The parents of a Tennessee man nearly stabbed to death at a north Mississippi restaurant in 2019 are speaking out as the U.S. Supreme Court weighs this week whether to take on the defendant’s case, potentially halting a scheduled retrial.
In 2023, a judge acquitted Lane Mitchell, who stabbed Russell Rogers at Tallahatchie Gourmet in New Albany, of attempted murder before the jury could deliberate. The state’s appeal led to a close decision by the Mississippi Court of Appeals. However, that decision was ultimately left standing by the state Supreme Court, paving the way for the retrial set for March 2027 in Union County.
Mitchell’s attorneys asked the nation’s high court in October to hear his case, arguing that the state appeals court decision violated their client’s protection from double jeopardy. Typically, the U.S. Supreme Court accepts few petitions requesting review.
Bob and Maridonna Rogers say the petition contains misstatements. These include the description of their son’s stabbing and the repeated assertion that Russell refused to show up or was intentionally kept from trial to testify, even though a Tennessee probate court ruled he was suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of the attack and was unable to testify. The judge used the victim’s absence as a basis for the acquittal.
The couple had hoped the state would file its own brief to correct the record, as it did in the appeal. Instead, they said they were shocked to find that the attorney general’s office filed a two-page waiver saying it would not respond.
“How can you (the court) make an informed decision when the information you’re being given is misinformation?” asked Maridonna Rogers, the victim’s mother.
A spokesperson from the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office declined to comment, saying the office does not comment on active cases.
In her victim’s impact statement, Maridonna Rogers said her son was given less than a 1% chance of survival. He had emergency surgery to repair a severed carotid artery and experienced a stroke.
Months after the stabbing, Russell Rogers was placed under a conservatorship, which is a court-approved agreement for someone who is unable to care for their own personal affairs due to factors including illness. The court appointed his father, Bob, the conservator, in 2020 and that conservatorship overseeing medical matters remains in place today.
Before the stabbing, Rogers had studied international politics in Washington, D.C., traveled to China and immersed himself in the language. Rogers left an international relations program in 2013 to take care of his father who had suffered a minor stroke and help his mother at home in Collierville, Tennessee. He stayed as his father experienced other health complications.
An outdoorsman, Rogers liked to hike in north Mississippi, often bringing him to the New Albany area where he frequently ate at the restaurant.
Today, he has ongoing symptoms of PTSD and sensory triggers that make him relive the stabbing, along with nightmares and hyper-vigilance, according to his parents.
Their son also lives with the fear that the stabber will find him and try to kill him, his mother wrote in a victim impact statement.
“He took my son’s life,” she said.
Differing descriptions of the stabbing in court records and video
A 42-minute silent surveillance video from the restaurant from Feb. 9, 2019, shows interactions between restaurant staff and customers and the events that led up to the stabbing.
In their petition, Mitchell’s attorneys state that Rogers had been drinking the afternoon and evening of the attack.
About half an hour before the attack, video shows Rogers talking to three women at a table near the back of the restaurant. At trial, they testified that Rogers did not seem intoxicated and court transcripts show they did not feel threatened by him starting a conversation with them.
Russell Rogers, seen top right in this surveillance video, talks with a female waitress at the Tallahatchie Gourmet restaurant in New Albany on Feb. 9, 2019, moments before Lane Mitchell, unseen sitting at the other end of the bar, stabbed Rogers in the neck. A judge acquitted Mitchell of attempted murder in 2023 and an appeal led to an order for a retrial. Mitchell’s attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case.Later in their petition, the defense states that Rogers “corner(ed) a frightened teenaged server.”
The server testified that she was 21 when Rogers was attacked, according to the trial transcript and local reporting. Prior to the attack, video showed Rogers attempting to talk with the woman.
The defense wrote that Rogers, who was told multiple times by restaurant staff to leave, became enraged and “charged aggressively at the bartender, (the) petitioner’s father.”
The entire stabbing sequence happens in two minutes, video shows:
The waitress, seen earlier offering Mitchell a hug, speaks with Rogers at a corner table as Mitchell watches.
Mitchell, 18 at the time, takes a knife from the bar and holds it behind his back, keeping his eyes on Rogers and the waitress. A woman seated at the bar grabs the back of Mitchell’s t-shirt, but he stands and stops a few steps away from Rogers and the waitress.
During the conversation, Rogers leans in, causing the woman to step back and lean away. She turns to go behind the bar, passing Mitchell’s dad, Torrey Mitchell, the bartender. Rogers takes a step to follow her, and Torrey Mitchell stops him, grabbing his arms.
Lane Mitchell, seen top center, holds a knife behind his back while looking at Russell Rogers, top right, as he talks to a waitress at the Tallahatchie Gourmet restaurant in New Albany, as seen in video surveillance the night of Feb. 9, 2019. A judge acquitted Mitchell of attempted murder on 2023 and an appeal led to an order for a retrial. Mitchell’s attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case.At that moment, Lane Mitchell takes four steps toward Rogers from behind and sinks the knife into Rogers’ neck three times, dazing him. Torrey Mitchell pushes his son out of the way and wraps his arms around Rogers, holding him in place.
Still holding Rogers around the abdomen, he walks them toward another end of the restaurant and eases Rogers to the ground. Video shows stains on the front of his pants and splatters of what is likely blood. Lane Mitchell and a customer peer at Rogers. Within two minutes, police officers arrive and tend to him: One gets a towel for the blood, another tries CPR.
Russell Rogers is held around the abdomen after being stabbed in the neck on Feb. 9, 2019, at the Tallahatchie Gourmet restaurant in New Albany. The man holding Rogers is a bartender and the father of Lane Mitchell, the then-18-year-old who stabbed Rogers. A judge acquitted Mitchell of attempted murder in 2023, and an appeal led to an order for a retrial. Mitchell’s attorneys have asked the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case.The defense states that Mitchell acted in self defense “believing Rogers to be armed and seeing him charge at his father” and “to prevent any harm befalling his father, himself and any other patrons or employees at the Tallahatchie Gourmet restaurant.”
Video shows that minutes earlier, Rogers had left the restaurant, prompting Mitchell, his father and the waitress to exchange looks. At trial, witnesses and Mitchell said they believed he retrieved a gun, according to court records. Court filings show a firearm was never found on Rogers.
A representative from Mitchell’s legal team did not respond to a request for comment.
Victim’s absence at court argued as violation of defendant’s rights
Mitchell’s attorneys highlighted the trial judge’s order to support its argument to convince the U.S. Supreme Court to review his case.
Union County Circuit Judge Kent Smith said Russell Rogers had never appeared at court hearings, spoke with law enforcement or communicated with the prosecution. The judge and both sides viewed him as a material witness and expected him to testify, with the defense issuing a subpoena to take Rogers into custody in Tennessee and bring him to Mississippi.
Ultimately, his father acting as conservator, petitioned the Shelby County Probate Court, which oversees Rogers’ conservatorship. A judge quashed the subpoena, finding that Rogers was unable to testify due to his mental health.
In lieu of Rogers, prosecutors called his mother as a witness, asking her about his injuries and recovery, according to the trial transcript.
Rogers’ absence at trial meant the defense was not able to cross examine Rogers, which the defense argued was a violation of Mitchell’s Sixth Amendment right to confront a witness. Smith agreed.
“(Rogers) is the complaining victim. Both the State of Mississippi and the defense announced their desire and intent to call Rogers as a witness at trial,” Smith wrote. “Nevertheless, he appears to be intentionally unavailable even though the Court is of the opinion that Mitchell has a fundamental right to call Rogers as a witness at trial and to examine him at trial in the presence of the jury.”
The state denied that characterization in its successful 2024 appeal. In the majority written by Judge John Emfinger, the court noted that the conservator acted accordingly when he stepped in to challenge the defense’s subpoena, even if it “may well have been at odds with the state’s interest in proceeding with the prosecution of the case.”
In its appeal, the attorney general’s office asked for a different judge or venue for the retrial, but the Court of Appeals did not order that, sending the case back to Smith.
New attorneys have not reached out about retrial
The attorney general’s office has been part of the case since 2021, after District Attorney Ben Creekmore recused himself due to undisclosed conflicts. Multiple attorneys from the office worked on the case, including new attorneys now assigned to handle the retrial.
One of those attorneys is Special Assistant Attorney General Luke Williamson, who this year handled the cases of two former Capitol Police officers charged with manslaughter in the shooting death of Jaylen Lewis in a traffic stop in downtown Jackson. The jury deadlocked on whether to convict one, Michael Rhinehalt, while acquitting his co-defendant, Stephen Frederick, allowing both to walk free when the attorney general’s office announced it would not retry Rhinehalt.
Bob and Maridonna Rogers said they had a positive experience communicating with Danielle Love Burks from the attorney general’s office who headed the appeal and took care in writing the appeal brief, but have not heard from Williamson or other attorneys assigned to the case. They said they learned about recent updates by reading Mississippi Today or by checking court dockets on their own to access new filings.
A spokesperson for the attorney general’s office did not respond to Mississippi Today’s questions about its communication with the Rogers family.
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