{"id":463552,"date":"2026-09-14T17:44:18","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T17:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/463552\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T17:44:18","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T17:44:18","slug":"man-pleads-not-guilty-in-the-hanging-death-of-a-mississippi-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/463552\/","title":{"rendered":"Man pleads not guilty in the hanging death of a Mississippi woman"},"content":{"rendered":"

EDITOR\u2019S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national suicide and crisis lifeline in the U.S. is available by calling or texting 988.<\/p>\n

By SOPHIE BATES<\/p>\n

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) \u2014 A man charged with murder in the hanging of a Black woman in Mississippi pleaded not guilty Monday during his first court appearance.<\/p>\n

The body of Tasia Fortune<\/a>, 29, was found hanging from a tree behind an abandoned home in the capital, Jackson, on Aug. 3.<\/p>\n

On Friday, police arrested 51-year-old Jarques Ratliff<\/a>, who is also Black, on a murder charge after the state medical examiner deemed her death a homicide.<\/p>\n

During the brief hearing Monday in Municipal Court, the judge denied bond for Ratliff, who told the court he\u2019s not guilty. Ratliff\u2019s attorney at the hearing left the courthouse afterward without speaking to reporters.<\/p>\n

The case has attracted widespread attention because the nature of Fortune\u2019s death recalled lynchings in the Southern state, which has a tumultuous civil rights history<\/a> stained by episodes of racial violence.<\/p>\n

Police and prosecutors haven\u2019t given a suspected motive for the killing or said whether they think race played any role.<\/p>\n

Police Chief RaShall Brackney said Friday that Ratliff, 51, had an \u201cassociation\u201d with Fortune, but she didn\u2019t elaborate. She also said that additional arrests<\/a> are expected in the case.<\/p>\n

A Kentucky native, Fortune had been living in Jackson for about a decade, according to relatives. Her mother, Christy Spivey, said Fortune had four children but rarely saw two of them.<\/p>\n

Spivey wasn\u2019t sure where Fortune was living when she died, but she said her daughter had struggled with homelessness in recent years. She said Fortune had talked recently about starting a cleaning business and was trying to get her life in order.<\/p>\n

Two other Mississippi hanging deaths over the past year \u2014 those of a Black student<\/a> at Delta State University and a homeless white man in Vicksburg \u2014 also drew widespread attention, but both were deemed to be suicides.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EDITOR\u2019S NOTE: This story includes discussion of suicide. If you or someone you know needs help, the national…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":463553,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[182547,182545,182546,74,76,75],"class_list":["post-463552","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-san-diego","tag-are-lynchings-still-happening","tag-lynchings","tag-lynchings-in-mississippi","tag-san-diego","tag-san-diego-headlines","tag-san-diego-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463552","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=463552"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/463552\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/463553"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=463552"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=463552"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=463552"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}