JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - The Mississippi Department of Corrections says three inmates from three different prisons have died after being hospitalized.
The department said in a news release late Saturday that autopsies will be done, and no foul play is suspected in any of the deaths.
At least 59 Mississippi inmates have died since late December. Several inmates died during outbursts of violence in late December and early January. The U.S. Justice Department announced in February that it is investigating Mississippi’s prison system.
Melvin Earl Thomas, 66, died Friday at Merit Health Rankin in Brandon, where he was taken from Central Mississippi Correctional Facility. Thomas received a 20-year sentence on Feb. 19, 2008, after he pleaded guilty to armed robbery. The charge came from the stick-up of a store in Perry County on Aug. 20, 2007.
J.C. Ormand, 91, died Saturday in the hospital at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. He had been serving a life sentence since Aug. 19, 1992, for the rape of a child in 1988 in Lauderdale County.
Carl Shane Cox, 48, was pronounced dead Saturday at George County Hospital in Lucedale, where he had been taken from the George County Regional Correctional Facility. Cox received a three-year sentence in January for a false-pretense conviction in Harrison County.
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