SALEM, mo. • The Dent County Jail is so dreadful that last year the sheriff was offering tours to highlight its Third World-like conditions. At the time, county officials were seeking a tax increase to replace the jail. It passed. The YouTube videos posted by some who have toured the dank, dark, overcrowded jail, including the , offer a glimpse of the reality facing local citizens warehoused there, often on pretrial cash bails set so high that poor people can’t escape.
“Black mold grows freely on the ceiling, in corners and under the table,†one veteran inmate told me. She’s been in the jail several times and is likely to be there again soon. She has a warrant out for her arrest. “In the summer, the back wall sweats and puddles collect in corners and soak the blankets.â€
Women are crowded into two cells built for four people, but often holding 10 or more.
People are also reading…
So it is no wonder that in August, Amy Murr did whatever she could to get out of that place.
Murr, 36, is a Dent County native. She’s the country girl-next-door with a slight drawl that goes down like sweet tea and a smile that can melt hearts. But Murr is no stranger to run-ins with the law. From burglary to domestic violence, she’s been arrested several times. She did a stint in prison on a probation violation.
In February 2017, she was arrested for violating an order of protection against her mother. Associate Circuit Court Judge Brandi Baird set a $5,000 cash-only bail, a common practice in Dent County, regardless of the charge. After Murr spent about two weeks in jail, her public defender was able to get the bail reduced. Murr posted bond and was ordered to be supervised by private probation company MPPS and pay for drug testing twice a week. According to MPPS, which at the time wasn’t required to test according to federal or state standards, Murr failed a drug test in March 2017.
She was put in jail again, and her bail was doubled. She was locked up for about three months.
In September 2017 she pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor and was sentenced to time served.
That’s when the payment review hearings began. Murr owed Dent County about $4,000 for her “board bill†for the 95 days she had been jailed. Baird ordered her to appear once a month to make payments or explain why she couldn’t.
There is nothing in state statute that calls for such hearings, but Baird orders them regularly. So do judges in many Missouri counties. This is the cycle that creates . It starts with high cash bail, followed by pretrial supervision by private for-profit probation companies, and then a large bill for jail time, often as a result of alleged violations of bond conditions. If defendants don’t pay the bill or miss a payment review hearing, they go to jail again. The state public defender’s office has cases pending before Missouri appeals courts seeking to declare this practice illegal.
At her eighth such payment review hearing, in July of this year, Murr was late.
When she got to court, Baird had her cuffed and put in jail again. Her bail was set at $5,000, cash only. This time, Murr hired a private attorney to fight for her, a former public defender named David Simpson. He filed motions for bail reduction and a reconsideration of the conditions of her probation. He tried to get her released from jail.
Baird would have none of it.
Then her bailiff, Sgt. Michael Roderman, paid Murr a visit in the jail.
He suggested, Murr says, that if she got rid of Simpson, who had become a burr in Baird’s side, the judge would reduce her bail.
“I knew right then that I had to fire my attorney,†Murr says. She signed a paper Roderman gave her consenting to Simpson withdrawing. On the same day, her bail was cut significantly. She posted it and hasn’t been back to the Dent County Jail since then.
When she got out of jail, she rehired Simpson.
He filed a motion to put an end to the nonstop cycle of payment review hearings, followed by jail, followed by a bigger board bill.
“This court imposed and executed a sentence on Defendant one year ago … and Defendant completed her jail sentence on the same date,†Simpson wrote in a motion he filed with Baird. “There is no statute or rule that permits a circuit court after it has imposed and executed a jail sentence to require the person who has served the jail sentence to appear in court for ‘payment review hearings’ in an attempt to collect the county sheriff’s bill for the costs of the jail sentence.â€
The court could, as some in Missouri do, Simpson pointed out, seek a civil action to collect the board bill. It could, as outlined in state law, intercept her income tax refund, suspend various state licenses, or refer the bill to a collection agency. But it can’t keep putting her in jail, he wrote.
That jail, Murr tells me, is regularly filled with a lot of “wonderful women.†Some are drug addicts. Others have been punished far beyond statutory limits for theft or other misdemeanors. Most owe board bills they’ll likely never be able to pay.
“I think they look at us like cattle,†Murr says. “Put a number on us and stow us away in the jail. They have something against the weak and the poor.â€
Murr is scheduled to appear at her next payment review hearing in January.
Baird won’t be there. On Nov. 6, voters gave the judge her walking papers.
Jailed for being poor is Missouri epidemic: A series of columns from Tony Messenger
Tony Messenger has written about Missouri cases where people were charged for their time in jail or on probation, then owe more money than their fines or court costs.Â
The Pulitzer Prize board considered these columns when it decided to award the prize for commentary to metro columnist Tony Messenger.Â
In a twist of irony, one judge no longer calls them “payment review hearings.†Instead, he’s even more direct. Now they are called “debt colle…
“The jail is emptying out. People that do come in are able to bond out quickly. None of the girls here are being held for financial reasons. T…
In a case of civil contempt — such as when a judge jails a reporter for not revealing a source, or an attorney for failing to follow an order …
Even with the state’s top court making progress in eradicating the practice of putting people in jail because they can’t afford to be in jail,…
“There are a pile of cases where people owe us money,†the judge told the defendant, a painter, who said he was having a hard time finding wor…
No longer, the court said in one voice, can judges in Missouri threaten indigent defendants with jail time for their inability to be able to a…
Disparate treatment of people charged with crimes offers a glimpse into a fundamental problem in the application of criminal justice in Missou…
Weiss wants the Legislature to make it illegal for counties to charge defendants for their time behind bars.
“How can they cancel a court date then issue a warrant without even telling you the new court date?†Sharp wonders.
His bill would stop the practice in Missouri of state police agencies avoiding state jurisdiction by seeking asset forfeiture under guise of f…
"He sat in jail because he was poor," public defender Matthew Mueller said of his client.
The two defendants are Exhibits A and B of why Missouri has become the front line in a national war on poverty and the courts.
She knows what she did was wrong. She knows she should have been punished.
“It's been a hard road,†she told me recently. “Really hard.â€
For decades, Missouri’s corrections budget has been rising. So has its prison population, with a “tough on crime†philosophy filling prisons w…
“We’re hamstringing the very people who we want to go out and get a job,†Lummus says. “It’s self-defeating.â€
In his regular appearance on the McGraw Milhaven show on KTRS radio, Metro columnist Tony Messenger discusses his ongoing debtors' prison series.
He did his time. Then he got the bill: $3,150 for his stay behind bars.
A year-end update on some of the cases Tony Messenger wrote about during 2018.
The primary difference between the poor people who have been “terrorized†in Edmundson or Jennings or Ferguson, compared with those in Salem a…
The Court of Appeals in the Western District of Missouri determined that the practice of using the courts to try to collect board bills is ill…
Some counties in Missouri don't charge board bills. Those include the most urban counties in the state: both the city and county of ºüÀêÊÓƵ,…
I did my time and then some. This is how they get people. They keep them on probation and then if they don't pay their board bill they violate…
By 2009, Rapp was behind in her payments and the court revoked her probation. She did a couple of days in jail and her cash bond of $400 was a…
Every week in Missouri, a judge somewhere holds a crowded docket to collect room and board from people who were recently in jail. The judges c…
“I don’t see why he has to keep going to court every month,†she says. Sharon uses her Social Security income to try to keep him out of jail. …
Because Precious Jones was late to jail, prosecutor and judge seek to add to her sentence.
The Missouri Supreme Court and Missouri Legislature should revisit their 2015 and 2016 efforts to reform courts. More work is necessary.
Other than now being required to meet federal standards for that drug testing, private probation companies face nearly no oversight in Missour…
“I messed up on probation,†he says. “It was my fault.†Still, he doesn’t think it makes sense that he’s still hauled to court once a month wi…
Murr owed Dent County about $4,000 for her “board bill†for the 95 days she had been jailed.
The domestic violence victim, Gaddis says, wouldn’t make a report to police because she feared going to jail herself and losing her child.Â
“They make you jump through hoops,†Bote says, “and then they keep moving the hoops higher.â€
William Everts stole from a church. Almost immediately, he knew it was a bad idea.
Bergen has the sort of back story that would inspire one of the movies or television episodes based in the Ozarks that seem to be all the rage…
Clark ended up spending 495 days in county jail awaiting a trial that still hasn’t come.
Pritchett first called me last year, after I wrote about a St. Francois County woman who was sent to prison for failing to pay court costs. He…
Rob Hopple had been in jail since May after falling behind on payments on an ankle bracelet. Court dates kept coming and going, with the prose…
The bills are that high because the two criminal defendants couldn’t afford to pay for an initial sentence behind bars for relatively minor of…
“The practical reality is that people are being arrested for being poor,†Mueller says. “And there’s nothing they can do about it. They just s…
At least twice in recent years, the Missouri Supreme Court has overturned harsh sentences issued by a judge after she sent people to prison so…
Branson, in early 2018, was in Desloge, Mo., now, living with her 15-year-old son, checking in with her parole officer, hoping never to go bac…
Officially, Victoria Branson’s probation was revoked because she never paid the state the past due support and the court costs, which rang up …