OK, I’m obsessing over this Nash case. My outrage is based primarily on the social/moral argument that 12 years and $5,000 is grossly disproportionate to the offense. As I stated earlier, I accept that a legal process was followed and that the penalty was within the range of penalties allowed by the law. I find this to be an example of a capricious and unjust system. Even if Nash had ample notice that he shouldn’t have a phone, and even if he had a prior criminal conviction, I fail to see how society’s interest is served by incarcerating him for 12 years over this.
But, because I’m an insomniac, I wanted to see what kind of operation they might be running in Newton County, MS. Even though I think a law that provides for this kind of punishment is fucking nuts, irrespective of who’s to blame for the phone being in the cell, I think Nash’s case looks more egregious in light of some facts about Newton County and its law enforcement.
First, Newton County is very rural. The population in 2010 was just shy of 22,000 people, spread out over 578 square miles (Wiki). Nash was arrested by the Newton PD in the City of Newton, population 3,300 (Wiki) and was then taken to the Newton Co. Jail in the town of Decatur, population 1,800 (Wiki). The Newton Co. Sheriff’s Office and Jail are in a tiny building at the end of what appears to be a gravel road (Google Maps).
Now, of course this isn’t to say that rural cops are inherently less professional than urban cops. However, it does suggest to me that the county might have inadequate resources to put into training staff and maintaining the jail.
My suspicion that the county might be under-resourced is strengthened by the fact that the newly elected sheriff earned praise this January for hiring more part-time deputies and changing the department schedules so that the department could provide 24-hour coverage for the first time (cite, cite). When Nash was arrested in 2018, we can assume the department had something less than 24-hour coverage.
Nor is the department blessed with a large budget. for example, in 2016, Newton Co established a special team to respond to things like school shootings. It was made up of officers from departments across the county. Then-Sheriff Jackie Knight had to turn to donations from businesses and individuals to come up with the money to equip the team. At the time this article was written, Knight had collected $20,000 of the $40,000 he said was needed.
A less-than-full-time sheriff’s department, in a tiny county, with inadequate funds, housed in a glorified pole barn, is not the kind of operation I feel comfortable assuming has implemented thorough and consistent intake procedures.
Some additional incidents are illustrative of an indifferently managed jail. In 2014, an inmate was found hanged in his cell. The jail does not appear to be a particularly large facility. That the staff were not able to keep a detainee from killing himself indicates a lack of attention and adequate staff.
In another case, a man held in pretrial detention between September 2012 and May 2013 sued the County for denying him his medication and adequate hygiene while he was in custody. The man, who was HIV positive, claimed he was not allowed access to any of his medication for about the first six weeks of his detention. After that, he received the medication, but not regularly or as prescribed. At one hearing, the Newton County Sheriff’s Department provided records of medication administration, but the records were “not accompanied by an affidavit authenticating them or establishing their admissibility as records kept in the ordinary course of business”. The department offered no reason for their failure to provide the man adequate hygiene articles. (Cite.) I can’t find any information on how the case ended. But if the allegations are true, the case provides further evidence of a badly managed detention facility, which in this case provided substandard care to a detainee and was unable to produce adequate documentation of its operations.
The Sheriff at the time of Nash’s detention was a man named Jackie Knight, a guy who thinks non-Christians are going to Hell and who fired members of his department who ran against him for sheriff not once, but twice.
So. An understaffed, badly-managed, backwater county sheriff’s department run by a vindictive religious zealot took custody of a guy who had been picked up for disorderly conduct and disturbing the peace, and – whoopsie! – the guy ended up in his cell with a mobile phone. Yes, the guy had a prior conviction, but he hadn’t been in trouble in over a decade. Now, maybe this guy got what he deserved, or maybe he’s yet another black guy put through the ringer of a fundamentally unjust, thoughtless, and cruel machine.
