Unlike some of the race-obsessed folk on the other side, we do not generally catalog the race of the people involved in the cases we brief or comment on. Most of the time, race is irrelevant to the issues we are discussing. We only care who is innocent and who is guilty. Even so, I couldn't help but be struck by the pictures in the Clarion-Ledger story yesterday on the Berry case.

Mary Bounds, who was murdered twenty years ago, was white. Her husband Charles is also white. The perpetrator, Earl Berry, is also white. Three Mississippi state government officials are pictured in the story. Mississippi Department of Corrections Director Chris Epps is briefing the media. Beside him are Policy Advisor to the Governor Daryl Neely and Superintendent of Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman Lawrence Kelly. Behind them is Mississippi's stars-and-bars state flag. All three of these Mississippi government officials are black.

This is not your grandfather's Mississippi.