Marcus Taylor has been incarcerated for 10 years, serving a sentence that should have ended five years ago.

In 2015, a judge sentenced the husband and father to 15 years in prison for conspiring to sell an opioid combination pain-relief medication – a schedule III controlled substance. But he spent eight years in jail before anyone realized the maximum sentence for his crime by law was five years. In May, the Mississippi Court of Appeals recognized that Taylor was serving a sentence 10 years longer than the legal maximum, but refused to order his release despite making note of the mistake, arguing that the issue was raised too late.

Taylor, now 43, was indicted in 2014 on two counts of conspiracy to sell controlled substances, and one count of business burglary for breaking and entering a drugstore to steal them. In February 2015, he took what he thought was an advantageous deal: he pleaded guilty to the first count, and the two others were dismissed. But the plea petition was riddled with mistakes. It erroneously said the maximum sentence for conspiracy to sell schedule III controlled substances was 20 years – not five years. And no one in the court, including his lawyer, realized his sentence was 10 years longer than the legal maximum.

It’s only after he challenged his sentence in 2023, demanding eligibility for parole, that the problem surfaced. The Choctaw County Circuit Court denied Taylor’s motion for post-conviction relief, because he filed it past the three-year deadline of his conviction.