Mississippi Ordered to Follow the Constitution...(..no speedy trial)..see 3rd link below
Last edited Wed Jun 28, 2017, 08:49 PM - Edit history (2)
Original Story in Latest Breaking News...posted by Eugene...
at this link: https://www.democraticunderground.com/10141809766
title:......Mississippi counties ordered to stop jailing poor people indefinitely......................
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Source: Reuters
U.S. | Wed Jun 28, 2017 | 4:09pm EDT
A U.S. federal judge has ordered four central Mississippi counties to appoint public defenders for arrestees when they are detained instead of jailing them for months without providing legal counsel, civil rights groups said on Wednesday.
The order accompanies the settlement of a federal class action lawsuit challenging one county's practice of detaining people who cannot afford a lawyer for as long as a year without formal charges and appointment of counsel, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center said in a statement.
The settlement and court order require Scott, Neshoba, Newton and Leake counties to hire a chief public defender, a rarity in rural Mississippi, to ensure that defense lawyers no longer serve at judges' whims, the statement said. The chief public defender, not judges, would supervise all public defenders, the statement said.
A spokeswoman for Attorney General Jim Hood, whose office handled the case, did not respond to a request for comment.
Read more: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-mississippi-settlement-idUSKBN19J2QJ
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Amendment 6....Bill of Rights..
Rights of Accused Persons in Criminal Cases
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor; and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense
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Therefore, the State of Mississippi did not give defendants the right to council or a "speedy trial" ..I guess Mississippi did not follow the Constitution of the United States...Amendment 6..see above.
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.............................Additional information on this story...more links...............................................
This story from September 2014..shows that this has been going on for sometime..Yes , a very long time, very sad...
https://www.commondreams.org/news/2014/09/25/no-freedom-sight-illegally-jailed-inmates-mississippi-demand-answers#
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Octavius Burks has been locked in jail for three years. He has not been charged. He is still waiting for an attorney. He is still waiting to find out why this is happening to him—for the third time in as many years. Several other people in the same jail, caged indefinitely, are wondering the same thing.
The one shared fact among their cases is that they live in Scott County, Mississippi.
Officials in Scott County have illegally allowed those incarcerated to languish in jail, in some cases for years, without being charged, waiting indefinitely for trial or counsel, in an unconstitutional policy that might be occurring throughout the state, according to a lawsuit (pdf) filed by the ACLU on Tuesday.
“Octavious has spent over three years of his life locked in a cell without ever being formally charged—let alone found guilty—of a crime,” said Brandon Buskey, ACLU Criminal Law Reform Project attorney. “That's how it works in Scott County: No one gets a public defender until they've been indicted… Mississippi doesn't limit how long a prosecutor has to indict someone, even if that someone is wasting away in jail.”
These practices violate the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments, which guarantee rights to counsel, a speedy trial, and fair bail hearings, the ACLU charges.
“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,” Buskey said after filing the lawsuit. “For those waiting for indictment, the county has created its own Constitution-free zone.”
Burks and other plaintiffs, like Joshua Bassett, face additional challenges: they cannot afford to pay their bail.
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I am guessing that the story about the Federal judge ordering Mississippi to change procedures is a result of the ACLU..filing suit on the story above.
Here is another story on this from June 13...
https://mississippitoday.org/2016/06/13/federal-judge-slams-state-for-trial-delays/
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JACKSON – U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves blames the Mississippi Supreme Court for the state’s poor record of trials delays, which keep accused persons in jail longer than necessary.
“The court lacks the will to hold prosecutors and trial judges accountable for egregious delays in criminal cases,” Reeves wrote in an opinion filed Friday. “The result is that accused persons wait longer and longer to go to trial.”
“Given the frequency of speedy trial issues it faces, it is astonishing that the Mississippi Supreme Court has not reversed a criminal conviction for a speedy trial violation since 1992,” Reeves wrote.
State court procedures posted on the Mississippi Supreme Court website call for a criminal trial date to be set within 60 days of indictment and a trial to be held within 270 days of an indictment unless good cause is given for a continuance.
Mississippi State Supreme Court Chief Justice William Waller Jr. declined to comment.
In his opinion, Reeves asked: “Why is Mississippi’s criminal justice system unable to bring accused persons to trial in a reasonable amount of time? To avoid punishing the innocent … accused persons must have a right to a speedy trial.”
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PLEASE NOTE;.....the defendants in these stories are too poor to pay some of the fees involved..The counties went after the poor, and kept them ...???