The government blinked. On Wednesday, June 10, federal prosecutors filed a motion to withdraw their request to move the Jackson bribery trial to another court or to expand the jury pool, telling the court they are, in their own words, satisfied that a fair and impartial jury can be seated in this case. That is according to WLBT, which first reported the filing.

It is a quiet end to a loud fight. For months, the venue and the jury pool were the live questions in the case against Hinds County District Attorney Jody Owens, former Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba and former Ward Six Councilman Aaron Banks. With this withdrawal, both questions are effectively settled. The trial stays in Jackson, and the jurors will be drawn from where they always would have been.

Back in February, Assistant U.S. Attorney Kimberly Purdie asked U.S. District Judge Daniel Jordan to transfer the case to the Southern District's court in Gulfport, or, failing that, to pull jurors from all of the district's counties rather than the 18 in the Northern Division. The argument, as reported by WLBT and WLOX, was that months of media coverage had likely tainted the local pool — coverage prosecutors tied in large part to Owens' own decision in January to release dozens of documents from the FBI investigation as part of a motion to dismiss.

Owens pushed back. In a May filing reported by WLBT, he refuted the claim that he was the reason the government wanted a new venue, and argued that the speaking indictment itself — nearly 30 pages of quotes and photographs unsealed in November 2024 — was designed to taint the pool first. Judge Jordan, for his part, noted that Owens appeared to have responded in kind.

On April 1, Jordan drew the first line. He was blunt from the bench: he was not moving the trial to Gulfport, according to WLBT. But he left the harder question open. He signaled he might use a juror questionnaire to measure bias, and said he remained open to expanding the venire if a fair jury could not be seated in the Northern Division after months of headlines.

That is what changed. In May, the court sent a questionnaire to hundreds of potential jurors gauging their familiarity with the case. Attorneys met on Monday, June 8, to review the responses and began striking jurors the next day, per WLBT. Two days after they got their first real look at what local jurors actually knew and believed, the government dropped its bid to look elsewhere.

The geography here is not incidental. The Southern District of Mississippi has four divisions — Northern, Eastern, Western and Southern. As WLBT noted, the Southern Division, seven counties along the Gulf Coast, has the highest percentage of white residents of the four. The government's fallback — a district-wide jury or a move to Gulfport — would have pulled the panel away from majority-Black Hinds County and Central Mississippi. Withdrawing the motion keeps the jury rooted where the alleged crimes happened.

The plea window has also closed. All three defendants kept their not-guilty pleas past Judge Jordan's May 29 deadline, court records show. Two other figures in the scheme have already pleaded guilty and are positioned to cooperate: former City Councilwoman Angelique Lee, and Sherik “Marve” Smith, described in coverage as Owens' cousin and associate.

The three men still facing trial answer to 17 federal charges tied to what prosecutors describe as a scheme to bring a convention center hotel to downtown Jackson, with undercover FBI agents posing as developers, according to WJTV. Lumumba, per WLBT, is charged with conspiracy, bribery, racketeering, wire fraud and money laundering; Magnolia Tribune has reported he faces five counts tied to allegedly moving a bid deadline for the project. The men were indicted in October 2024.

The trial is set to begin July 13 at the Thad Cochran United States Courthouse in downtown Jackson, and is expected to run about six weeks, according to multiple outlets covering the case. Jury selection is already underway.

What is left, then, is the trial itself. The arguments over where it would happen, and who would sit in judgment, are over. The next twelve people to decide the fate of a sitting district attorney, a former mayor and a former councilman will come from Central Mississippi — the same place that elected them.