Smith County in East Texas has agreed to pay a $1.5 million settlement to more than 100 people kept in that county jail after completing their sentences.
An attorney now with Southern Methodist University's Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center filed the federal lawsuit for three people who were kept detained after they were eligible for release.
Nathan Fennell had been with the Texas Fair Defense Project, which provides some legal services to people who "cannot afford access to justice."
Ladarion Hughes, the first plaintiff in the suit, in 2020 contacted the Texas Jail Project, a nonprofit trying to end mass incarceration by advocating for people in county jails.
Two years later, Hughes called them again.
He said he had agreed to a plea deal and had already served his agreed sentence during the 911 days since he was first jailed.
He was still in jail 27 days after he could have been let go, said the Jail Project's Krish Gundu.
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"He needed help because the jail was refusing to release him," she said. "Nobody would listen to him, nobody would — including his court appointed attorney."
Gundu said the very day "we called the state rep on this issue," Hughes was immediately released.
"And then we sort of took him home. His grandma was there to receive him. And then he had nothing left. He had no things," Gundu said. "So we bought basic essentials for him, bought a bus ticket for him, because he needed to go back to his mom's place."
Initial co-plaintiffs Angela Alonzo and Demarcus Lively served 33 and 8 days more than their sentences, respectively.
Each of the 102 class action lawsuit plaintiffs is potentially eligible for $666 for each day they were over-detained.
“This is a story about a county prioritizing its own convenience over the rights and interests of the people it’s supposed to be serving,” Fennell said in a statement. “Smith County is legally obligated to handle this better and faster, but nobody cared enough to try.”
Dallas County jail also has over-detained people, and in some cases, paid settlements for similar cases.
Some Dallas County over-detainments stemmed from computer software problems.
The Dallas jail could hold almost 7,500. Smith County holds about 1,150, but a smaller jail does not equal easier detention management, Gundu said.
"It should be easier to track, but policies come out of culture," she said. "If policies come out of this sort of 'What is your culture?' do you want to know who's in your jail? Do you care about who's in your jail? And what we've seen over and over again with this particular county, as with many other counties, is they don't really care who they're putting in jail."
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