RALEIGH, Miss. — Sheila Burks has not seen her nephew Octavious much over the past few years.

Sitting in her house far out in the Mississippi countryside, she ticked off his stints in the Scott County jail: There was the 18-month stay that ended in 2011; the year that ended in June 2013; and a stretch that began with an arrest last November and is still going.

It is hard to figure out what all this jail time has actually been about. While the arrests that led to these jail stays have been on serious felony charges, Octavious Burks, 37, a poultry plant worker, has not been convicted of or even faced trial on any of the charges. For nearly all of his time in jail, including his current 10-month stay, Mr. Burks has not even had access to a lawyer.

“He’s always at the jailhouse,” Ms. Burks said. “And he don’t ever go to court.”

On Tuesday, civil liberties groups filed a federal class-action lawsuit on behalf of Mr. Burks and others in jail in Scott County, a rural area about a 45-minute drive east from Jackson, the state capital. The suit charges that inmates at the jail have been “indefinitely detained” and “indefinitely denied counsel,” in violation of their constitutional rights.