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It’s easy to understand why. In March, the sheriff and two of his deputies in this southeast Missouri community were arrested and charged with “criminal street gang activity,� in an alleged plot to help a friend in a custody dispute.

Attorney General Andrew Bailey is now trying to remove the sheriff, Jeff Burkett, from office — something the local prosecutor also tried to do shortly after Burkett’s election.

Burkett and his deputies have pleaded not guilty. Their attorneys allege others in the judicial system are out to get them. It’s quite a mess.

Three months before those men were arrested, Breen found herself in the jail they used to run. The 63-year-old got in a spat with a man with whom she was living in a trailer. She was drinking. There was some pushing and shoving. A door was broken. The sheriff’s office was called.

According to the police report, she was put in the Iron County Jail for “12 hour safe keeping� because of her “intoxicated state.� In other words, she wasn’t arrested. She wasn’t charged with a crime.

To call the Iron County facility a “jailâ€� is a stretch. It’s more like a “d³Ü²Ô²µ±ð´Ç²Ô,â€� Breen says.

It’s been that way for a long time, with limestone walls that date to the 1800s, little sunlight, leaks, black mold and bat guano. It’s a Civil War-era facility that is hot in the summer, cold in the winter and is finally due an infusion of money from the budget that the Missouri Legislature passed this year.

“I just stood in the corner for hours and hours,� Breen remembers. “There was nowhere to sit.�

After 12 hours, after she had sobered up, Breen was still in jail. In fact, she was there for days. That’s because, according to the police report, a deputy and a jailer decided to go through her purse “looking for a set of car keys.� The report doesn’t say why they were looking for the keys, or whether they asked Breen’s permission to dig through her purse. But it alleges they found a container with “methamphetamine� in it.

Breen says there’s no way that’s true. She owns up to her drinking. She has a medical marijuana card. “I don’t do drugs,� she says.

Breen was charged with felony drug possession. She spent almost two weeks in the dungeon before her public defender could get the judge to let her out on a personal recognizance bond. The public defender, Ayla Chadbourne, also filed a motion to suppress the evidence, which she argues was obtained without due process in an “unlawful� search.

“Defendant did not consent to the search or seizure and any alleged consent was not voluntary and understandingly and knowingly given,� the motion reads. “The items seized were not in plain view and the seizing officers were not at a place the officers had a legal right to be.�

The case highlights a constant problem in our nation’s legal system, in which people with money can get different results than people of lesser means. Wealthy people, or those who know somebody in the system, don’t often end up in jail in these situations. Once you’re in jail, bad things can happen.

Breen is one of those people of lesser means. She’s bounced around from state to state — Nebraska, Colorado, California, Missouri. She had been working as a fry cook in Caledonia.

By the time she got out of jail, she had no place to live and no job. Her daughter in Texas sent her a train ticket. That’s where Breen was when we spoke, and that’s what her current problem is, even in a case that appears to be a slam-dunk loser.

In Iron County, and many rural counties in Missouri, it’s common practice for a judge to require weekly drug testing for defendants on pre-trial release, often through a private, for-profit probation company. In this case, Breen was told to come to the Iron County Jail every Monday to be drug tested.

By the time the first Monday came, she was in Texas. Now there’s a warrant out for her arrest.

Her public defender has told her that they might be able to get the charges dismissed but Breen first has to come back to Iron County.

“Who in the hell wants to be 63 years old and have a warrant out for your arrest in another state?� Breen says. “But I had to run, man. I had no other choice. I had nowhere to go.�

The prosecutor, of course, could drop the charges. The judge could rule on the motion to suppress and wipe the case away. But none of that probably happens if Breen doesn’t come back to Iron County and turn herself in — where she believes she will end up in the dungeon again, for however long it takes for justice to occur in a place that sometimes lacks it.

“I’m not a nefarious person,� Breen says. “I know I probably have to come back at some point, but I just don’t trust anybody in that county. This has ruined my life. It’s been a nightmare that won’t end.�