Constitution Doesn't Apply In MS: In a Mississippi Jail, Convictions and Counsel Appear Optional (PIcture)
Indefinite detention isn’t found only at Guantanamo Bay or other U.S. military facilities imprisoning terrorism suspects. It’s also used in rural Mississippi on poor people.
At least one jurisdiction, Scott County, routinely keeps prisoners for months and sometimes more than a year at time without indicting them or providing legal counsel. That’s why the American Civil Liberties Union and the MacArthur Justice Center are suing the county alleging inmates’ constitutional rights are being violated by being “indefinitely detained” and “indefinitely denied counsel.”
The common practice is for the local judge, Marcus Gordon, to delay appointing a public defender until the prosecutor indicts the defendant. “And there is no state law setting a time limit on detention before an indictment,” The New York Times reported, which results in the defendant languishing in jail without counsel.
Gordon told the newspaper that he delays appointing a public defender in order to save the county money. “The reason is, that public defender would go out and spend his time and money and cost the county money in investigating the matter,” Gordon said. “And then sometimes, the defendant is not indicted by the grand jury. So I wait until he’s been indicted.” MOREHERE
RALEIGH, Miss. — Sheila Burks has not seen her nephew Octavious much over the past few years.
Sitting in her house far out in the Mississippi countryside, she ticked off his stints in the Scott County jail: There was the 18-month stay that ended in 2011; the year that ended in June 2013; and a stretch that began with an arrest last November and is still going.
It is hard to figure out what all this jail time has actually been about. While the arrests that led to these jail stays have been on serious felony charges, Octavious Burks, 37, a poultry plant worker, has not been convicted of or even faced trial on any of the charges. For nearly all of his time in jail, including his current 10-month stay, Mr. Burks has not even had access to a lawyer. MOREHERE
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