Jill Jefferson was arrested in June 2023 while filming a traffic stop.
A judge took the extraordinary step of rescinding his own guilty verdict last week in the case of a Mississippi civil rights attorney whom police arrested for filming a traffic stop last summer.
Lexington police arrested Jill Collen Jefferson, who founded the grassroots group Julian in 2020, in June after she recorded officers performing a traffic stop.
Julian was already suing the police department at the time, and her arrest happened just nine days after the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division traveled to the small, predominantly Black city following multiple allegations of police abuse and excessive force.
Holmes County Justice Court Judge Marcus Fisher convicted Jefferson of multiple misdemeanors related to the incident on Jan. 31 after a bench trial.
But he rescinded his own verdicts in a one-page decision that mentioned only a “thorough review” of facts and evidence as a basis for the reversal.