A Mississippi man spent 940 days in jail waiting for a trial that never came

NBC News

02-05-2025

U.S. news
Sinatra Jordan was accused of firing at police officers and leading them on a chase through the streets of Jackson. Then the officers were arrested.
By Jon Schuppe
JACKSON, Miss. — Sinatra Jordan stepped out the glass doors of the Raymond Detention Center and headed toward his father's waiting car.
It had been 940 days, and he wasn't going to linger.
Jordan, 32, was dressed in the same blue T-shirt and dark denim shorts he'd been wearing since he was brought to the jail on Aug. 15, 2022, accused of starting a car chase and firing at police. Jordan insisted that he did not have a weapon. He said the officers had shot into his car without provocation, a bullet striking his friend in the passenger seat — a mother of five who was left seriously wounded.
As months passed with no trial, no hearing, no updates and rare interactions with his lawyers, there were many times, alone and despairing in jail, when he wondered if anyone was listening.
Then, in an extraordinary turn, the blame shifted onto the officers and the bulk of the case against Jordan was dropped.
Now he was free.
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I was there to greet him on the evening of March 11 — and, I hoped, to understand what exactly had happened the night of the shooting, and why he had languished behind bars for so long.
I'd spent years reporting on a string of shootings by the Mississippi Capitol Police, including this one. The force had mostly provided security for government buildings, until three summers ago, when the governor deployed officers to the streets of Jackson to tamp down crime.
Jordan and I communicated regularly, first by letter, then by phone, as he waited for a trial date that never came. He often asked me for news about his case, which I was unable to provide. 'I just want to go home,' he'd tell me.
One option was to admit guilt and hope for an early release. Jordan would not. He insisted the police had lied, but without proof, it was his word against theirs. Even after the officers were arrested and accused of unlawfully firing on Jordan's car, which they denied, the evidence against them remained a secret to Jordan and his lawyers.
The investigative file, which I obtained after Jordan's case was resolved, included hundreds of pages of notes, recordings of interviews, detailed evidence and witness information. It was a rare look inside the machinations of a criminal case.
But there was no gotcha. As it turned out, Jordan's ordeal was the result of an opaque and overburdened criminal justice system where judges, prosecutors, investigators and court-appointed defense lawyers are struggling to keep pace with a tide of cases, perpetuating delays that force defendants to wait years for their day in court — and postpone justice for victims.
'It's stressful,' Jordan said, 'not knowing when you're coming home, not knowing when you'll be able to see the judge.'
I attended his final court appearance and then waited for Jordan outside the jail. He emerged holding an armload of court papers, still wearing his jail-issue slides.
I told him it was nice to meet him in person. Jordan grinned hesitantly, as if he weren't quite sure this was real.
'Yes, sir,' he replied. 'It's been a long time.'
The night of Aug. 14, 2022, began with a casual drive, according to Jordan's telling. He and a friend, Sherita Harris, were cruising downtown Jackson with no goal other than to relax.
Harris had rented the car, a Nissan Rogue with Arizona plates, after hers was damaged. Jordan was driving — even though he had a suspended license.
He'd grown up in a nearby working-class neighborhood, the only son of a single mother. Jordan graduated from high school and studied business at a community college with dreams of starting an aftercare program for schoolchildren, he said.
But he couldn't balance school and work, so he dropped out and took service industry jobs — Wendy's, McDonald's, Home Goods. He lived with his mother in the house where he was raised.
Jordan and Harris had known each other for years, but only recently began hanging out; she was 38 and had just started a job managing a charter school cafeteria.
As they drove down State Street that evening, an unmarked cop car pulled up behind them and flashed its lights.
The Capitol Police officers inside were members of a new street crimes unit focused on intercepting guns, drugs and stolen cars. They had no body or dashboard cameras, and their policies on when to use force were outdated.
As he moved into the right lane, Jordan said the police suddenly opened fire.
He looked over at Harris, who was slumped over and covered in blood; she'd been struck in the head. Panicked that he, too, would be shot, he said he drove off to get to safety.
Jordan made his way to his neighborhood, about a mile northwest. "I was just confused and didn't know what to do,' he said.
He pulled over at Lamar and Adelle streets, then got out and ran. He didn't get far before he was arrested.
Harris said she remembers Jordan telling her police lights were flashing behind them, but nothing more.
Both were taken to a hospital. Jordan was treated for cuts on his head and sent to Raymond Detention Center. In jail, he asked how Harris was doing, according to a recording obtained by NBC News. An investigator told him Harris was in surgery.
Jordan sobbed.
'I hope she's all right,' he said, his voice cracking.
The officers, Jeffery Walker and Michael Rhinewalt, gave a very different version.
The pair told investigators that they had pulled the Rogue over for running a red light, and when Rhinewalt started to get out of the patrol car, the driver took off.
As they chased the car onto an interstate, 'I heard what appeared to be a gunshot and a muzzle flash, and noticed that the back window shattered, so I immediately leaned over,' Rhinewalt told investigators, according to recordings from the case file. 'I immediately returned fire.'
Walker said the SUV slowed down at one point in the chase, and someone inside fired again. 'You could hear shots real loud at that time,' he said. Both officers shot at the Rogue.
Moments later, the officers said they saw objects tossed from the car.
Jordan eventually pulled over and took off running, and Walker opened fire again, later telling investigators he thought a black object in Jordan's hand was a gun. It turned out to be a cellphone.
The investigation into the shooting happened on two tracks. In one, the Hinds County district attorney's office gathered evidence to prosecute Jordan.
Walker testified at Jordan's preliminary hearing, telling a judge that a neighborhood witness 'confirmed that bags of dope and guns' were thrown from the Rogue and that three armed men took them.
The judge ruled the case against Jordan could proceed. He already had two unresolved felony charges stemming from a 2020 arrest when police say he stored stolen motorcycles at his mother's house. State law prohibits bail for someone facing felony charges from an earlier arrest.
That meant he would wait in jail while the case moved forward.
The second track was run by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, or MBI, which is required to examine police shootings, and the state attorney general's office, which determines whether the shootings are justified.
In interviews with MBI investigators during his first days in jail, Jordan at first seemed confused about the chase and how long he'd been locked up. He gave muddled or inconsistent recollections, including where he drove and whether he'd thrown anything out of the window, according to a review of the audio interviews and his statements.
Jordan sounded exhausted and on edge — but also eager to tell his side, even without a lawyer. He remained consistent on one point: He'd never had a gun.
During one interrogation, MBI Lt. Heath Farish repeatedly suggested Jordan had a weapon. At one point, he told Jordan that a witness had seen him toss a firearm from the car, in an apparent attempt to get him to confess to a weapon. (Farish could not be reached for comment.)
The only nonpolice witness interviewed by MBI had told another investigator that he did not see a gun, according to the case file.
Farish also threatened to use DNA to tie Jordan to a gun found at the scene. Evidence logs show that investigators found only a starter pistol, a type of firearm that fires blanks and is usually used to signal the start of a race. Investigators never determined its relevance to the case.
'Man, we can do whatever we gotta do,' Jordan told Farish. 'And I guarantee you, when all this is over with, y'all are gonna say, 'Damn, Mr. Jordan did not have a gun on him that night.''
MBI investigators, two months after speaking to Jordan, interviewed Rhinewalt and Walker. Each had lawyers with them. These sessions were shorter, nonconfrontational and consistent.
The MBI additionally collected bullet fragments inside the Rogue and spent shell casings on the street. They found surveillance video and looked for the objects the officers had said were tossed out of the Rogue, but did not find them.
In November 2022, the MBI said the case file was ready for the attorney general's office to review.
A decision didn't come for another two years.
In Mississippi, criminal cases must go to trial no later than 270 days — about nine months — after a defendant is indicted and arraigned. But there is no limit to how long someone can wait to be indicted. In some parts of the state, including Hinds County, there aren't enough judges or prosecutors to keep up with cases, and there is still a pandemic backlog. Overwhelmed and underpaid public defenders do not have enough time to properly represent all their clients, who tend to be of limited means.
In early 2022, researchers at the MacArthur Justice Center, a nonprofit that advocates for those caught up in the criminal justice system, reported that more than 700 people were held in Mississippi jails more than a year, including 96 in Hinds County.
Jordan joined that group. He was arraigned in April 2023 and pleaded not guilty. A couple months later, his court-appointed public defender asked the judge for copies of the evidence against him, and for a speedy trial.
Then nothing much happened. A new public defender took over Jordan's case later in 2023, but made no motions on Jordan's behalf until August 2024, when he asked the judge to delay the trial because all the evidence still had not been turned over by the district attorney's office. The judge agreed.
In early 2023, I wrote to Jordan asking for his perspective on the shooting. He sent back a handwritten note. 'I'm still sitting in jail no court date,' he wrote.
He started calling me on the jail's phone line through an account paid for by NBC News. We spoke every few weeks, short conversations that often covered the same ground: I'd ask what was new in his case; he'd say he didn't know. He'd say how badly he wanted to go home.
Harris, meanwhile, was suffering from deep wounds, physical and emotional.
She underwent multiple surgeries to remove a bullet from her brain and repair her left eye and ear, but her face remained partially paralyzed. She struggled to chew and drink, suffered bouts of dizziness and had trouble remembering things. Her injuries made it difficult to do routine tasks, like cooking, driving, working and caring for her children. She rarely left home.
'I'm not a criminal,' Harris said outside court in December 2023 after she filed a lawsuit against the officers. The suit is on hold while the criminal cases play out. 'Why did I get shot? This changed my life forever. I can never be me, so money don't cover it. I didn't even get an apology. Do I matter?'
Jordan usually didn't mention Harris unless I asked; he told me he wanted to talk to her once his ordeal was over. He had little privacy on the jail phone and rarely spoke introspectively or emotionally. I often heard inmates shouting in the background nearby.
The Raymond Detention Center, which is notorious for decrepit conditions, assaults, deaths and chronic understaffing, will soon be put under the control of a court-appointed expert after a decadelong legal battle with the Justice Department.
Jordan said he spent the first few months of his detention in the jail's infamous A-pod — since closed — where it was freezing in the winter and scorching in the summer. Roofs leaked, toilets didn't work, and he said he slept on the floor and went hours without seeing a guard. He was later transferred to C-pod, where members of different gangs were housed together, he said. (Hinds County Sheriff Tyree Jones said the jail separates gangs within housing units at C-pod.)
Jordan told me he had to keep his 'game face' on and 'stay focused' to avoid trouble. He said he prayed a lot, but it was depressing.
'I just looked at the bright side of it, like, what's done is going to come to light,' he said. 'The truth will come out.'
Last August, the Mississippi attorney general's office requested a grand jury to present evidence in the car chase and shooting, according to Jamie McBride, first assistant district attorney in Hinds County, who oversees grand jury cases.
The attorney general's office didn't exactly explain the delay but said in court papers that it had received an 'incomplete' case file from MBI and the MBI later added information to it.
On Dec. 26, Rhinewalt and Walker were each indicted by a grand jury on two counts of aggravated assault: one for shooting Harris, one for shooting at Jordan. The indictment didn't provide many details beyond accusing them of wrongly firing on Harris and Jordan. The officers pleaded not guilty.
Mississippi Department of Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell, who oversees the Capitol Police and MBI, updated the agency's use of force policy in 2023 following NBC News reporting on the shootings by the Capitol Police. The changes, embraced by many other American police departments in recent years, included a 'duty to intervene' to prevent another officer from using excessive force. The Capitol Police also now equips officers with body cameras.
Tindell declined to comment on actions of Walker and Rhinewalt but stressed that police officers are justified in shooting if they feel their lives are in danger.
'I'm going to support the decision that they have to make in that split second, to make sure that they go home to their families,' Tindell said.
But the charges jeopardized the district attorney's case against Jordan.
'When I saw the indictment come down, I knew we had a problem,' McBride, the assistant DA, recalled.
From the jail television, Jordan watched the news of the officers' arrests, stunned and newly hopeful. The next time he called, I asked what it could mean for him. He hadn't heard from his lawyer, he said.
In late February, a new public defender (the fourth) took up Jordan's case. Andre de Gruy leads the state Office of the Public Defender and does not typically represent defendants, but he took on Jordan as part of a project to reduce backlogs. He did not want to see Jordan's long-delayed trial — now scheduled for March 10 — postponed again.
'Two and a half years in any jail waiting to have your case disposed of should be unacceptable to everybody,' de Gruy said.
But it wasn't until 11 days before the trial was to begin that de Gruy started receiving the bulk of the evidence in Jordan's case, including the MBI report. The assistant district attorney, herself new to Jordan's case, said she turned over the MBI's evidence shortly after she had gotten it.
It's not unusual to receive evidence at the last minute, said Chris Routh, the deputy public defender for the Hinds County Public Defender's Office. Discovery-related delays hold up nearly all the cases his office handles.
Routh said Jordan's case was 'a particularly egregious example of a widespread and systemic problem.'
De Gruy began negotiating a plea deal, and on March 11, the district attorney's office agreed to drop the shooting charges. Jordan, who appeared in court in chains and a red jumpsuit, agreed to plead guilty to a reduced charge of fleeing the scene and to the 2020 felony charges related to the stolen motorcycles.
The 940 days he'd spent in pretrial detention went down as time served, and he got two and a half years of supervised release.
He walked free that night. The moment felt exhilarating, he said. But the cost was steep: years lost, a woman's life ruined, a felony record that would make it hard to find a job.
Rhinewalt and Walker have each been charged in other criminal cases stemming from the first months of the Capitol Police street crimes unit deployment and have also pleaded not guilty in those cases, too. Rhinewalt was indicted last month in the shooting death of a 25-year-old man. Walker has been charged with violating a driver's civil rights, accused of beating him after a chase.
Rhinewalt was fired in April; Walker left the Capitol Police in 2023.
The officers' lawyers have argued in court filings that some of the inconclusive evidence in Jordan's case — gunshot residue tests performed by investigators and damage on the hood of their police car — suggests someone fired a gun from the Rogue.
Walker's lawyer, Francis Springer, called the evidence against his client 'pitiful,' and said he was confident the charges would not stick. Rhinewalt's lawyer, Scott Gilbert, declined to comment.
The officers' trial date in Jordan's case is scheduled for June — six months after they were charged. They remain free on bail.
Jordan is trying to get his life back on track. He is living at his mother's and works part-time for his father, a local DJ.
He had his first meeting with his probation officer, and said he is working on getting a driver's license. 'Just taking it one day at a time,' he said, repeating a line he told me often during his incarceration.
A few weeks after he got out of jail, we were sitting in his mother's living room, an NBA game blaring on the TV. Jordan still hadn't contacted Harris, though he said he wanted to pay condolences and hoped she was all right.
'I thought about her the whole time,' he said.
The guilty plea to fleeing from police has been difficult for him to swallow. Jordan said he was justified in driving away from the officers, but didn't want to risk trial.
'I had already been locked up for so long, and I didn't want to sit even longer,' he said. 'I had to sell out, just for my freedom.'
Jon Schuppe
Jon Schuppe is an enterprise reporter for NBC News, based in New York.