The sheriff of Tallahatchie County has been arrested on federal narcotics trafficking and extortion charges, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.
William Brewer, 58, appeared in court on Friday before federal judge Roy Percy. He is now in the U.S. Marshals Service custody with preliminary and detention hearings set for August 14 at 10 a.m. in the federal courthouse in Oxford.
The arrest announcement was made Friday by William Lamar, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Mississippi and Christopher Freeze of the FBI, according to a news release by U.S. Attorney’s Office.
Brewer is charged with conspiracy to distribute a controlled substance, and extortion and bribery under color of official right in violation of the Hobbs Act.
If convicted, he will face up to 20 years in prison on each count, as well as fines ranging from $250,000 to a million dollars per count.
Brad Daigneault, Brewer’s attorney, told Mississippi Today they did not have a comment at the time.
Executive director of the Mississippi Sheriffs’ Association, Stacie Rutland, said the organization did not have a comment.
“We don’t know anything except what we’ve heard about through the grapevine,” a clerk in the Tallahatchie County clerk’s office told Mississippi Today.
According to reports, Brewer had been in office for about 20 years, first appointed to the post when the previous sheriff died in office. He then was elected to the position multiple times.
“I am taken aback,” said Rep. Tommy Reynolds, D-Charleston, who is also the attorney for the Tallahatchie Board of Supervisors. “”We will just have to see what is there. It is hard to fathom at all.”
Republish our articles for free, online or in print, under a Creative Commons license.
Republish this article
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
- Look for the "Republish This Story" button underneath each story. To republish online, simply click the button, copy the html code and paste into your Content Management System (CMS).
- Editorial cartoons and photo essays are not included under the Creative Commons license and therefore do not have the "Republish This Story" button option. To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.
- You have to credit Mississippi Today. We prefer “Author Name, Mississippi Today” in the byline. If you’re not able to add the byline, please include a line at the top of the story that reads: “This story was originally published by Mississippi Today” and include our website, mississippitoday.org.
- You can’t edit our stories, except to reflect relative changes in time, location and editorial style.
- You cannot republish our editorial cartoons, photographs, illustrations or graphics without specific permission (contact our managing editor Kayleigh Skinner for more information). To learn more about our cartoon syndication services, click here.
- Our stories may appear on pages with ads, but not ads specifically sold against our stories.
- You can’t sell or syndicate our stories.
- You can only publish select stories individually — not as a collection.
- Any web site our stories appear on must include a contact for your organization.
- If you share our stories on social media, please tag us in your posts using @MSTODAYnews on Facebook and @MSTODAYnews on Twitter.