Broke by Jodie Adams Kirshner

Broke by Jodie Adams Kirshner

Author:Jodie Adams Kirshner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group


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Miles waited for permission to enter a payment plan for the driving fees on the valid charge. He filled his days draped over his one chair at home, flipping through his folders of important papers and notes for clues about the gun warrant, paying people to drive him to construction sites, and taking the bus when he could not find anyone to drive him. Many people he knew relied on carpooling to get to construction jobs, even as the carpool drivers frequently also risked losing their licenses for driving without insurance. He hated his lack of control over his own schedule, and he could not pick up materials when his bosses asked or run out to buy them more gasoline. When he had to take the bus, poor connections made jobs across town unreachable.

He needed to keep moving, though, earning as much money as he could and then rotating which bills he paid each month. “You sit still, it’ll catch up with you,” he said. He had payment plans for his groceries, his utilities, his cell phone, his property taxes, and, he hoped, the auto-insurance penalties. When a bill arrived for delinquent tuition for the online construction courses he watched, he wadded up the bill with delicate hands and threw it away, muttering, “How many times are you going to tell somebody you don’t make the money you used to?”

Missing work, he waited again to ask the judge to remove the fines and fees she had already found improper. After she removed them he walked to another courthouse that handled criminal cases, which he had learned about on his phone, to ask about the old gun charges. In his understanding, the clerk he spoke with at the criminal court could not find the warrant because the charges had never been “bound” over to that court. In Detroit arraignments on both misdemeanors and felonies occurred in the district court, where Miles had just had his traffic hearing and where he had mailed his letter to the chief judge asking for help. If a district court judge found sufficient evidence at a preliminary hearing to believe a defendant committed a crime, the judge “bound” the case over to the criminal court and terminated the district court’s jurisdiction over the case.

Miles’s district court records predated the reorganization of that court, which occurred simultaneously with the city’s bankruptcy to improve the collection of fines and fees and increase computerization. His records seemed to indicate that the criminal court remanded his case to the district court, which then sent the case back to the criminal court. In the criminal court, because the police officers did not show up to try the case, the judge dismissed it. He dismissed it “without prejudice,” however, which meant that the prosecutors could bring the case again. No judge or jury had tried the charges on the merits, so no double jeopardy protections attached. The judge had neither acquitted nor convicted Miles. This meant that Miles could face another trial and potential conviction.



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