
12 Years in Prison for Using His Cell Phone While in Jail - throwlaplace
https://www.deepsouthvoice.com/index.php/2020/01/11/black-man-sentenced-to-12-years-in-prison-for-using-his-cell-phone-while-in-jail-for-a-misdemeanor-mississippi-supreme-court-upholds-sentence
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Fjolsvith
Cops all the time allow an arrested person keep something that is contraband
when entering a facility in order for them to add charges. I been there and
seen it happen frequently.

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throwlaplace
tldr: it's the application of statutory sentencing with judicial discretion.
the range is 3-15 years. the case was appealed all the way to the MS supreme
court; quoting the article that quotes the presiding MS supreme court justice

>“Nash served his time for his previous convictions and stayed out of trouble
with the law for many years. He has a wife and three children who rely on him.
His crime was victimless, and the facts of the case lend themselves to an
interpretation that his crime was accidental and likely caused by a failure of
booking procedures,” King wrote. “Nash did not do anything nefarious with his
phone, and he certainly did not hide his phone from law enforcement."

>“While I do not think this Court can find under the law that the trial court
abused its discretion in sentencing, it is a case in which, in my opinion,
both the prosecutor and the trial court should have taken a more
rehabilitative, rather than punitive, stance.”

there's a good discussion in r/law about the case[1].

i often see people here complain about how opaque google is wrt handling
customer complaints, or paypal in giving refunds, or youtube in taking down
videos because of copyright strikes. imagine spending 12 years of your life in
a cage because of an opaque system that you have no remedy from.

[1][https://old.reddit.com/r/law/comments/eouls4/in_mississippi_...](https://old.reddit.com/r/law/comments/eouls4/in_mississippi_a_black_man_was_arrested_for_a/)

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chrisbennet
I’m never going to Mississippi...

