Kiasha Hughes

---

Photo by Kristie Eiland

Story by SPLC and Alabama Appleseed for Alabama's War on Marijuana

Pregnant Kiasha Hughes arrested for marijuana possession while changing clothes  between work shifts, after her boyfriend asked her to hide some baggies.

Full Story:

Kiasha Hughes picked the wrong place to change for work.

Rushing to make it from the laundromat to her shift as a University of Alabama food service worker, she and her boyfriend parked behind a fast-food joint so she could change into a freshly laundered uniform. Responding to a call about suspicious activity, police officers pulled up and searched the car.

Seeing the approaching police vehicle, her boyfriend had asked her to hide a few baggies of marijuana in her clothes. Now they were both going to jail.

Hughes, then 23, was two months pregnant and in the throes of pregnancy-induced nausea. She waited for hours in a vomit-spattered holding area before police photographed, fingerprinted and booked her. By the time she was “dressed in” to jail, dinner had already been served. She spent a miserable few hours trying to rest on a mat in a crowded dorm before bonding out around midnight on Valentine’s Day 2014. By the time the ordeal was over, she was so sick and dehydrated that she had to be given intravenous fluid at a hospital.

Hughes, who says she doesn’t even like marijuana, said it was the first and only time she was ever arrested. But because police judged that the marijuana was for “other than personal use” – a subjective determination based on officers’ suspicion alone – and because they also found paraphernalia in her boyfriend’s car, she was charged with a felony.

She had just cashed her paycheck, and police, using Alabama’s abusive civil asset forfeiture program, took that money from her wallet when they arrested her, claiming in court that it was the proceeds of drug activity. Exhausted and sick from a difficult pregnancy, she was too stressed to challenge the $547 seizure in court – an effort that would in all likelihood have cost her more in attorney’s fees than the money was worth.

And she had bigger things to worry about. Having dreamed her whole life of working in health care, Hughes found herself suddenly ineligible for the positions she interviewed for at area providers. “They don’t hire pending felonies. And then that made me very upset, cause I’m thinking I’m fixing to get the job and they call me back, ‘Well we can’t offer you employment because of your background.’”

Hughes had been studying to be a medical assistant when she got pregnant with her daughter Jameria, now 3, and was seeking a job that would burnish her resume. Instead, she found herself working the overnight shift at a poultry processing plant, deboning chicken for $12 an hour. She’s grateful for the job, which provides insurance and other benefits, but sad and frustrated that her arrest cost her the opportunity to advance her career goals and better provide for her children.

It took two and a half years for Hughes’ case to finally get resolved.

At first, law enforcement tried to get her to share incriminating information about people she knew, but Hughes had nothing to tell. In 2017, she was offered an opportunity to participate in a diversion program that might have resulted in a clean record. But, pregnant with her second child and still working a third-shift job so she could look after her little girl during the day, she realized she would never be able to meet the program’s demands or pay the $1,000 needed to enroll, plus court costs and the costs of drug screenings. (Tuscaloosa does waive diversion fees on a case-by-case basis, but the determination that an individual qualifies is made only after they enter a conditional plea of guilty and register for the program.)

“You have to take classes, you would have to pay for drug testing” and do community service, Hughes said. “And I knew I wasn’t gonna be able to wake up and do that.” Instead, two and a half years after her arrest, she took a deal and pleaded guilty to misdemeanor possession of marijuana. She received a year of probation, and a bill for $1,440 in court costs.

Each month, Hughes pays $40 to a probation officer and $50 toward her court costs – money she can ill afford. The overnight child-care center where her children stay while she works the third-shift is expensive, and she plans to take a second job on weekends. Working multiple jobs will make it even harder for her to return to school and get her derailed medical career back on track.

Even so, asked where she hopes to be in five years, Hughes, now 27, said, “I’ll be graduated and probably working, and working on another degree. Because I don’t want to stop. I want to keep going. I want to progress into a nurse.”