A Mississippi woman spent 96 days in jail without access to an attorney indicted with a drug crime she did not commit.
Jessica Jauch was arrested on April 26, 2012 after she was pulled over for a traffic violation. She was told that she had been indicted by a grand jury and had an outstanding felony warrant for selling a controlled substance, the Washington Post reported. Court documents say that she was caught on video selling pain pills to an undercover informant, but Jauch maintained her innocence. Jauch claimed that the video captured her borrowing $40 from the informant, something that was later confirmed when the assistant district attorney watched the video and later dropped the drug charge against Jauch.
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Many factors are alleged to have kept Jauch detained. District judges in Mississippi go from county to county throughout the year, and when Jauch was arrested, the circuit court in Choctaw County wouldn’t be in session for another three months. District attorney Doug Evans also claimed that his office wasn’t notified when Jauch was arrested, and therefore no hearing was scheduled.
On July 21, 2012, Jauch was finally arraigned and plead not guilty. She was released from jail a week later when she posted her $15,000 bail. On August 20, 2012, she was assigned another attorney, C. Hays Burchfield, who filed a discovery of motion to obtain the video, which led to Jauch’s charges being dropped.
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Jauch filed a federal law suit against Choctaw County and Sheriff Cloyd Halford in April 2015, but a federal judge dismissed her case after finding that her rights were not violated. She is now appealing to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
