George Richey, the man whose case led to a Missouri Supreme Court ruling last year that made it illegal to jail people because of their inability to pay for previous jail stays, is back in jail. Judge Jerry Rellihan had locked Richey up for 65 days because he couldn’t afford a $2,275 bill for a stay in jail on previous misdemeanor charges. The ruling ended the debtors prison practice that had been rampant in rural Missouri. However, before the high court ruling, Richey was arrested on other misdemeanors, trespass and low-level assault. The local criminal justice system has done everything it can in the past few years to keep the 58-year-old retired Air Force veteran locked up as often as it can, writes St. Louis Post-Dispatch columnist Tony Messenger.
Richey was sentenced to 755 days in jail, in part because the judge found him guilty of probation violations as well as the minor peace disturbance that led to the misdemeanors. Richey believes it was punishment for making Rellihan the poster child for rural judges masquerading as tax collectors. Richey remains in custody, in a pod with mostly federal prisoners being held on felonies. On Tuesday, he filed a new lawsuit against Judge Rellihan, Sheriff Scott Keeler and St. Clair County, seeking damages for his various imprisonments and violations of his rights because some of those jail sentences — and the bills they came with — were illegal, according to the Missouri Supreme Court’s March 2019 ruling in his other case.