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You remember Mayberry, the fictional North Carolina town that was the setting for two television shows: Sheriff Andy Griffith, Deputy Barney Fife, Aunt Bee, and, of course, Otis, the town drunk.

Ah, Otis. After a bender, the avuncular fella in the rumpled suit would often let himself into the jail, and sleep it off, before walking out sober the next day.

Amid the current state of American jurisprudence, where mass incarceration rules the day, and defendants facing minor criminal charges — pot possession, shoplifting and the like — often end up behind bars for weeks or months because they can’t afford bail, the image of Otis having his own key to the jail seems quaint.

But the concept is actually rooted in the law.

That’s what Matthew Mueller told the seven black-robed judges of the Missouri Supreme Court on Tuesday. Mueller, the senior bond litigation counsel for the Missouri State Public Defenders’ Office, didn’t actually mention Otis, or Mayberry, but he might as well have:

“The defendant must have the keys to the jailhouse door,� Mueller said.

He was in court asking the judges to stop another judge, Jason Kanoy, from putting Mueller’s client in jeopardy of further jail time over his failure to pay a $2,000 bill from his previous time in jail. Apollo L. Brown pleaded guiltnor violation of an order of protection in 2013. He did 30 days in jail, and after he got out, Kanoy, an associate circuit judge in Caldwell County, started calling Brown before the court once a month to either make a payment or face more time in jail.

In 2015, Brown missed a hearing and Kanoy found him guilty of criminal contempt of court. He sent him to jail for two days. Mueller argued that if Kanoy did that again it would violate Brown’s constitutional right to avoid , being punished for the same crime twice.

In a case of civil contempt — such as when a judge jails a reporter for not revealing a source, or an attorney for failing to follow an order — the law allows a defendant a “purge� — or a way to get out of jail.

That was the nature of Mueller’s “jailhouse door� phrase. He borrowed it from a U.S. Supreme Court case applying the concept of double jeopardy to criminal contempt charges.

But the quote, intended or not, could describe what’s wrong with the entire debtors prison scheme that has been the subject of Mueller’s ongoing battle with rural courts.

Here, Brown is like so many others. He got arrested on a misdemeanor and his bail was set at $1,000, cash only. Unable to afford that, he sat in jail for 28 days. He pleaded guilty and received a sentence of time served. Then he got a bill for his time in jail, almost $2,000. Finally, Kanoy scheduled him for monthly hearings, and when he failed to pay, or missed a hearing, he went to jail again, and his bill grew higher, still.

O for his time in jail. Aunt Bee even brought him dinner. Truth is, there was a time when Missouri law resembled this humanitarian model. , for instance, Missouri law allowed defendants to bring bedding and food from home to make them more comfortable. The same version of the law discharged all jail debt if defendants were “insolvent.�

That’s no longer the case, though efforts in the Missouri Legislature, and a recent decision by the Missouri Supreme Court, suggest Mueller’s efforts are having an impact.

That was the irony of Tuesday’s case. Last month, in two similar cases — George Richey and John Wright — effectively negated Kanoy’s ability to keep using his courtroom to collect the $2,000 he says Brown owes Caldwell County. The court ruled that jail board bills are not court costs, and thus must be collected civilly, outside of the court system.

With Brown’s jail board bill no longer being an issue, Judge Laura Denvir Stith did the math on the rest of his court costs.

“Is that why we’re here?� she asked. “For $37?�

The question did as much as Mueller’s earlier plea for the key to the jailhouse door to frame the criminalization of poverty that for decades has festered in the Missouri courts.

Yes, that’s why we’re here. Whether it’s $37, or $2,000 or $15,000, too many Missouri judges see themselves as tax collectors rather than purveyors of justice.

Far too often, for people who lack financial means, the jailhouse door is locked behind them, usually before they’ve been convicted of a crime, and the key is simply tossed away.

The question at the center of Apollo L. Brown v. the Honorable Jason Kanoy is this one, Mueller said:

“Can the respondent continue to punish the defendant repeatedly and successively without end?�