accused of calling Jackson a racial slur.
Anderson denied using the slur, but admitted that voters could hear a radio playing a Cooper-Stokes political ad while they cast their ballots that morning at Institutional AME Church, where Anderson was poll manager.
Reeves seized on this and records from the Hinds County Election Commission that showed she had not received proper training.
“The law was broken … and you have to set the election aside. You have to,” Reeves told jurors.
Alkebu-Ian singled out Jackson’s testimony that she saw an exchange of money outside one precinct, insinuating that a Cooper-Stokes poll worker paid a voter for his vote.
When Alkebu-Ian asked Jackson to describe the worker, she would say only that he was a black man of average size. Later, the campaign worker, Darryl Thompson, testified that he was giving a distant cousin $5 to bring him a honey bun and a coke. His cousin was going to use the change to buy beer, he said.
Jackson responded to Alkebu-Ian’s comments after the trial. “He just was a big bully.” she said. “That’s a bully when you call somebody a sore loser,” she said. “That’s the same thing as calling me a half-white (racial slur). That’s a bully word.”
Written by Brian Eason | Clarion Ledger
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