Her conviction was vacated when her lawyer pointed out that prosecutors had failed to prove that Ms. Dorsey had taken the T-shirts without permission.

Even then, her case was not over. Mr. Valeska asked a grand jury to re-indict her on a different charge, theft by deception. By that time, Ms. Dorsey had paid the T-shirt bill. Mr. Valeska dropped the new charge, but only after she agreed to pay $350 in court costs.

Arrested on a Drunken Night

The landmarks of Jarvis Bracy’s life are strung along Ross Clark Circle, a necklace of commercial activity and low-wage jobs that rings Dothan. A city brochure, printed in Chinese in an attempt to woo foreign manufacturers, shows botanical gardens, kneeling debutantes and, in honor of the local cash crop, painted peanut sculptures.

But Mr. Bracy’s landscape is more mundane: He works part time for $9.10 an hour at a supermarket and occasionally cuts loose doing elastic-kneed line dances at Applebee’s on karaoke night. Both businesses are on the circle. Other days, he and his wife, Khadijah Ross, take their 1-year-old son, Jakeem, to a playground.

Mr. Bracy has a romantic, country-flavored indomitability, one that possessed him, on first sighting Ms. Ross, to trail her through a Walmart until he had her phone number. On their most recent anniversary, he hid an artificial rose in a bouquet of real ones — a love token that would never wilt.

But his life prospects have been sharply curtailed by one mistake three and a half years ago, when he was 21. The handling of his case shows the pitfalls of being young, black and poor in Wiregrass Country.

Having overindulged on MD 20/20 and Amsterdam malt liquor, Mr. Bracy was riding in a friend’s car when they were stopped by the police. Suspecting underage drinking, the officers asked Mr. Bracy for his name and ran a warrant check. According to the police, Mr. Bracy spelled his last name with an e, B-R-A-C-E-Y, and gave a Social Security number with two incorrect digits, which was traced to an elderly woman. The misinformation would have been a misdemeanor, but Mr. Bracy had warrants for unpaid traffic tickets. Providing false information in order to evade arrest is a felony.