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KINGSTON, Mo. • There has been a development, the judge said from his bench overlooking the second-floor courtroom in the Caldwell County seat. The defendant stood before him, the old wooden floor creaking beneath his shifting feet. The man was unable to make a payment on what he allegedly owed the court.

It was two days after the Missouri Supreme Court had ruled unanimously that judges in the state could no longer hold “payment review hearings” in an attempt to collect “board bills” given to defendants for their time in the county jail. Those bills are often several thousand dollars, but, the state’s high court said, they are not court costs and cannot be collected by the criminal courts.

Associate Circuit Court Judge Jason Kanoy held those hearings anyway on Thursday, under the watchful eye of Michael Barrett, head of the state public defender’s office, and Matthew Mueller, the senior bond litigation counsel for that office. Mueller is the lawyer who brought the appeals of two rural Missouri men that led to the Tuesday opinion being issued by the Missouri Supreme Court.

“There are a pile of cases where people owe us money,” Kanoy told the defendant, a painter, who said he was having a hard time finding work these days, “and I have to review them all.”

Money.

That is what this is about.

It’s a pay-to-stay system that has been ingrained in Missouri’s rural courts for decades. Pay the judge for your time in jail or he sends you to debtors prison.