I was in Markarth and was approached to pay a bounty or go to jail. I took jail because I was gonna try and get the achievement to break out. It sent me to Cidhna Mine, which from reading seems to be very glitchy when doing a certain quest. Well I am just trying a standard lockpick escape. I cannot pick the door I walked through when I got put into the mine, and the door that the orc is near requires a key.

All my auto saves are in Cidhna mine now, becuase I have been trying to figure this out, and my last manual save is literally from the day it came out. Is my save messed up? Do I have to start over again?

I have a bit more information, should anyone from Bethesda look on these forums. It seems the gate I should be able to pick my way out of, is not registering properly. The gate blocks the doorway just find, but I just did a double power attack and as the graphic for it inched me a little forward before setting me back, I had the Pick Lock pop up, I am unable to press the A button to activate it tho.

Dude, just pickpocket the guy who has the key.... ezpz and do the associated quest. Takes like 10 minutes tops if you're listening to the dialogue, less if you're not before "SPOILER"+++ the leader guy says "follow me" and you start busting out.

who has the key then? i looked in all the inventories of the guys standing around but only have skooma...conversation topics also don't go further then 'what are you in for' and 'how long have you been here'..

Firstly, apparently Cidhna mine is the ONLY jail you cannot escape from, unless doing the forsworn quest. To obtain the key you must challenge the orc to a brawl for him to let you through to the area where the king of the forsworn is and he has the key to an escape tunnel though. Be warned though, the orc is a very very good brawler. He has a lot of health.
You can either kill the king and take the key from his body and flee, this will complete one side of the quest, or you can talk to him and choose to become his ally and escape with him and join the forsworn, this completes the other side of the quest. Though if you want to kill hi,, you cannot talk to him first or his body glitches out and you are unable to loot him. If you just want to pass your time and leave jail and avoid this glitchy quest, you can just mine and this "does your time". This you can leave.