A Mississippi man, being held at a county jail on a misdemeanor charge, asked a guard to charge his cellphone. The phone was confiscated and the man was slapped with a 12-year prison sentence for possessing a phone in a correctional facility.
What We Know:
- Willie Nash was booked into the Newton County Jail in 2018. According to court documents, the married father of three handed his phone to a guard and asked if he could charge it. The guard took the phone and gave it to a sheriff’s deputy.
- Mississippi law prohibits inmates in correctional facilities from possessing cellphones. It is a felony offense with a sentence of 3 to 15 years, according to the court document.
- A jury found Nash guilty of breaking the cellphone law and in August 2018 a judge sentenced him to 12 years in state prison. The judge told Nash to consider himself lucky because given his past burglary convictions he could have gotten the maximum 15-year sentence.
- Nash appealed the lengthy sentence, which he said was both “grossly disproportionate” and a violation of his Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment.
- The Supreme Court acknowledged that proper booking procedures were probably not followed, and that Nash did not seem to know his phone was illegal. Unfortunately, on January 9th, the Mississippi Supreme Court still affirmed Nash’s conviction and sentence.
- Justice Leslie D. King, wrote in an opinion that while he agreed the court reached the correct result under the law, he had concerns that the case demonstrated “a failure of our criminal justice system on multiple levels”. King stated “it seems problematic to potentially allow someone into the jail with a cellphone, and then prosecute that person for such action.“
Nash’s tentative release date is February 4, 2029 with the possibility for parole in three years.
