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The single mother of nine had been evicted from her north ºüÀêÊÓƵ County home. She had no money and no place to live.

“I was going through a rough patch and didn’t have anywhere to go,� she recalls. “Everybody was turning me down, even my own family.�

In desperation, she called Jean Polly-Mitchell. At one point in the past, Fant had dated one of Mitchell’s sons. The woman was like a mother or grandmother to nearly everybody she met.

Mitchell wasn’t doing too well herself. Her husband, Reginald, had died of leukemia. She lived on about $800 a month in disability payments. Like so many impoverished North County residents, she had numerous traffic tickets from multiple municipalities to deal with. She was fighting because a single oxycodone pill had been found in her car in a 2015 search in ºüÀêÊÓƵ County.

The electricity in her Section 8 housing in Spanish Lake had been turned off. She would run a cord to a neighbor’s house sometimes to provide power.

When Fant came knocking, needing a place to stay, Polly-Mitchell took her in. Fant and eight of her children moved into the basement.

“I don’t care what kind of stretch she was going through, she didn’t turn anybody down,� Fant says. “Ms. Jean was like a second mother to me.�

Last Tuesday, Polly-Mitchell was laid to rest at in North County. Her coffin was draped with a Los Angeles Lakers banner listing the team’s 16 NBA championships. Family and friends donned the Lakers’ purple and gold colors for the funeral.

They remembered a woman who never had it easy, surviving the rough Los Angeles streets of Compton before coming to ºüÀêÊÓƵ to raise her family.

“She was so kindhearted,� said Yolanda Smith, one of Polly-Mitchell’s six children. Even as she dealt with recent legal troubles, her mom never seemed to complain, Smith remembers.

That was Michael-John Voss’ recollection, too.

Voss is a lawyer with the nonprofit civil rights firm . He was helping Polly-Mitchell clear up her old municipal warrants, and also represented her in the county drug case.

He was in court when he learned she was ill.

It was April 25, and Polly-Mitchell didn’t show up for a scheduled hearing.

Voss called her cellphone and Polly-Mitchell’s son, Jesse, answered. He told Voss his mother had suffered a heart attack. She had slipped into a coma.

Voss asked the judge for a continuance, but first, prosecutor Brooke Hurst of the ºüÀêÊÓƵ County prosecutor’s office had a request. She wanted a warrant issued for Polly-Mitchell’s arrest.

Voss was dumbfounded. His 65-year-old client was incapacitated and the prosecutor wanted her put in jail. He appealed to Judge Robert Heggie and Heggie ruled in Polly-Mitchell’s favor. There would be no warrant.

Five days later, she was dead.

Voss remembers his client as a “very giving woman who was just living through hard times.�

Those hard times are too common for many black people living in North County, where minor infractions for too long have led to jail time, deepening the hold poverty has on their lives.

Fant remembers spending weeks at a time in the Jennings jail in her youth, unable to pay the fines that were commonly stacked upon each other in the county before the 2014 Ferguson protests brought attention to the problem. Fant was in the successful federal lawsuit filed against Jennings alleging a debtors’ prison scheme.

And while much of that scheme has been unraveled in the past three years, Polly-Mitchell’s case highlights the continuing connection between the legal system and poverty. Were it not for Voss obtaining a bail reduction, she might have been in jail for months awaiting trial over her alleged possession of an oxycodone pill. And even while on life support, the prosecutor sought a warrant to have her arrested.

For too many people living in poverty, this is their reality. The scales of the justice system rarely balance their way.

Poverty had its grip on Polly-Mitchell most of her life. Born in Columbus, Ohio, she moved first to San Diego, then north to Compton, and back east to the mean streets of ºüÀêÊÓƵ.

“She was jolly for no reason at all,� says Fant.

Fant and her kids are in Wellston now with a roof over their heads. She thanks her friend for opening her home when nobody else would. “I’m going to miss my friend dearly.�