Jury awards $250,000 to woman jailed without seeing a judge

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) – A Mississippi jury is awarding $250,000 in damages to woman jailed 96 days without seeing a judge.

The verdict, including $200,000 in damages against Choctaw County Sheriff Cloyd Halford and $50,000 against the county, was handed down Tuesday after a two-day trial in federal court in Aberdeen.

Jauch was jailed in 2012 on a drug indictment and eventually cleared after video didn’t show her committing any crime.

The case highlighted Mississippi’s struggles with holding people before trial with little access to a lawyer or bail.

The jury was only determining how much Jauch was owed, after a judge earlier found the county and Halford liable.

U.S District Judge Sharion Aycock originally denied Jauch’s lawsuit. An appeals court reinstated it, calling Jauch’s detention “unjust and unfair.”

Jauch’s lawyer declines to comment.

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