Mississippi law requires someone running for district attorney to live within the counties they would serve, but Gov. Tate Reeves’ appointment of a white Madison County attorney to temporarily oversee the top prosecutorial office in Black-majority Hinds County is coming under scrutiny.
Some local attorneys raised questions when the governor picked Brad McCullouch, an assistant district attorney in Hinds County since 2023, to replace the county’s elected district attorney, Jody Owens, who resigned after pleading guilty in June in a federal bribery case.
McCullouch, a white man who ran for district attorney as a Republican in Texas in 2012, will oversee the office until a Nov. 3 special election. In the next few months, McCullouch is poised to indict hundreds of felony cases in a county that hasn’t had a white top prosecutor since 2001.
On his weekend radio show, Jackson defense attorney Shaun Yurtkuran wondered if McCullouch can legally lead the office because of a state law specifying district attorneys “possess all the qualifications of county officers,” which is generally taken to include being a resident of the county.
Gov. Tate Reeves appointed Brad McCullouch to serve as Hinds County District Attorney on July 10, 2026, until a special election in November. Credit: Courtesy Hinds County District Attorney's OfficeJoe Hemleben, an appellate attorney who previously worked for the Hinds DA’s office, told Mississippi Today he was considering challenging the validity of any indictments secured under McCullouch’s tenure. But it remains to be seen if anyone will legally challenge McCullouch’s appointment.
The optics of the selection of a white prosecutor to lead the district attorney’s office in Hinds County has not gone unnoticed. The Republican-run state government has a history of taking over local, Democratic-led law enforcement, said Matt Steffey, a Mississippi Christian University School of Law professor.
“It doesn’t seem like an appointment crafted to please the voters in Hinds County,” Steffey said, noting that McCullouch is the first white man to serve in the position since Ed Peters resigned in 2001.
McCullouch has already publicly said he won’t run for election. In recent years, Republican governors have had middling electoral success with their appointees in heavily Democratic Hinds County.
State law gives the governor power to fill a district attorney’s office in the event of a death or resignation. But the law does not specifically say if the governor must appoint a resident within the electoral jurisdiction.
In an email, Reeves’ press secretary Shelby Wilcher wrote the governor’s office was aware that McCullouch did not live in Hinds County at the time of his appointment. Wilcher added the statute empowering the governor to make an emergency appointment does not “place any eligibility requirements or other limitations on the Governor’s discretion.”
McCullouch did not respond to an inquiry from Mississippi Today. He already faces challenges in restoring trust in prosecutions undertaken by the office, where DAs have been embroiled in legal scandals going back to the 2000s.
Owens was indicted on federal corruption charges in the fall of 2024 for allegedly taking bribes from undercover FBI agents posing as real estate developers seeking to invest in downtown Jackson. Last month, he pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy charge.
Because he won’t be running to permanently fill the post, McCullouch said in federal court last week, he would be free to make politically unpopular decisions.
“I’m in such a unique position because I don’t have to run for district attorney,” McCullouch told U.S. District Court Judge Carlton Reeves on Friday during a hearing regarding overcrowding and other problems at the county jail.
The attorney general’s office has yet to opine on whether an appointed district attorney must meet the qualifications of an elected district attorney. But the office has weighed in on comparable scenarios, writing that when an elected superintendent vacates the post, the board of supervisors must pick an appointee who meets the same qualifications. The office has issued similar opinions on vacancies of a municipal utility commissioner and a county prosecuting attorney.
When there is a vacancy of a circuit court judge or a school board member, the attorney general’s office has held that state law is clear: The appointee must be a resident.
Wilcher wrote that because some state laws specify that an appointee must be a resident, the Legislature would have done the same for the statute giving the governor the power to appoint an emergency district attorney.
“However, the Legislature chose wisely to not impose any such limitations,” she wrote.
Jim Kitchens, a former Mississippi Supreme Court Justice, said he thinks the matter is not settled law because the statute that gives the governor the power to appoint a district attorney in the event of a vacancy does not specifically state whether the appointee must reside in the district.
Plus, attorney general opinions are not binding.
“While they may be helpful in many instances, they are mere opinions, not law,” he said.
Kitchens, a former district attorney, recalled times in decades past when he stepped in for colleagues in other parts of the state who faced personal matters or had to recuse themselves. Kitchens temporarily served in their stead under a different state law that gives a senior circuit court judge the power to appoint a temporary DA.
To challenge the governor’s appointment, a Hinds County resident would have to file a lawsuit. Kitchens said he believed it was unlikely such an effort would yield a ruling before the Nov. 3 election.
In 2023, Reeves appointed local attorney Pieter Teeuwissen to fill a Hinds County Court vacancy following the death of LaRita Cooper-Stokes, a longtime judge and wife of Ward 3 Council Member Kenny Stokes. Teeuwissen did not win the election.
In 2018, Gov. Phil Bryant appointed attorney Joseph Sclafani to serve as a Hinds County Circuit Court judge.
Faye Peterson, a former Hinds DA, defeated Sclafani, who subsequently became a policy advisor to Reeves in early 2019, according to his LinkedIn.
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