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Steve Perez / The Detroit News William De'Andre Bonner, right, talks to his lawyer. Despite more than a decade of violent crime, he was released and almost immediately killed a man.

OVERCROWDED JAIL: Cases reveal program's flaws
Out of jail early, inmate resumes violent ways
Case of criminal with multiple convictions highlights flaws in early release system

By Ronald J. Hansen, and Norman Sinclair / The Detroit News

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   DETROIT -- William De'Andre Bonner was the kind of criminal for whom jails were designed.
   Yet despite more than a decade of violent crime that included a murder charge, assaulting a police officer and car theft, administrators in the Wayne County Jail, desperate for bed space in the crowded facility, released Bonner back to the streets in 1999 with a weapons charge pending against him.
   Bonner immediately skipped court, picked up a drug charge, was released once again and almost immediately killed a man. He's now serving a life sentence at the Mound Correctional Facility in Detroit.
   Bonner's case highlights serious flaws in the Wayne County Jail's administrative release program. Despite a clear propensity for violence and prior felony convictions for drugs and car theft, Bonner still was released without bond to make space for another inmate.
   The formula jail officials must use in determining who gets released ignores prior arrests and focuses on convictions for assaultive crimes. And jail officials admit they rarely know the details of past convictions or the current charge under which inmates are booked into the jail.
   So jail officials knew little of Bonner's history of crime.
   Bonner was granted an administrative release after police caught him on Jan. 20, 1999, breaking into a house on Omaha Street in Detroit with a .357-caliber revolver.
   Five days later, he skipped his preliminary court appearance.
   While out on jail release, Bonner's probation officer from an earlier crime noted that he failed to report to her five times between January and March 1999. A bench warrant was issued for Bonner's arrest, but he remained free until Inkster police caught him with cocaine three months later.
   Court records show that from the time he turned 20, Bonner never went a year without prison, probation or police problems. He stole a car in Washtenaw County in September 1987 and spent 10 months behind bars.
   On May 15, 1991, Bonner broke the nose of Tereasa Vasquez, an off-duty Wayne County Sheriff's Department deputy, and stole $15 and cigarettes from her female friend, witnesses said. Bonner ran away, abandoning a stolen car, they added. Charges of unarmed robbery and resisting arrest were dropped in August when Vasquez didn't show in court. She said Detroit police never told her Bonner had a court hearing.
   Bonner spent nine months in jail for stealing the car and violating his probation. On Oct. 30, 1992, he was charged with the Sept. 2 murder of a 48-year-old Detroit man.
   A jury acquitted him after the key witness recanted her testimony. Prosecutors said she did so because her contact with Bonner and his co-defendant caused her to "fear for the safety of herself and her family."
   Bonner's freedom didn't last long.
   A month after his acquittal, police caught him stealing a car again on Aug. 8, 1993. That crime kept him behind bars until February 1998.
   Four months after his release, police charged Bonner with driving a stolen Ford Explorer. The case was first delayed because of a police officer's vacation, then dropped a week later because a witness failed to show in court.
   In October 1998, Bonner accosted a police officer. A month later, he was put on probation for two years.
   Following his arrest by Inkster police in May 1999 for cocaine, Bonner received a nine-month jail sentence. He served 144 days before the jail released him, without realizing the concealed weapons case from January had never been resolved.
   Back on the streets on Nov. 21, 1999, Bonner killed a man outside a crack house in Detroit. In February, a jury convicted him of that murder, and he was sentenced last month to life in prison.