Recording Police in Mississippi: No Right-to-Record Statute, One-Party Consent Instead

The negative is worth stating precisely because several states have moved on this recently and Mississippi has not. Searching the Mississippi Code 1972 Annotated for the Nevada drafting phrase record a law enforcement returns a single section, Miss. Code Ann. Section 25-61-12, which is a Public Records Act exemption for the private information of law enforcement, judicial and prosecutorial personnel and has nothing to do with a bystander with a phone. Searches for a distance-based approach offence return nothing: the Code contains no twenty-five-foot rule, no eight-foot rule and no interference-with-an-officer offence of the kind enacted in Arizona, Louisiana and Florida.

Nor is there a proviso buried inside the obstruction offence, which is where Oklahoma keeps its protection. Miss. Code Ann. Section 97-9-73 is short and is about arrests only: it is unlawful for any person to obstruct or resist, by force, or violence, or threats, or in any other manner, his lawful arrest or the lawful arrest of another person by any state, local or federal law enforcement officer, punishable by not more than Five Hundred Dollars ($500.00), six (6) months in the county jail, or both. There is no clause protecting a person who records from a public area, and equally no clause making recording itself an obstruction.

That leaves the wiretap article, Article 7 of Chapter 29 of Title 41, as the instrument that actually decides the question in Mississippi. Section 41-29-531 lists five categories to which the article does not apply, and paragraph (e) covers a person not acting under colour of law who intercepts a wire, oral or other communication where that person is a party to the communication, or where one of the parties has given prior consent, unless the interception is for the purpose of committing a criminal or tortious act in violation of the United States Constitution or the laws of the United States or Mississippi, or any other injurious act. A driver or a bystander recording a conversation they are part of is squarely inside paragraph (e). Paragraph (d) grants the same exception to a person acting under colour of law, which is why an officer may record you without asking.

The second, independent reason a public recording is lawful in Mississippi is definitional. Section 41-29-501(j) defines oral communication as an oral communication uttered by a person exhibiting an expectation that the communication is not subject to interception under circumstances justifying that expectation. An officer giving commands in the open, at a traffic stop or on a sidewalk, is not exhibiting such an expectation, and circumstances would not justify it if he were. Video without audio never touches the article at all, since the article regulates interception of communications rather than images.

The article is permanent law rather than a sunsetting scheme, which is easy to misread from its history. Sections 41-29-501 and 41-29-531 were reenacted without change by Senate Bill 2713 of the 2004 Regular Session, 2004 Miss. Laws ch. 511, a bill whose short title was about extending a repealer. The repealer section itself, Section 41-29-537, was then repealed outright by 2006 Miss. Laws ch. 469 effective 1 July 2006, so the article no longer expires.

On footage held by the police rather than by you, Mississippi is restrictive. Section 25-61-12(2)(a) exempts investigative reports from the Public Records Act while they are in the possession of a law enforcement agency, though the agency may in its discretion choose to make public all or any part of an investigative report. Body-worn cameras are mandated by statute for only one force: Section 45-1-20, added by 2023 Miss. Laws ch. 546, requires the Department of Public Safety, subject to appropriation, to provide body-worn cameras to each patrol law enforcement officer within the Office of Capitol Police, to be worn on the uniform and fully operational while the officer is on patrol. No general statewide body camera mandate exists.

Recording lawfully under Section 41-29-531(e) carries no penalty at all. Stepping outside it does. 00), or both. That is the exposure for leaving a device running to capture a conversation you are not part of and nobody has consented to, in a place where the speakers do have a justified expectation of privacy. 00) or six (6) months. Neither offence is triggered by the act of recording itself.