These Mississippi Defendants Have Been In Jail For As Long As A Year Without Even Being Charged

There is an epidemic of individuals in the United States jailed for extended periods of time before they’ve been convicted of anything. Many of them are stuck behind bars because they can’t afford bail, in a system that in too many jurisdictions punishes defendants simply for being poor, not because they are considered at risk of fleeing pending trial.

But mostly, we at least assume that after a few days or a few weeks, if a jail is going to keep holding them, they are charged with something. Not so in Scott County, Mississippi, according to a new class action lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union. Octavious Burks has been in jail for ten months on an arrest of attempted robbery with bail set at $30,000. But he has never been charged with anything. He has never been appointed a lawyer. And, by the account of the ACLU, he has twice before been held in jail for periods of 18 months and 16 months, before being released without ever having been convicted of anything.

Joshua Bassett hasn’t been indicted either. He’s been in jail for 9 months with bail set at $100,000, after an arrest for grand larceny and possession of methamphetamine. And he doesn’t have a lawyer. But Scott County Senior Circuit Judge Marcus Gordon says he will not appoint Bassett a lawyer until he is formally indicted.

Bassett and Burks are in a particularly tough situation. Because they haven’t been charged with anything, they have nothing to defend. And they don’t even have a lawyer, so they are particularly hamstrung from challenging their incarceration.

“This is usually a problem when a defendant has no one to push their case to the attention of a judge,” Mississippi College law professor Matt Steffey told the Guardian, pointing out that this is the risk of not having a county public defender. “Clients without lawyers find their cases move slower, they are less likely to get bail or bail is higher.”

But the Sixth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution also includes a provision guaranteeing a “speedy trial” so that defendants don’t languish in jail. And Mississippi does not impose any time limit on how long defendants can be held without indictment. In Scott County, where Bassett is held, grand juries who decide whether to indict defendants are only impaneled three times a year. Even when the grand jury does convene, there is no guarantee that an individual’s case will not be postponed, ensuring a wait of at least another three to five months each time.

“This is indefinite detention, pure and simple. Scott County jail routinely holds people without giving them a lawyer and without formally charging them for months, with no end in sight. For those waiting for indictment, the county has created its own Constitution-free zone,” said Brandon Buskey, Staff Attorney at the ACLU’s Criminal Law Reform Project. “These prisoners’ cases are frozen, their lives outside the jail are disintegrating, and they haven’t even been charged with a crime. The county has tossed these people into a legal black hole.”

The judges also didn’t conduct assessments of whether these defendants could afford the astronomical bail amounts set in their cases, according to the ACLU. To avoid this jailing of defendants just because they are poor, New Jersey recently passed a law to allow those who can’t afford bail but are not deemed a flight risk to participate in other monitoring programs so that they can be released pending their trial.

Original Article
Source: thinkprogress.org/
Author: BY NICOLE FLATOW