Challenging Mississippi’s depraved justice system: Months in jail, with no indictment and no lawyer — salon.com

The American Civil Liberties Union filed a class action complaint in Mississippi today on behalf of an estimated 50 prisoners who have been languishing for months in a Scott County jail without access to a lawyer and without being indicted for a crime. The ACLU asserts the class of plaintiffs may be even larger; this is just one county in a state rife with right-to-counsel problems. One man, Joshua Bassett, has been in jail for more than eight months after being arrested for grand larceny and meth possession. He has not been indicted and, though he is poor and entitled to an attorney, he has never been given one.

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