LEWISTON — Susette Jenkins sat in the jail cell for hours. She’d have to spend the next 12 days behind bars, she’d been told. That meant she wouldn’t be able to work for two weeks. Or get paid. It meant she wouldn’t be there for her family and, especially, her grandchild’s first Christmas.

She knew it was a mistake. She’d told officials repeatedly as they arrested and handcuffed her. As they made her strip and searched her. As they made her shower and put on a jail uniform.

Police started knocking on her door at 5:30 that morning. About three hours later, a female corrections worker at Androscoggin County Jail handed her a plastic bag with her clothes. “‘Susette, you’re out of here,'” the corrections officer said.

That’s when Jenkins started crying.

It had been a mistake — apparently a clerical error. Jenkins, 42, had been right after all.

Two days later, her name appeared in the newspaper: Arrested on a warrant. She decided she needed to set the record straight.

Yes, she’d been arrested in October 2008 for drunken driving, her second offense. She’d opted for an alternative sentencing program that combined a weeklong jail sentence with a fine and community service.

After postponing it once, she had served her sentence in October. She was paid up (after a warrant was issued because she was late.)

Somehow, jail staff hadn’t fully processed that information. Based on the jail’s records that she hadn’t done her time, the 8th District Court in Lewiston issued a warrant for her arrest, a court clerk said.

“There’s no question that there was an error that occurred,” Androscoggin County Sheriff Guy Desjardins said Monday. He launched an internal investigation the same day to determine why and how the bogus warrant could have been issued.

“‘How could this be?’ is the same question I have,” Desjardins said.

The jail booking staff eventually discovered that the warrant shouldn’t have been issued, Desjardins said. But that happened hours after Jenkins had sat in a holding cell, having been put in a jail suit and handed a sheet and blanket and a mug with a toothbrush.

As Jenkins sat in the booking area awaiting her shower, a corrections worker told her: “I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but you’re serving 12 days in here.” He told her she hadn’t shown up for her mandated jail time two months earlier.

“I already served my sentence,” she said. By luck, another corrections worker, who was present when she served her time, suddenly appeared. He confirmed her story. During her shower, the staff figured out that she should be released. That same worker offered her a ride home later. She declined.

Standing outside the jail in freezing temperatures, her hair still dripping wet from the shower, Jenkins waited for her fiance, Keith Del Santo Jr. to give her a ride home.

“Nobody said, ‘I’m sorry.’ There were no apologies,” she said.

She would have to explain to her 15-year-old daughter why she wasn’t at home that morning on a school day and instead, was handcuffed and driven off in a police cruiser. She’d have to explain to her bosses and colleagues at her two jobs why her name was in the newspaper.

“A mistake like this really affects a lot of people,” she said.

Recounting later the nearly lost Christmas, the frustration and powerlessness she felt, Jenkins broke down again.

“I made mistakes in the past,” she said. “I was bad. I drank and drove.” She answered for those mistakes, she said. And moved on. She wants to move on again.

The next day, she talked to a sheriff’s deputy about the incident. “How do you know this isn’t ever going to happen to someone else?” she said she asked the deputy.

Desjardins said he shares her concern.

“I don’t want it to happen again. That’s why we have to find out what went wrong,” he said. “If it’s an error on our part, we need to have people held accountable.”

Susette Jenkins speaks about being arrested on December 16 at 5:30 a.m. for a bogus warrant. After a corrections worker arrived for first shift and confirmed her story, they released her because of an apparent clerical error.