During a 2015 no-knock drug raid in Mississippi’s rural northeast nook, sheriff’s deputies shot and killed 57-year-old Ricky Keeton after he got here to the door with an air pistol as SWAT workforce members compelled their approach into his trailer house at 1 a.m.
Keeton’s dying acquired little public consideration on the time. Keeton’s three daughters sued, arguing that Monroe County deputies had no constitutional authority that evening to burst into their father’s house with a battering ram and pry bar with out first knocking and figuring out themselves.
The federal wrongful dying go well with was settled seven years later for $690,000. This got here after a number of judges refused to dismiss the lawsuit, ruling the defendants did not show there was any authorized justification for the no-knock raid within the first place. The county and sheriff’s division made no admission of wrongdoing within the settlement.
5 years after Keeton’s dying, no-knock searches confronted elevated nationwide scrutiny after police shot and killed Breonna Taylor in Louisville, Kentucky, throughout a March 2020 raid by which her boyfriend shot and wounded an officer. The boyfriend later stated he thought they had been intruders. Equally, Keeton’s girlfriend stated that Keeton “thought any individual was breaking in” earlier than he was shot to dying.
Taylor’s taking pictures dying in the end amplified longstanding, bipartisan calls for for reform of no-knock raids. A number of states restricted no-knock searches, together with Kentucky, Tennessee and Virginia.
Mississippi has a historical past of no-knock searches — with harmful outcomes. Police have raided the mistaken properties, and in a single 2020 case, officers even shot and wounded an unarmed individual visiting a focused house.
But as different states tightened their no-knock search legal guidelines, Mississippi officers did nothing.
Because the Keeton killing in 2015, judges in six courts throughout the state have authorised at the very least 62 no-knock search warrants that failed to indicate that they met primary constitutional requirements, an investigation by The Marshall Challenge – Jackson and the Northeast Mississippi Day by day Journal discovered.
The information organizations confirmed copies of the warrants from throughout the state to authorized specialists together with attorneys, legislation professors and former federal magistrates. The specialists agreed that a lot of the search warrants and affidavits confirmed no written authorized justification for the no-knock warrants.
A kind of courts was in Monroe County, the place, for years after Keeton’s dying and the lawsuit that adopted, some county-level judges continued to signal what specialists deemed legally threadbare no-knock search warrants.
A photograph from the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation exhibits the doorway the place Ricky Keeton was shot and killed by Monroe County sheriff’s deputies in 2015.
The Supreme Court docket has dominated that to acquire a no-knock search warrant from a choose, police should present that the search goal is harmful or would possibly attempt to run away or destroy proof. Specialists stated the overwhelming majority of warrants and affidavits gathered by The Marshall Challenge – Jackson and the Day by day Journal didn’t state an sufficient purpose — if they’d one in any respect.
“You’ve acquired an actual mess in your arms,” stated Henry Schultz, a Wisconsin-based legal professional who reviewed these information for the information shops. Some 25 years in the past, Schultz helped argue the key 1997 case by which the U.S. Supreme Court docket required particular limits on no-knock searches.
Pointing to the search warrants from Mississippi, Schultz stated the excessive court docket’s try and put guardrails round no-knock raids almost three many years in the past isn’t working.
There has by no means been a public survey of no-knock warrants in Mississippi, the place many courts block entry to go looking warrant data.
After rising scrutiny targeted on Monroe County, together with this reporting effort, officers there scuttled using boilerplate no-knock search warrant requests about two years in the past.
In at the very least two different Mississippi courts, no-knock search warrants dropped off lately, in keeping with data reviewed this 12 months by the information shops.
Past these native adjustments, there’s nonetheless no broader oversight of how judges within the state deal with no-knock requests and no straightforward technique to inspect them.
With no statewide restrictions, judges can disregard Supreme Court docket precedent at any time, with few penalties.
Judges throughout the nation have largely prevented the identical degree of scrutiny that has fallen on police departments and even prosecutors over no-knock warrant abuses, stated Christy Lopez, a former U.S. Division of Justice legal professional, and one of many authorized specialists who reviewed the information shops’ findings.
She stated the investigation in Mississippi by The Marshall Challenge – Jackson and the Day by day Journal exhibits that judges should reckon with their share of the duty.
“Judges,” stated Lopez, “are actually failing folks on no-knocks.”
In January 2020, Brandon Davis traded his deputy sheriff’s badge for a choose’s gavel after defeating an incumbent’s bid for reelection. By then, litigation over Ricky Keeton’s dying was coming into its fifth 12 months.
Davis joined the bench of the Monroe County Justice Court docket with one other newly elected choose, Sarah Cline Stevens, an legal professional specializing in household legislation issues. Her authorized schooling is a rarity amongst justice court docket judges in Mississippi. These judges aren’t required to be attorneys and normally solely hear small civil claims and misdemeanor legal issues. They will additionally signal search warrants.
Throughout a profession of greater than a decade-and-a-half in legislation enforcement, Davis joined many no-knock raids with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Workplace. In some circumstances, he ready the precise functions and offered them to a choose. He didn’t play any function within the Keeton raid.
The identical month he took workplace, court docket data present, Davis signed a search warrant for a Monroe County deputy.
It licensed no-knock entry.
It additionally repeated the most important flaws of the search warrant used within the Keeton raid.
The one reference to a no-knock entry was a boilerplate sentence close to the top of the search warrant — a sentence that has appeared in Monroe County search warrants in some kind over a few years: “The above affiant respectfully requests a no-knock search because of officer security and the safety of additional proof.”
Neither the warrant that Davis signed nor the written affidavit that’s required to help it provided any detailed, written causes for the no-knock request.
![search warrant with highlighted text that reads: “8. That within the past seventy-two (72) hours, A confidential informant was sent to [redacted] Mississippi by Monroe County Narcotics Agents to purchase alleged Methamphetamine. The informant purchased the Meth from [redacted] at his residence. He then returned it to Monroe County Narcotics agents. 9. That Crystal Methamphetamine is a Schedule II controlled substance, and no evidence exists to indicate that Mr. [redacted] or any persons at this residence has authorization to legally possess this drug.”](https://d1n0c1ufntxbvh.cloudfront.net/photo/f5e288dd/105633/2000x/)
U.S. District Choose Sharion Aycock zeroed in on the dearth of any particulars, written or in any other case, within the Keeton no-knock warrant in the course of the household’s lawsuit in opposition to Monroe County and sheriff’s deputies.
“The Defendants have did not deliver forth any proof that pronouncing their presence, ‘beneath the actual circumstances’ was harmful,” Aycock wrote in a 2018 order dismissing Monroe County’s movement to drop the case.
The U.S. fifth Circuit Court docket of Appeals agreed with Aycock a 12 months later.
Monroe County Justice Court docket Choose Stevens, a lawyer, was conscious of the Keeton litigation when she joined the bench, and stated in a 2022 interview that she studied the authorized points concerned.
The homework paid off.
She acquired a search warrant utility in February 2020. It contained the boilerplate no-knock request. She signed it, however solely after handwriting further notes on the affidavit, culled from an interview of the officer: The focused individual had been served two prior search warrants earlier than and “he got here to the door with a gun (sawed off shotgun and pistol).” A confidential informant additionally advised officers, “Weapons are presently current.”
![A search warrant with two blocks of highlighted text that read: “The confidential informant also sent pictures of methamphetamine inside the residence and the shop behind the residence to Agent [redacted],” and “8. That within the past seventy-two (72) hours, a confidential informant contacted Agent [redacted] with the Monroe County Sheriff’s Department and stated that at [redacted] had methamphetamine inside the residence and inside the shop behind the residence.” Judge Sarah Stevens’ initials are signed near both highlighted texts.](https://d1n0c1ufntxbvh.cloudfront.net/photo/530195c8/105630/2000x/)
![A search warrant with highlighted text that shows handwritten notes by Justice Court Judge Sarah Cline Stevens: “Suspect [redacted] has previously been the person of interest under search warrants and on two different occasions he came to the door with a gun (sawed off shotgun and pistol). Highly probable that suspect will attempt to dispose of the drugs etc. if their presence is announced. Suspect is armed and dangerous. CI stated that weapons are currently present.”](https://d1n0c1ufntxbvh.cloudfront.net/photo/4fdad6af/105736/2000x/)
That’s the extent of particular element that the Supreme Court docket’s 1997 ruling, Richards v. Wisconsin, requires, specialists agreed. Lopez, the previous Justice Division legal professional, stated the excessive court docket set a reasonably low bar — too low in her view.
Nonetheless, for years, most no-knock search warrants in Monroe County did not clear even that low bar.
The information organizations discovered 14 no-knock warrants signed by Monroe County Justice Court docket judges since 2015, with the final such warrant present in late 2022. Since 2020, when Davis and Stevens joined the bench, court docket data present 11 no-knock search warrants have been signed, virtually all of them by Davis, the previous sheriff’s deputy.
Specialists stated they discovered all however one warrant missing sufficient written justification. Stevens signed the one with sufficient help, in addition to one of many 11 with out sufficient written help. Davis signed a lot of the relaxation, with a 3rd choose, Adrian Haynes, signing just one. Haynes didn’t reply to a request for remark.
Judges and the court docket clerk stated that the court docket data reviewed by The Marshall Challenge – Jackson and the Day by day Journal are incomplete, that means the judges might have signed much more no-knock search warrants.
Stephen Smith, a retired federal Justice of the Peace from Texas, typically reviewed search warrant functions throughout his judicial profession. After taking a look at a number of the Monroe County search warrants, he stated he wouldn’t have signed them as no-knock searches.
“Each considered one of these granted no-knock authority,” he stated, “and just one tried to justify it.”
In a 2022 interview, Davis stated he was granting no-knock search warrants to protect officer security and to stop the destruction of proof, although neither the search warrants nor the affidavits confirmed enough written proof from the circumstances at hand to help these justifications.
Davis stated that he typically mentioned a search warrant affidavit with the requesting officer, however that he didn’t doc the conversations in writing. In Mississippi, judges can depend on sworn oral testimony past the affidavit in help of a search warrant. There’s no requirement to doc it in writing, however Davis stated that in obligatory coaching classes for justice court docket judges that he attended, the judges had been suggested to take action.
“They’re telling us, you actually need to incorporate this, it must be on paper,” Davis stated.
Jeffrey B. Welty, who teaches legislation in North Carolina and likewise helps prepare judges there, strongly advises in opposition to interviewing officers about their functions, particularly if it received’t be documented in some style.
“Don’t have them inform you a bunch of stuff concerning the case that doesn’t seem within the utility, as a result of that’s simply fraught with peril,” Welty stated he tells judges. “That doesn’t look like judicial follow to me.”
Davis additionally described approving search warrants in some circumstances based mostly on his information of suspects from his profession in legislation enforcement. However judges shouldn’t depend on their very own information of individuals or locations described in a warrant utility; they need to contemplate info equipped by the officer, stated William Waller Jr., a retired justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court docket.
In response to Waller and others who reviewed his warrants, Davis in early 2025 stated that he stands by the equity of his course of.
“Opinions are simply that, opinions. That’s what you bought once you requested different retired judges or attorneys,” stated Davis. “If I’m mistaken, then why have I not been disciplined?”
He additionally added, “If the folks don’t like my choices, then they’ll elect one other choose subsequent election.”
Over the course of a years-long reporting effort by The Marshall Challenge – Jackson and the Day by day Journal, Monroe County’s judicial practices modified.
After that 2022 interview by the information organizations with Davis and Stevens, Davis started amending functions for no-knock search warrants with handwritten notes, although specialists stated they discovered his degree of element was nonetheless missing. In 2023, Davis stated he was doing so due to rising scrutiny on courts.
“The very last thing I would like is for anyone to query my choice on one thing,” stated Davis in 2023. “You’ve got extra folks now that’s wanting on the judicial system.”
A brand new sheriff, Kevin Criminal, took workplace in 2020, the identical 12 months Davis and Stevens joined the bench. Criminal, a former sheriff’s deputy and justice court docket choose, quickly started to subject questions concerning the county’s no-knock practices as native and nationwide information investigations scrutinized the county amid the rising nationwide outrage that 12 months over Breonna Taylor’s dying.
Criminal advised The Marshall Challenge – Jackson and the Day by day Journal in 2023 that the no-knock search warrants situated by the information organizations weren’t all the time executed as no-knock searches and that his division was transferring away from what he deemed “loopy techniques” utilized by the division when executing no-knock search warrants in years previous.
In 2023, Davis additionally stated that he was seeing fewer no-knock search warrant requests from officers.
And after these 2023 interviews, officers modified course even additional.
“We took the language out,” Criminal stated in early 2025, referring to the boilerplate language in earlier no-knock warrants. “If we want it, we’re going to clarify to the choose why we want it.”
Search warrants on file with the court docket bear this out. The boilerplate no-knock language disappeared from search warrants. The judges additionally instituted an on-call rotation to deal with search warrant functions, an initiative meant partly to stop the looks that deputies had been taking their warrant functions on to a well-liked choose.
“This has been a problem that has introduced numerous detrimental gentle to our county,” stated Stevens. “It’s one thing that I’ve been very delicate to from the start of my first time period.”
About an hour up the highway from the courthouse the place Davis and Stevens preside sits the Pontotoc County Justice Court docket, nestled within the Hills Area of northeast Mississippi.
Court docket data in Pontotoc County present that the justice court docket’s two long-serving judges, David Corridor and Scottie Harrison, collectively signed 33 no-knock search warrants from 2020 by means of 2023.
After an obvious reorganization of the county’s drug activity power in late 2023, court docket data don’t present the authorization of any extra no-knock searches.
However for the data examined from 2020 by means of 2023, no-knock searches had been virtually half of all search warrants present in court docket data. Nearly the entire search warrants examined in drug circumstances contained no-knock permission.
Authorized specialists who reviewed the paperwork agreed that with solely three exceptions, these Pontotoc County search warrants lacked written justification for no-knock entry as a result of they failed to supply any info to help the declare that officers is perhaps in peril, or that suspects would possibly escape or destroy proof. In some circumstances, these specialists stated there didn’t even look like sufficient written justification for a search warrant of any sort.
Corridor and Harrison didn’t reply to requests for remark.
Together with Pontotoc and Monroe counties, the information organizations discovered 91 no-knock search warrants, with 62 of these warrants deemed legally faulty by specialists . These warrants had been signed by 10 judges in six jurisdictions from throughout the state from 2015 by means of 2023.
In whole, the information organizations reviewed data from 20 courts searching for no-knock search warrants, reviewing hundreds of pages of court docket filings and submitting dozens of public report requests.
Many of those no-knock search warrants contained no clarification for why a no-knock search was wanted, both by the issuing choose or the requesting officer.
“Details matter; specifics matter,” stated Brian Owsley, a retired federal Justice of the Peace choose from Texas who signed lots of of search warrants whereas on the bench. “Are the targets harmful? Are they armed? Are they armed and apt to shoot?”
That’s the place Mississippi’s no-knock search warrants so typically go mistaken.
“In these warrants, I don’t actually see that dialogue in any respect,” Owsley stated.
Different search warrants provide solely meager supporting proof, together with nameless cellphone calls or outdated info. A few of these warrants had been directed towards areas the place a no-knock entry doesn’t appear vital. In Pontotoc County, Corridor signed two no-knock warrants authorizing searches of fuel stations. The written utility didn’t request no-knock authority.
Two search warrants signed by Ricky Farmer, a former justice court docket choose in Stone County, close to the Gulf Coast, licensed no-knock entry to go looking unoccupied vehicles at towing heaps. These functions additionally didn’t ask for no-knock permission.
Some warrants had been rife with sloppiness and generally even doable errors, stated a number of specialists, together with Welty, who trains judges in North Carolina.
One other warrant from Stone County signed by Farmer directed officers to go looking one deal with within the warrant, however the requesting affidavit contained a wholly totally different deal with outdoors the choose’s jurisdiction. The error was seemingly because of a copying error on the warrant.
Farmer didn’t reply to requests for remark.
In contrast to justice courts in Pontotoc and Monroe counties, some courts provided a extra combined bag. Within the Southaven and Greenville municipal courts, the information organizations discovered various no-knock search warrants that did comprise enough written justification alongside a number of warrants that specialists stated didn’t.
In Southaven, municipal court docket judges haven’t issued a no-knock search warrant since 2020.
In contrast to justice court docket judges, municipal court docket judges in Mississippi usually have legislation levels.
However whether or not these sorts of warrants are rising, declining or holding regular, judges ought to deal with no-knock requests with specific care given the possibly harmful and even deadly penalties, stated civil rights attorneys and authorized specialists.
For a choose to do in any other case, stated Lopez, the previous Justice Division legal professional, is “stunning” and exhibits “no sense of the potential hurt of what they’re doing.”
Within the Mississippi metropolis of Vicksburg, an aged couple sued after state narcotics brokers raided their house by mistake with a no-knock search warrant in hand and compelled them onto the bottom at gunpoint. A choose awarded them $50,000 in 2019. Two different lawsuits within the state involving dying or critical accidents throughout no-knock raids have been settled since 2022, together with the Keeton litigation. Two further lawsuits over no-knock raids stay ongoing, together with a case in Jones County involving mistaken entry on the mistaken condo.
The search warrant issues uncovered by this investigation are on no account distinctive to Mississippi. Welty carried out the same evaluation of no-knock search warrants in North Carolina. He stated the authorized justifications provided had been higher than the Mississippi search warrants he reviewed, however they had been nonetheless generally skinny.
In 2018, a Washington Put up columnist discovered search warrants from Arkansas missing any legally enough purpose for no-knock entry. A bigger investigation in 2020 by the information outlet discovered hasty, superficial critiques of no-knock search warrant functions throughout the county.
Even the search warrant used within the lethal Breonna Taylor raid — considered one of 5 related no-knock search warrants police had obtained — lacked authorized justification for a no-knock entry, in keeping with some authorized observers.
Trying again at his involvement in the important thing 1997 case from the U.S. Supreme Court docket, Schultz, the legal professional in Wisconsin, stated the ruling felt important on the time.
“For some time, it appeared like issues had been going to alter,” he remembered.
However in a later 2006 opinion, the excessive court docket stated that even when police unlawfully power their approach into a house, they’ll nonetheless use proof seized within the raid. Different violations of the Fourth Modification usually bar prosecutors from utilizing any proof seized in court docket.
Civil rights advocates have often blamed that 2006 ruling for undermining the importance of prior rulings limiting no-knock entries.
Schultz agreed. Taking inventory of the Mississippi search warrants he reviewed and the absence of bigger reforms within the state in addition to many different elements of the nation, that 1997 Supreme Court docket ruling typically doesn’t really feel prefer it issues a lot anymore.
“We’re again to the place we had been,” stated Schultz. “It’s sort of miserable that we’d be on this spot.”
Some reporting for this text was performed with the help of ProPublica’s Native Reporting Community.
How we reported the story
Nobody tracks or displays search warrants in Mississippi. Statewide guidelines for courts do require that search warrants have to be returned to court docket, nonetheless, and filed by the clerk.
As beforehand reported by the Northeast Mississippi Day by day Journal and ProPublica, many courts violate court docket guidelines and don’t even have these data. Others do have them on file however refuse to make them accessible to the general public.
Nonetheless, The Marshall Challenge – Jackson and the Day by day Journal continued a years-long effort to acquire search warrants the place they had been accessible. We visited courthouses and appeared by means of hundreds of pages of court docket information, scoured digital court docket data and submitted dozens of public data requests.
Finally, we gathered search warrants from 20 totally different jurisdictions, focusing totally on justice courts, the place judges typically haven’t any legislation diploma and often authorize search warrants, but in addition together with some municipal courts.
Submitting cupboards of court docket data saved on the Monroe County Justice Court docket workplace in Could 2022. Search warrants could be onerous to acquire from many Mississippi courts. Others, like Monroe County, make them accessible for public inspection. The information organizations in the end combed by means of hundreds of pages of court docket data whereas investigating using no-knock search warrants.
Some doc caches had been well-organized and went again a few years. Somewhere else, clerks had incomplete data, and even no data, and we solely obtained a number of search warrants.
Of the 20 courts the place we obtained search warrants, six had at the very least some no-knock search warrants. Pontotoc County Justice Court docket and the Greenville Municipal Court docket every had greater than 20.
In a number of the locations the place the information organizations discovered some no-knock search warrants, search warrant data will not be extensively accessible from the court docket, making it troublesome to evaluate how often no-knock search warrants have been issued or if they’re nonetheless being issued.
The ultimate reporting appeared solely at search warrants signed inside the final decade.
In some counties with lawsuits over alleged no-knock raids, together with Coahoma County, there have been no judicially licensed no-knock search warrants among the many court docket data. Somewhere else with no-knock search warrants among the many information, together with Monroe County, legislation enforcement officers claimed that such warrants aren’t all the time, and even usually, executed as no-knock searches.
Regulation enforcement officers can even execute a typical knock-and-announce search warrant with a no-knock entry based mostly on emergency situations on the time the warrant is executed.
We requested eight authorized specialists to evaluation the warrants and accompanying affidavits that we discovered and to judge their authorized justification beneath the necessities of the U.S. Supreme Court docket’s ruling in a 1997 case, Richards v. Wisconsin.
These specialists included retired federal magistrates, who often dealt with search warrant requests from the federal bench, in addition to practising attorneys and legislation professors.
Nobody professional reviewed the complete batch of data. To make sure a range of viewpoints, we confirmed a number of the identical search warrants to a number of specialists. Specialists persistently agreed about which no-knock search warrant requests had been justified with written help and which weren’t.
Listed here are the locations the place we discovered no-knock search warrants, with the overall variety of no-knock search warrants since 2015 and the overall variety of no-knock search warrants with out written help:
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Greenville Municipal Court docket: 23 no-knock search warrants, eight with out written help. All had been signed by Municipal Court docket Choose Michael Prewitt.
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Monroe County Justice Court docket: 15 no-knock search warrants, 14 with out written help. Most signed by Monroe County Justice Court docket Choose Brandon Davis. Two signed by Monroe County Justice Court docket Choose Sarah Cline Stevens. One signed by Monroe County Justice Court docket Choose Adrian Haynes. Stevens signed the one no-knock search warrant recognized on this county with enough written help.
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Pontotoc County Justice Court docket: 33 no-knock search warrants, 30 with out written help. All had been signed by Pontotoc County Justice Court docket Judges David Corridor and Scottie Harrison.
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Southaven Municipal Court docket: 13 no-knock search warrants, 5 with out written help. Of the 13 whole no-knock search warrants, 10 had been signed by Southaven Municipal Court docket Choose David Delgado, and three had been signed by Southaven Municipal Court docket Choose Joseph Neyman. Of the 5 with out enough written help, Delgado signed 4 and Neyman signed one.
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Stone County Justice Court docket: Six no-knock search warrants, 4 with out written help. All had been signed by former Stone County Justice Court docket Choose Ricky Farmer.
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Yazoo County Justice Court docket: One no-knock search warrant, one with out written help. Signed by Yazoo County Justice Court docket Choose Pam Could.
Solely Judges Davis and Stevens from Monroe County agreed to interviews or responded to requests for feedback. Their feedback are within the story. The remaining judges didn’t reply to requests for remark.
