Carson Sands spent nearly a year locked inside a county jail near Jackson, Mississippi, without ever facing a formal indictment, a grand jury hearing, or a trial. Arrested on Halloween night in 2025 following an alleged gas station robbery, the 31-year-old North Carolina native appeared before a judge on November 3 of that year, where a $300,000 secured bond was levied against him. He has not stepped inside a courtroom since.
According to an analysis published by The Marshall Project, Sands’ indefinite detention is far from an isolated administrative glitch. As of June 30, Sands was one of 131 individuals held in the county facility for more than six months without an indictment, a group that included 56 people who had languished behind bars for over a year. While jurisdictions across the country impose strict statutory deadlines requiring prosecutors to secure charges—such as 40 days in Florida or 60 days in Louisiana—Mississippi remains one of only six states with no legal time limits whatsoever for pre-trial incarceration before an indictment, as detailed in a 2023 law review analysis.
Inside the Legal Limbo of Hinds County
The mechanics of Sands’ confinement trace back to an October 31 arrest near LeFleur’s Bluff State Park. Police reports state that after a dispute over using an EBT card to purchase alcohol, Sands displayed a can of bear spray and a knife before leaving a convenience store with a water, an energy drink, and a Cayman Jack beverage. Apprehended shortly after in nearby woods, he was booked into custody and assigned a $300,000 bond. For a defendant unable to afford the $30,000 cash payment typically required by a bondsman, that financial threshold effectively guaranteed continuous confinement.
In other states, individuals detained for months without formal charges can petition a judge for a bond reduction or unconditional release after a set period, such as 90 days under Texas rules. In Mississippi, however, the lack of statutory caps leaves indigent defendants trapped in a system stretching multiple municipal offices past their operational limits. The local legal apparatus combines a decrepit jail under federal receivership, a public defender's office burdened by severe caseloads, and a district attorney's office struggling with leadership turmoil following the resignation of former prosecutor Jody Owens as part of a plea deal in a federal corruption case.
“It’s as if he doesn’t exist,” said Vicki Sands, his mother, in an interview with The Marshall Project. Struggling to track basic facts about her son’s case from her home in North Carolina, she noted that her attempts to send reading materials were frequently blocked by jail messaging systems, leaving her son isolated in an environment she described as crushing and traumatizing.
Single Judge Creates Operational Chokepoint in County Court
During proceedings observed this year in the county court, unindicted defendants routinely appeared before Judge Johnnie McDaniels to address lingering delays, missing case files, and stalled grand jury presentations. The county court functions as a primary venue for attorneys arguing motions prior to indictment, creating a severe operational chokepoint given that a single judge presides over the docket.
In April, court officials called the case of LaShanti Esco, who had been arrested the previous August on armed carjacking and armed robbery charges with a $1 million bond. In another instance, attorney representations for Jeremy Jordan—arrested in August 2025 on drug possession charges and held for 237 days without an indictment—revealed that prosecutors were still awaiting results from the state crime lab.
“We know the issues with the state crime lab,” Judge McDaniels said during the hearing, questioning why years had passed without resolved testing. Later in the docket, assistant district attorney Wendy Wilson White acknowledged regarding an unindicted murder case that the district attorney’s office was not yet in possession of the complete investigative file from law enforcement.
“A case is not solved just because an arrest is made,” Judge McDaniels observed from the bench. “When I’m being told more than a year later that you don’t know what stage a case is at, that should be troubling to us all.”
The Stakes of Indefinite Detention
Legal experts and local officials have increasingly scrutinized the constitutional implications of holding unindicted defendants for extended periods. Brad McCullouch, a Hinds County assistant district attorney appointed as interim officeholder in July by the state’s governor, criticized the practice of indefinite pre-trial detention.
“This is not what we do as a country,” McCullouch said. “It’s not based on constitutional principles.”
McCullouch pointed to ongoing efforts to allocate additional resources toward grand jury processing and secure releases where appropriate. Because he does not reside in Hinds County, however, McCullouch is ineligible to run in the special election scheduled for next Tuesday, leaving the future direction of the office to one of five candidates seeking to replace him.
As stalled cases age, evidence can degrade or disappear entirely, complicating both prosecution and defense efforts while defendants with limited financial means remain incarcerated indefinitely.
