# Five Guilty Pleas, Five Sentences Coming. What Each Person Faces, and When. > The Jackson bribery case now moves to the only courtroom fight left: punishment. A person-by-person guide to the exposure, the guidelines math, the cooperation credit, and the order in which the bills come due. *General News · By Jackson Wire Staff · July 6, 2026* The case is over. The punishment phase is not, and it now becomes the whole story. Five people stand convicted by their own word in the FBI's Jackson operation, and one judge, Daniel P. Jordan III, will decide all five sentences, likely across a fall calendar that begins October 15. Here is what each person faces, based on the public record, the federal sentencing guidelines, and the parts of the plea agreements that have reached the docket. Where terms are not yet public, this guide says so. First, the rules of the game. Federal sentences are driven by advisory guidelines: public corruption cases start from Section 2C1.1, which adds levels for the value involved, for holding a high-level or elected position, and for leading the scheme. Pleading guilty earns a three-level reduction for acceptance of responsibility. Cooperation can earn a substantial-assistance motion, the 5K1.1, which lets the judge sentence below the guidelines entirely. There is no parole in the federal system; defendants serve at least 85 percent of whatever they get. Conspiracy under 18 U.S.C. 371, the count most of these defendants chose, caps the sentence at five years no matter what the guidelines say. Jody Owens, former district attorney. Pleaded June 29 to one conspiracy count: five-year cap, $250,000 maximum fine, restitution owed, forfeiture waived. Sentencing October 15. The guidelines treat him harshly in every direction: an elected official at the top of the trust hierarchy, described by prosecutors as the scheme's broker, tied to at least $115,000 for himself and more than $80,000 he moved to others. Without cooperation, the Wire's read of the guidelines points to a range around 30 to 46 months. The wildcard is his sealed plea supplement. If the government files a 5K1.1 before October 15, the floor drops, and there is an argument his plea earned it already: eight days after he folded, everyone folded. Prosecutors got five convictions without calling a witness. Estimate: 18 to 36 months, lower with a strong government motion. Chokwe Antar Lumumba, former mayor. Pleaded July 6. The terms had not reached the public docket at publication, and they matter enormously. If he pleaded to a single conspiracy count on the Owens model, the five-year cap governs everything. If he pleaded to a substantive bribery or fraud count, the ceiling is far higher. The conduct the guidelines will price: five $10,000 checks accepted on a recorded yacht, and a call placed while aboard directing a city employee to move a deadline. As the elected chief executive, he takes the same high-official enhancement as Owens, but he was not the organizer; that role belonged to the man who recruited him. His problem is timing. A plea seven days before trial, on the day final filings were due, buys the acceptance reduction but none of the goodwill an early plea earns, and with no trial left, he has little cooperation to sell. Estimate, if capped at the conspiracy count: 30 to 48 months, with real risk of the top of that range. Aaron Banks, former council president. Pleaded July 6, hours after Lumumba; terms likewise not yet public. His conduct is the smallest on the board: $10,000 in cash plus the alleged job and driver, tied to a vote that never took place. His guidelines value calculation is the lowest of the five, and his lawyers spent months building an actual-innocence record that may now serve as sentencing mitigation: the argument that whatever he agreed to, the city was never actually injured. He pleaded last, which costs him, but his exposure was always the shortest. Estimate: 12 to 24 months, and he has the best argument on this list for a sentence at or near the bottom of it. Angelique Lee, former councilwoman. Pleaded in August 2024 to conspiracy to commit bribery, the same five-year cap, and has now sat unsentenced for nearly two years, the signature posture of a cooperating witness kept on ice until her testimony was no longer needed. It never was. Under the guidelines she benefits from everything the others lack: the earliest acceptance, the longest cooperation, a lower-level role, and the near-certainty of a government motion crediting two years of assistance. First-in pleas in cooperator-driven cases routinely land at probation, home confinement, or months rather than years. Estimate: zero to 12 months, with probation a live possibility. Sherik Marve Smith, the insurance agent and Owens associate described as a conduit for payments. Pleaded in 2024 to the same conspiracy count and has waited unsentenced just as long. He holds no public office, which spares him the trust enhancements that drive the others' math, and his cooperation clock matches Lee's. Estimate: zero to 12 months, and as the only non-official in the group, he has the strongest claim to the bottom of everyone's range. Notice the shape of that list, because it is the quiet lesson of the whole affair. The likely order of severity runs roughly inverse to the order of pleading. The two who admitted it first, in 2024, may walk away with little or no prison. The broker who flipped in June bought himself a fighting chance at the low end. The two who held out until the courthouse steps face the longest realistic terms. In the federal system, the discount for honesty is real, it is priced daily, and it expires. What happens between now and the hearings follows a fixed sequence. The probation office prepares a presentence report on each defendant: interviews, financial disclosures, guidelines calculations, victim and community impact. Both sides file sentencing memoranda, the defense arguing mitigation, the government stating what cooperation, if any, it will credit. Watch three specific filings: a 5K1.1 motion for Owens before October 15, and the setting of sentencing dates for Lumumba and Banks, which will signal whether Judge Jordan intends one climactic week or a staggered fall. Restitution amounts, reserved in every public agreement, arrive at sentencing too, and they will finally put a dollar figure on what the government says Jackson lost. Two caveats belong on every number above. These are the Wire's estimates from public guidelines and public facts, not predictions from inside any camp; the sealed supplements and unpublished terms could move any of them, in either direction. And Judge Jordan is not a calculator. The guidelines advise; the sentence is his. He has watched this case for twenty months, watched five public servants and associates admit that the government's tape was true, and he will be the first official voice to say, with numbers, what that conduct costs in Mississippi. By Thanksgiving, Jackson will know the price of everything. --- _Sentencing estimates reflect the Wire's analysis of the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and the public record; they are not legal advice and could change materially once the Lumumba and Banks plea terms become public. Sources: court records in United States v. Owens, No. 3:24-cr-103 (S.D. Miss.), Magnolia Tribune, Mississippi Free Press, WLBT, AP, and prior Wire reporting._ --- [The Jackson Wire](https://www.thejacksonwire.com/) · [Read on the web](https://www.thejacksonwire.com/article/sentencing-guide-five-guilty-pleas)