Heather Ellis Could Face Prison Time After Cutting the Line at Walmart

Nov. 18, 2009— -- The prospect of spending 15 years in jail was probably the last thing on a Missouri woman's mind nearly three years ago when she switched checkout lines at a Walmart store.

But jail's a possibility for Heather Ellis, 24, who goes on trial today for charges stemming from a dispute at the Kennett, Mo., Walmart.

Ellis faces charges of disturbing the peace, trespassing, resisting arrest and assaulting police officers after she became "belligerent" when she was asked to leave the store Jan. 6, 2007, authorities say.

The schoolteacher could face 15 years in prison, if convicted.

But Ellis, who is black, has said that the charges are racially motivated, and that she has been unfairly targeted, which authorities deny.

In a letter she sent to the Missouri chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People after the incident, Ellis said that she was trying to join her cousin in his checkout line at the time of the dispute, because his was moving faster than the one in which she was standing, according to The Associated Press.

Ellis wrote that she was "pushed by a white customer, hassled by store employees, called racial slurs and physically mistreated by Kennett police officers," according to the AP.

"What a shame the system can destroy a young person's future like this because of bad cops," Ellis wrote.

Repeated calls by ABC News to the state NAACP office were not returned Tuesday.

Although Ellis declined to speak with ABC News before today's trial, her father, the Rev. Nathaniel Ellis, called the trial a "big, racial discrimination cover-up."

Ellis said his daughter was at the store with her mother and cousin when a "Caucasian lady pushed her and accused her of butting into line.

"In a nutshell, [the altercation] was due to the incompetence of the cashier," Ellis said Monday, explaining that his daughter was trying to add six items to the conveyer belt on which her cousin's items rested.

But members of the Kennett Police Department who responded to the scene tell a very different story, and accused Ellis of "yelling and cursing" and hurling "verbal assaults" toward them, according to the probable cause affidavit filed in Dunklin County Circuit Court and obtained by ABC News.