MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Judge Milton Williams is the first black Polygrapher with the Mississippi Highway Patrol.
He’s currently the Quitman County Justice Court Judge, but he started from humble beginnings.
“I would chop cotton every summer, from the day school was out until the day school started,” Williams said.
Judge Williams worked on the Buckskin Plantation in Lampert, Miss. Where his family had been employed for decades.
“It was hot in that cotton field, and I wanted to get out,” Williams said.
That’s exactly what he did, and he climbed his way to one of the most respected positions.
“I was appointed as a judge after 29 or 30 years in law enforcement,” Williams said.
He said his success behind the bench started out on the roads with the Mississippi Highway Patrol.
“Every traffic stop is different because you're dealing with individuals with different personalities, and sometimes you may stop a person that's having a bad day, and you get have to adjust to that person having a bad day. And sometimes you can make that person's day just by spending a little more time talking to him,” Williams said.
Over his career, he mad more than 20,000 traffic stops, so he got really good at talking to people.
“My supervisor picked up on my interview skills,” Williams said.
That’s when his law enforcement career veered.
“During several federal murder cases that we worked, I was getting confession, confession, confession, just back-to-back...I thought it was natural,” Williams said. ‘You talk to a person they confess to you. That wasn't normal.”
His interviewing skills landed him a new job in 2005. He took an eight-week intensive polygraph course and became the first Black polygrapher with the Mississippi Highway Patrol.
Over the next decade, he traveled across the state doing polygraphs. He got tapped for some high-profile cases. He was even handpicked to interview people when Emmett Till’s case was reopened in 2017, including the original mortician.
“He just told me about the condition of the body...he couldn't recognize, it was hard to recognize,” Williams said.
However, he said not everyone applauded his success.
“They would try to call another other examiner to have them test the same person in a criminal case,” Williams said.
Currently, there are less than 10 Mississippi Highway Patrol polygraphers and only one of them is black. Even though he broke a barrier, he thinks it’s still difficult for black polygraphers coming behind him.
Even though his full-time job is a judge now, Williams said he still does private polygraphs on the side.