 On February 10, 2015, Reeves sentenced three young white men for their roles in the death of a 48-year-old black man named James Craig Anderson.They were part of a group that beat Anderson and then killed him by running over his body with a truck, yelling "white power" as they drove off.In handing down sentences of between 7 and 50 years in prison for the defendants, Reeves gave a widely publicized speech that remarked on how the killing of Anderson fit into Mississippi's "tortured past" of lynchings and racism.