From Midnight to Guntown
From Midnight to Guntown: True Crime Stories from a Federal Prosecutor in Mississippi
John Hailman
Copyright Date: 2013
Published by: University Press of Mississippi
Pages: 416
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctt24hw7c
Search for reviews of this book
Book Info
From Midnight to Guntown
Book Description:

As a federal prosecutor in Mississippi for over thirty years, John Hailman worked with federal agents, lawyers, judges, and criminals of every stripe. InFrom Midnight to Guntown, he recounts amazing trials and bad guy antics from the darkly humorous to the needlessly tragic.

In addition to bank robbers--generally the dumbest criminals--Hailman describes scam artists, hit men, protected witnesses, colorful informants, corrupt officials, bad guys with funny nicknames, over-the-top investigators, and those defendants who had a certain roguish charm. Several of his defendants and victims have since had whole books written about them: Dickie Scruggs, Emmett Till, Chicago gang leader Jeff Fort, and Paddy Mitchell, leader of the most successful bank robbery gang of the twentieth century. But Hailman delivers the inside story no one else can. He also recounts his scary experiences after 9/11 when he prosecuted terrorism cases.

eISBN: 978-1-62103-953-2
Subjects: Sociology, Law
You do not have access to this book on JSTOR. Try logging in through your institution for access.
Log in to your personal account or through your institution.
Table of Contents
Export Selected Citations Export to NoodleTools Export to RefWorks Export to EasyBib Export a RIS file (For EndNote, ProCite, Reference Manager, Zotero, Mendeley...) Export a Text file (For BibTex)
Select / Unselect all
  1. Front Matter
    Front Matter (pp. i-viii)
  2. Table of Contents
    Table of Contents (pp. ix-xii)
  3. Preface
    Preface (pp. xiii-xx)
  4. Common Law Enforcement Abbreviations and Acronyms
    Common Law Enforcement Abbreviations and Acronyms (pp. xxi-2)
  5. Prologue: The Making of a Career Prosecutor
    Prologue: The Making of a Career Prosecutor (pp. 3-16)

    For years, it never really occurred to me why I enjoyed being a prosecutor so much, but I knew I did. In my office, we used to say, “If I didn’t need the money, I would do this job for free.” What we all enjoyed most were the jury trials, which were like sports, full of intense competition performed before an audience of jurors. Our Anglo-Saxon system is clearly a modern form of deadly combat, mental and moral, with the underlying motives of violence and revenge focused and controlled.

    My daughter Allison, now a medical doctor, caused me to think...

  6. 1 BANK ROBBERS I’VE KNOWN
    1 BANK ROBBERS I’VE KNOWN (pp. 17-68)

    We once took an informal poll in my office for our favorite crime to prosecute. The result was unanimous: bank robbery. Why? Well, a bank robbery is fast-moving and exciting, and even though there is an element of force and violence, physical injury is pretty rare, although there is often emotional trauma to the tellers and other victims. There is also no confusion about whether a crime was committed. In a white-collar case, there is usually no doubt who did it; the only question is whether what the accused did was a crime and whether he or she knew it...

  7. 2 CORRUPTION IN POSITIONS OF TRUST: Lawyers, Judges, Supervisors, Sheriffs
    2 CORRUPTION IN POSITIONS OF TRUST: Lawyers, Judges, Supervisors, Sheriffs (pp. 69-172)

    Prosecuting public officials and other prominent citizens for corruption brings conflicting reactions from the public. For some, it deepens their cynicism about government: “They’re all crooks—I told you so.” Other times, a few public officials criticize us prosecutors: “Every time y’all prosecute another sheriff or county supervisor, it makes the rest of us look bad.” The latter view has a grain of truth, but to me it is a price worth paying. If you don’t prosecute corruption, you end up with a national reputation for immorality in public life like New York City for sex scandals, Chicago for rigged...

  8. 3 CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL WRONGS
    3 CIVIL RIGHTS AND CIVIL WRONGS (pp. 173-236)

    When I joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office, because of my three years of civil rights experience with Legal Services during law school and my two years as law clerk for Judge William Keady during school and prison desegregation, U.S. Attorney H. M. Ray assigned me to do all the office’s civil rights cases, both criminal and civil. For a few years, we had only civil class actions, handled by the Civil Rights Division in Washington with me helping. First there wasGates, a monster class-action suit to desegregate Parchman Prison; then cameGipson, another monster class-action with over five thousand...

  9. 4 KILLERS AND WANNABES
    4 KILLERS AND WANNABES (pp. 237-318)

    Most murders are not federal crimes. State DAs handle most homicides unless they are committed on federal lands like national parks. Fortunately for prosecutors in our office who get satisfaction from putting killers behind bars for life (like me) north Mississippi is rich in federal enclaves and interstate highways. The Natchez Trace Parkway seems to be the crime scene of choice for federal killings in Faulkner country. Most emotional and unforgettable for me was the locally famous Natchez Trace sniper killing where a paroled rapist used a high-powered rifle to murder a nine-year-old boy returning home from Christmas with his...

  10. 5 FARAWAY PLACES WITH STRANGE-SOUNDING NAMES: The Age of Terror
    5 FARAWAY PLACES WITH STRANGE-SOUNDING NAMES: The Age of Terror (pp. 319-370)

    When I joined the U.S. Attorney’s Office in 1974, it never occurred to me that I would ever know a terrorist beyond the Ku Klux Klan nor have any use for the fluent French I acquired during my two years as an undergraduate at the Sorbonne in Paris. Oxford did not sound like a launching pad for terrorism or for using my French to get free trips to exotic foreign cities. For five years, the only time I used my French at all was for a couple of interesting interviews with the French-Canadian wife of a Montreal drug dealer passing...

  11. Notes
    Notes (pp. 371-376)
  12. Bibliography of Related Readings
    Bibliography of Related Readings (pp. 377-380)
  13. Acknowledgments
    Acknowledgments (pp. 381-382)
  14. Index
    Index (pp. 383-398)
  15. Back Matter
    Back Matter (pp. 399-400)
  16. [Illustrations]
    [Illustrations] (pp. None)
University Press of Mississippi logo