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“It was my first time in jail,� she told me.

Stuehmeyer is 64. She has no record. She’s disabled and lives on a monthly $892 disability check from the federal government.

Her run-in with the law started on a sunny May afternoon two years ago. She took her dog, a 7-year-old pitbull mix named Saint, for a walk in a park by the Arcadia Valley Pool in Ironton, about two hours southwest of St. Louis.

Stouts Creek runs through the park, and Saint likes to play in the water. On this day, the pool was closed. Stuehmeyer said she didn’t see anybody around, so she let Saint off the leash so she could splash in the water. The local elementary school shares a border with the park and lets the kids play outside there. One of them had some sort of interaction with Saint.

The boy looked like he had a scratch on his back, Stuehmeyer remembers. She didn’t think much of it and went home with Saint. Later that day, an Ironton police officer served her a summons. She was charged with an ordinance violation of having an “animal at large.�

She showed up at court on the given day and pleaded guilty. Associate Circuit Court Judge Scott Schrum set sentencing for three months later. This is where things took a turn for the worse.

There is no evidence in the court record that there was an actual dog bite, and Stuehmeyer was not charged with such a crime. But in a hearing in Schrum’s chambers, the judge told her that she’d owe about $2,700 in restitution to the boy’s mother for medical bills and lost time off work, as well as fines and fees.

Stuehmeyer asked to see the documentation. The judge wouldn’t let her, she says. So he sentenced her to three days in jail but suspended those days — if she paid the $2,700, plus other fines and fees, within nine months.

Stuehmeyer knew she’d never be able to pay off that debt on her income. But she did what she could, sending $5 and $10 money orders now and then. Last September, with little of the debt paid off, municipal prosecutor Daniel Fall moved to revoke her probation. Hauled before Schrum, the senior citizen tried to explain her inability to pay.

“He said he put me in jail because I told him I wasn’t going to pay the fine,� she told me. “But he didn’t let me finish. I was going to explain that I didn’t have the money to pay the fine because I live on a fixed income of $892 a month and I couldn’t afford it. He just slapped the cuffs on me and put me in jail.�

Stuehmeyer, like in small courts like the one in Ironton, was headed to debtors’ prison. She wasn’t locked up because she was a dangerous criminal, but because she couldn’t afford the costs thrust upon her by a court. Like many others who end up in her position, she had no idea that the court had violated her civil rights.

She found that out a couple of months later, when she went to see Kenneth Seufert, an attorney in Farmington. Stuehmeyer’s friends and family put together some money so she could file for bankruptcy, in part because the mother of the alleged dog bite victim filed a civil lawsuit against her. When Seufert saw what had happened to Stuehmeyer, he fired off an email to the judge.

“I can find nothing in the docket sheet that Ms. Stuehmeyer was ever advised of her right to counsel,� Seufert wrote. She was never “advised that if she was a poor person, an attorney would be appointed for her … No indigency hearing ever occurred.�

Further, Seufert wrote, there’s nothing in the Ironton “animal at large� ordinance that allows the city to charge a defendant for restitution. And threatening Stuehmeyer with jail time, and then sending her to jail, without letting her consult an attorney are violations of her civil rights.

One of the cases cited by Seufert in his letter to the judge is the famous Bearden vs. Georgia case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court said it was a violation of the 14th Amendment to send a person to jail because they can’t afford court costs. That case turned 40 years old this year, and yet it is still violated by judges who don’t want to take the time to assess a defendant’s indigency.

“I didn’t have any idea that I had those rights,� Stuehmeyer says.

It’s not clear if Schrum did. He didn’t return phone calls seeking comment. Earlier this month, Stuehmeyer filed a motion, prepared by Seufert for free, asking for an indigency hearing. Schrum has yet to rule on it.

Like the entire legal system in Iron County — where the sheriff and two of his deputies have been jailed in an alleged criminal conspiracy — her case seems to be in limbo.

Stuehmeyer has been back to the jail several times since her incarceration, in the role of a volunteer. Her three days behind bars taught her that jail food is terrible, so she has been taking fruit to the inmates when she can afford it.

She hopes she doesn’t end up on the other side of the bars anytime soon. If so, at least she now has a lawyer on her side.

“It is unfortunate that the court has already imposed the jail sentence,� Seufert wrote the judge. “I hope not to become involved in this matter further.�

But he added that his “sense of justice will require me� to appeal the case if Stuehmeyer returns to jail.