MOBILE, Alabama – Call it the reverse of the criminal justice system's oft-repeated revolving door complaints.

Two Mobile County residents have been held in jail since October 2011, unable to make bail on charges of manufacturing methamphetamine. The cases have languished amid a logjam at the state crime lab and have not been presented to a grand jury for indictment.



One of the defendants, John Thomas Stokley, filed a handwritten petition last week complaining that he has been denied a constitutional right to a speedy trial.

The case stems from allegations that Stokely, 31, and three others were making meth at a trailer home in Wilmer, causing it to explode in October 2011. According to Mobile County sheriff’s deputies, four children younger than 12 were in the trailer at the time.

Defendant Crystal Ann Parnell made bail, but law enforcement authorities arrested her on a new drug possession charge in November. A judge later revoked her bail on the original charge.

Much has been made over the so-called revolving door of the criminal justice system, in which defendants bond out of jail and commit new crimes. This, Parnell's lawyer said, is the "polar opposite."

The attorney attorney, Greg Evans, contends his client has a strong defense on both charges but has been thwarted because prosecutors have yet to present the original case to a grand jury. He has filed a separate civil action in the case raising the same constitutional issue cited by Stokley.

“The State’s dilatory prosecution of the 2011 case leads to the inference that the State intends to detain Mr. Parnell indefinitely without bond,” he wrote in his court filing.

Mobile County Circuit Judge Sarah Stewart has scheduled a hearing on Parnell’s case for Tuesday morning.

Bail a ‘privilege,’ not a right

Mobile County Assistant District Attorney Lars Granade said the state opposes any change in Parnell’s bail revocation. He said a standard condition of any pretrial release is that a defendant avoid additional arrests on new charges. Parnell violated that condition when police arrested her on Nov. 9. Granade siad.

“Bond is a privilege and not necessarily a right,” he said.

Evans and Granade both agreed that the unusual delay in Parenell’s original case is due to budget cuts at the state Department of Forensic Sciences, which has a growing backlog of drug tests.

“The new cases don’t slow down when the budget gets cut,” Granade said.

Officials from the Department of Forensic Sciences did not immediately return a call seeking comment. But they have complained for several years that funding reductions and staff cuts have jeopardized the ability of state labs to perform toxicology reports in a timely fashion.



Budget cuts or no, he said, the state should not be able to hold someone indefinitely on a criminal charge. If not for the bail revocation on the manufacturing charge, Parnell easily would be able to make bail on the new offense, he said.

“The way it is now, she can just sit there until whenever,” he said. “They can’t just hold someone indefinitely.”

The other two defendants in the meth manufacturing case, Jason Swann and Jamie Boykin, have not made any court filings to contest the delay in the case, although they have less incentive since they remain out on bail. Russell Bergstrom, who is listed as the attorney for Boykin, could not be reached for comment.

The attorney listed for Swann, Shane Weldon, works for the Social Security Administration and does not even practice criminal law anymore. He said he thought, because of the time that has passed, that the grand jury declined to indict his client.

“It’s a bad situation,” he said. “It is kind of shocking.”

Defendants in ‘purgatory’

One of the problems, Weldon and Evans said, has to do with the way Mobile County handles indigent defense. Typically, District Court judges appoint lawyers to represent defendants who cannot afford an attorney. After the case goes to a grand jury, though, Mobile County Circuit Court often appoint new lawyers.

In between, the appointed lawyers in District Court often to not keep up with their clients. When the system functions normally, lawyers said, it is not a big deal. A grand jury hands down an indictment, and the new lawyer picks up the case quickly after that.

But if an unusual delay develops, that mean a defendant might not have an advocate.

“I think a lot of times … that defendants can fall through the cracks like this,” Weldon said.

Evans said the situation can cause serious constitutional issues.

“The person winds up sitting there in purgatory. … There’s nobody looking over his shoulder at that point,” he said. “It’s a serious hole in the system for these people.”

Weldon said he tried to persuade a district judge at the preliminary hearing to throw out a charge of chemical endangerment of a child on grounds that the defendant had no custodial responsibility over them.

“Hopefully, that will be brought out at the Circuit Court level,” he said.

Evans said Parnell also has a strong case. He said she and her child were staying temporarily at the trailer while she saved money for a deposit on a house rental. He maintains that she had nothing to do with the drugs.

In the incident last November, Evans found, Parnell was a passenger in a vehicle where law enforcement authorities found drugs. The drugs did not belong to her, Evans said.

“She has a defensible case on both of the charges,” he said.

Evans said it is rare for a case to take almost a year and a half to go to a grand jury after an arrest.

“This is a little bit unusual, but I’m afraid it’s something we’re going to see more and more with the state budget cuts,” he said.

Another result of slowing the system down, Evans said, is that the jail becomes overcrowded with people who pose little threat to the public. He said his client had no criminal history prior to the 2011 arrest and that the new arrest did not involve allegations of violence.

“We need to be careful who we park over there,” he said.

Updated at 5:37 p.m. to correct information about the bail status of defendants Jamie Boykin and Jason Swann.

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