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Copyright 2002
The Detroit News.
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OVERCROWDED JAIL: Public safety at risk
Inmates freed early commit new crimes
Accused Wayne County felons kill, rape and rob
By Norman Sinclair, and Ronald J. Hansen / The Detroit News
DETROIT -- A program to ease overcrowding at the Wayne County Jail has set free tens of thousands of accused felons with little or no supervision -- leading to even more new crimes including murder, rape, carjacking and assault.
The jail, under Wayne Circuit Court orders since 1971 not to exceed its 1,885-bed capacity, has set free more than 60,000 people in the past seven years alone with only their promise to show up for trial. With no bail money to lose or court supervisors looking over their shoulders, nearly half vanished.
Over the years, thousands have used these get-out-of-jail-free passes not only to evade justice, but to return to their lives of crime.
At least 1,085 people freed under the administrative release program in the last three years have been rearrested and charged with committing new crimes, a Detroit News investigation found.
Twelve have been convicted of murders committed after their release, three were convicted of manslaughter and eight more are awaiting trial on murder charges. In addition, the released suspects have committed at least 46 armed robberies, 40 violent assaults, 11 rapes and 14 carjackings. Their other crimes included robberies, burglaries, car theft, illegal weapons and drug dealing.
And those are only crimes law enforcement officials know about because someone was arrested, Wayne County Prosecutor Michael Duggan said.
"You can bet a lot of the others are still out there committing more crimes," Duggan said. "If we could eliminate the jail release program, we could cut crime in this county by 20 to 30 percent."
Jesse Livermore of Northville knows firsthand the danger the program poses.
His brother-in-law, Gregory Flesner, was carjacked, robbed and killed on Detroit's west side, two days before Thanksgiving in 2000. One of the three men involved in killing Flesner was Anthony "Turk" Daniels, a 17-year-old with a history of assaults as a juvenile.
Flesner lost his life for $39 and an old car, one month after Daniels was granted an administrative release from the Wayne County Jail, where he was awaiting trial on a charge of delivery of cocaine. Daniels is now serving a life sentence for murder and carjacking with a gun.
"I understand the problem with the jail, but you are not going to find any fans of the release program here," Livermore said. "There seems to be something terribly upside down in our criminal justice system that allows someone like Daniels to be released for any reason."
Program denounced
Last May, the area's top federal and local law enforcement officials, banding together under a U.S. Justice Department program to reduce violent crime in southeast Michigan, wrote the director of the Michigan Department of Corrections criticizing programs, like jail release, that allow those accused of felonies to roam the streets.
"Literally thousands of felons and repeat offenders who fail to appear in court and other fugitives from justice are loose on the streets and not enough is being done to apprehend them and hold them accountable for their misdeeds," the group wrote. "This is unacceptable."
Among the 12 officials who signed the letter were Duggan; FBI chief John Bell; then-U.S. Attorney Alan Gershel; Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Special Agent Michael Morrisey; former Detroit Police Chief Benny Napoleon; and former Wayne Circuit Chief Judge Michael F. Sapala.
With the jail constantly at capacity, officials must take a head count of inmates every midnight and reluctantly release enough people to ensure the jail population doesn't exceed the number of available beds. It is a daily race against the clock that's fraught with risks.
Among the program's most glaring problems:
* When defendants renege on their promise to show up for court, police rarely go looking for them. Those who are apprehended are usually caught when they commit another crime or violate traffic ordinances.
* Of 8,066 people released under the program in the past three years, 3,369, or 42 percent, failed to appear for their court dates. Some 1,078 remain unaccounted for, and law enforcement officials readily admit they have no idea where they are or what they are doing.
* By not requiring those released to post bail, law enforcement officials have lost one of their most powerful incentives for ensuring that accused criminals show up for court. While nearly half of those let go under the jail release program fail to make court dates and become fugitives, fewer than 9 percent of criminals released on bail skip out on their bonds, according to court records.
* With an average of 25,000 people booked into the jail each year, jail officials often make decisions about whom to release before they can fully verify the identities and criminal backgrounds of inmates. This has led to the release of dangerous inmates who gave fictitious names and addresses to police to hide their criminal past. Jail administrators say this practice is so pervasive that they can be sure of the true identity of only about 60 percent of inmates at any given time.
* So porous is the release process that some criminals arrested for crimes committed while out on release are often let go again without supervision. At least 699 suspected felons have been arrested and released twice. Ninety-one were freed under the program three different times without going to trial on their original charges.
* Unlike their counterparts in Macomb and Oakland, Wayne County judges and prosecutors have no say in who gets released from jail. That decision is left to jail officials, who say they can consider only prior felony convictions for violent crimes, the seriousness of the charge the inmates face, their history of skipping court and the probability of defendants getting probation if convicted in deciding which inmates they release.
There are also cases of people released after they were charged with non-violent crimes who have gone on to commit violent crimes while they are out of jail.
Jay Christopher Martin, 37, was released from the jail July 23, 1999, after stealing a bicycle. Martin, who had a prior conviction for entering a building without permission, skipped court for two months. On Oct. 16, 1999, he assaulted a man at a KFC restaurant in Harper Woods. He received a one-year jail sentence and three years probation for both offenses.
Director of Jails Darryl Fordham says he wants to see the release program terminated.
"At any one time, we have around 400 inmates who are eligible under the criteria for release, but we choose not to do so," Fordham said. But he must release some accused felons from the jail because he cannot ignore a court order prohibiting overcrowding. Violating the order would result in contempt of court charges against Fordham and the county.
Pressure from local, state and federal law enforcement officials has forced county officials to devise programs to reduce the number of unsupervised releases in recent years. Increasingly, jail officials have placed those released without bail into drug rehabilitation, halfway shelters or programs that require them to report in periodically.
Those efforts, spearheaded by the county's Department of Community Justice, have cut the numbers of inmates released to the street without any supervision from 1,199 in 1999 to 736 last year. The majority of inmates at the jail are now released to supervisory programs, court records show.
The jail's population is about 80 percent African American. A review of court records by The News found two of those on jail release arrested for violent crimes from 1999 to 2001 were white.
Released twice
Despite efforts to limit unsupervised releases, little is done to round up those who remain at large, and dangerous criminals continue to slip through the system.
William Franz Koss, 33, of Taylor had escaped from a halfway facility where he was sent on his first release last fall following his arrest for eluding police. He was rearrested on weapons and drug charges and was again released to the halfway house.
In between the first release on Sept. 5 and the second release, on Oct. 29, Koss allegedly killed William G. Cunningham, 49, in the victim's Romulus home. Cunningham's head was smashed with a rock, he was stabbed twice with a steak knife and his throat was cut with a butcher knife, police said.
Cunningham had been missing since Oct. 19, and his body was discovered by police on Oct. 31.
Koss told police he met Cunningham in a gay bar in Detroit on Oct. 19, went home with him and "lost it" when he woke up naked with Cunningham.
Under the jail's guidelines for release, neither of Koss' prior convictions -- burglary and larceny from a person, for which he served prison time; and fleeing a police officer, for which he spent a year in jail -- would have disqualified him from the release program.
Neither did his second arrest for carrying a concealed weapon.
"In some jurisdictions in this country, carrying a concealed weapon is considered an assaultive offense, on the assumption that whoever is carrying a weapon is on the way to, or on the way from, a more serious crime," said Lt. Rodney Pitts, one of two officers who make recommendations on releases to the jail administrator.
"We do not make that assumption," said Pitts, a 27-year veteran of the Wayne County Sheriff's Department. "If we did, we literally could not control the jail population."
Koss is awaiting trial on murder charges.
Suspects lie to get out
Under the constant pressure of making room for new inmates who enter the system at the rate of nearly 100 a day, jail officials admit that suspects who lie about their identity and criminal past are sometimes released before anyone finds out who they really are or the danger they pose.
That was the case with Lamont Smith, 22.
Smith, who had a well-documented history of violence, was booked into the county jail Jan. 29, 2001, for carrying a concealed handgun. At the time of his arrest, he gave police the alias Michael Dudley with a false address and was released the next day before jail administrators discovered his true identity.
A $1-million fingerprinting and photo identification system, purchased by Detroit police nearly four years ago, should have immediately identified Smith. But the system has never worked because police haven't trained enough technicians to run it.
Jail administrators, who assumed Smith was Michael Dudley, didn't know of his violent past, both as a juvenile and an adult. Smith had a felony conviction for assault, had violated both juvenile and adult probation sentences and was wanted for a probation violation.
His adult offenses would have made him ineligible for release. But the speed with which Smith passed through the system -- less than 24 hours -- didn't give authorities the chance to properly check him out.
When Smith failed to show up for court, a warrant for his arrest was issued in the name of Michael Dudley. But like in so many other cases, finding a fugitive wasn't a priority for police who face a crush of new crime reports each day.
Nine weeks after his release, Smith ambushed Detroit Police Officer Neil Wells, shooting and killing the officer through a door with an AK-47 as Wells approached a suspected dope house April 4, 2001. He is now serving a sentence of 62 to 92 years.
Jail officials say cases like Smith's don't prove negligence on their part.
"If they have a completely different name and Social Security number, in all likelihood we won't catch it," Pitts said.
In the case of Dontell Martin, 18, his several false identities were not discovered until he was in court after having been arrested and released twice from the jail.
In October 2000, Martin used the alias Martin Dontell when he was charged with receiving more than $20,000 in stolen property and fleeing police. He was given an administrative release from the jail on Nov. 1, but failed to appear in court two days later.
A warrant was issued for his arrest under the name Martin Dontell. He disappeared for six months until he was re-arrested and gave another false name, Dione Jackson. On May 13, 2001, he was granted a second release.
This time, he showed up in court on the stolen property charge and pleaded guilty. At the time he entered the plea, law enforcement officials still hadn't caught any of his lies.
It was his lawyer who discovered his real identity at sentencing and finally told the judge Martin's real name.
When Martin entered his plea, the judge did not know that he had twice violated administrative releases from the jail. Because information on whether a defendant is on such a release is not always included in court files, judges often do not know whether those appearing before them were let out under the program or were free on bond.
The judge, whose file didn't show that Martin was on jail release, assumed Martin was on bond and set a sentencing date for the next month and allowed him to leave.
On June 17, eleven days after his guilty plea and 44 days before he was to be sentenced, Martin got into an argument with Robert Moore during a dice game. Witnesses told police Martin left and returned with a handgun.
He allegedly shot Moore, 24, in the forehead. Moore died two days later in St. John Hospital. Martin is facing murder and felony firearm charges in Wayne Circuit Court.
Early release, then murder
Although jail officials say a history of disobeying court orders or not showing for court dates would disqualify an inmate for release, that rule didn't appear to apply to Anthony Daniels, the teen-ager involved in the murder of Gregory Flesner.
Before his release in October 2000, Daniels had failed to show up in court for a Sept. 15 final trial conference on the drug charge. He was re-arrested Oct. 19 and pleaded guilty to the drug charge. At his arraignment, the judge set sentencing for Oct. 31.
Daniels never showed up for sentencing, however, and a fugitive warrant was issued for him. Police did not go looking for him, and he was not caught until he and his accomplices were stopped driving Flesner's car after they killed him two days before Thanksgiving 2000.
"For 39 bucks and a car nobody would want," said Jess Livermore, Flesner's brother-in-law. "With the number of drug-related murders, it doesn't make any sense to me to let people involved with drugs out of the jail. They are probably more lethal than others they don't let out."
You can reach Norman Sinclair at (313) 222-2034 or nsinclair@detnews.com. You can reach Ronald J. Hansen at (313) 222-2019 or rhansen@detnews.com.
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