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DALLAS---Did the Dallas Sheriff's Department violate the constitutional rights of man incarcerated more than a year without having been afforded his Sixth Amendment right to counsel?
Apparently so---along with the court and the prosecutor's office.
 Sgt. Don Peritz, a spokesman for the Dallas Sheriff's Department said they were fully aware that Walter Mann Sr., 69, was in an inmate in the county jail although his case had never been adjudicated and he'd never seen an attorney.
But sheriff's officials did nothing---saying that "we hold them until the judge says to hold him no longer".
Prosecutors claim Mann got lost in the system but the sheriff's department says they knew exactly where he was----and did nothing about the injustice.
In 2002, Mann's 13-year-old son assaulted him and the boy was sent to a juvenile detention center. Mann, clearly the victim in the case, was ordered to pay $50 a month to house the boy but he was unemployed and on disability. When he failed to make the payments, he was arrested and jailed by a judge in September 2004 on warrants which alleged that Mann had written bad checks. He was never formally charged with contempt although prosecutors were pressing and no hearing was every held.
The judge failed to assign counsel for Mann and kept postponing his case. Had he been found guilty of contempt, his maximum sentence would have six months with a $500 fine. Instead, he was left sitting in jail for some 15 months, released on Dec. 16 after his cellmate Jim Brooks, 64, told his lawyer, public defender Shoshana Paige, about Mann's situation.
Paige immediately brought the matter to the attention of authorities and Mann was released the same day. When asked what he hadn't contacted his family and advised them of his plight and need for an attorney, Mann reportedly said that he didn't want to bother them.
The sheriff's department could have even bigger problems as the Dallas Morning News has reported that an October, 2004 docket entry seems to indicate that the order to incarcerate Mann was vacated but the records of the sheriff's department do not show that alleged court-ordered release.
It was the prosecutor's office who sought Mann's incarceration for allegedly being in contempt of the juvenile court but there's no indication why the prosecutor's office did not bring the case back before the judge or why the hearings in the case were repeatedly postponed or even if Mann was allowed to be present for those hearings as is constitutionally dictated.
12-25-05
© 2005 North
Country Gazette
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