Woman Sent to Jail for 2 Days Stuck There for 154

It's a 'big screw-up' in Indiana
By Kate Seamons,  Newser Staff
Posted Jan 27, 2014 1:42 PM CST
Woman Sent to Jail for 2 Days Stuck There for 154
Destiny Hoffman   (Clark County Sheriff's Department)

What's worse than going to jail? Being stuck there for 77 times your original sentence. That's what happened to a 34-year-old woman from Jeffersonville, Ind., who was ordered to serve two days in the Clark County jail after submitting a diluted drug test—in August. Destiny Hoffman was released Thursday, 154 days after she got locked up. Judge Jerry Jacobi oversees the Clark County Drug Court Treatment Program that Hoffman was part of, and ordered the Sheriff's Office to hold Hoffman "until further order of the court." But the order was never issued, and the 48-hour sentence was handed down without a hearing or any legal counsel, reports the News and Tribune.

She eventually did get legal help, from Deputy Prosecutor Michaelia Gilbert, who was going through old case files on Wednesday, spotted Hoffman's, and got a hearing held the next day, with Hoffman's former public defender representing her. The presiding judge called the screw-up, well, "a big screw-up." What Hoffman did or didn't do about the mix-up while in jail is unclear; the judge asked why she didn't alert officials about her situation, but she didn't give an answer. The News and Tribune reports the case isn't an isolated one: Jacobi ordered Jason Ray O’Connor to serve 30 days in June; he spent 215 days behind bars before his case came to light on Friday. (In other behind-bars news, Sheriff Joe Arpaio is handing out an unusual punishment to inmates who mess with the American flag in their cells.)

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