Colo. suspect Evan Spencer Ebel slipped ankle bracelet

 

 

Colo. suspect Evan Spencer Ebel  slipped ankle bracelet

http://news.yahoo.com/apnewsbreak-colo-suspect-slipped-ankle-bracelet-191325585.html

 

By NICHOLAS RICCARDI | Associated Press - 1 hr 4 mins ago

 

DENVER (AP) - Parole officials did not realize that a white supremacist gang

member had slipped his ankle bracelet and fled custody until five days after

the system first flagged him as being delinquent, according to records

released Tuesday.

 

They sent a warrant out for his arrest the next day, one day before he was

killed in a shootout with Texas authorities and a day after police now say

they think he was involved in the slaying of Colorado prisons chief Tom

Clements.

 

"We have to do better in the future," said Tim Hand, director of the

Department of Correction's parole division.

 

Evan Spencer Ebel had been a model parolee until his electronic monitoring

bracelet stopped working March 14. Before that, he called in daily, even

once calling in alarm because no one had requested his weekly urinalysis

test to show he hadn't been using drugs.

 

His father provided him housing and a job at his law firm, but on the

afternoon of March 14, a "tamper alert" automatically went to a prison

computer system showing the bracelet had stopped working.

 

Two days later, corrections officials called Ebel and told him to come in to

repair the bracelet. He did not show up.

 

It was not until March 18 that parole officers spoke to Ebel's father, who

told them he feared his son had fled and gave them permission to search his

apartment. The next day, two parole officers saw Ebel had taken a large

amount of clothing and apparently fled.

 

That night, Clements was shot and killed as he answered the front door at

his house. The next morning, parole officers obtained a warrant for Ebel's

arrest for parole violations and sent it to Colorado State Patrol. They had

no indication he was involved in the Clements' killing until the shootout

March 21.

 

Ebel is also suspected of killing a Denver pizza delivery man and father of

three on March 17.

 

It's the latest break that Ebel seems to have caught as he spent nearly a

decade in Colorado's criminal justice system. Court officials on Monday

vowed to release procedures that led to a clerical error that allowed Ebel

to leave prison four years early.

 

Judicial officials acknowledged Monday that Ebel's previous felony

conviction was inaccurately recorded and his release in January was an

error.

 

In 2008, Ebel pleaded guilty in rural Fremont County to assaulting a prison

officer. In the plea deal, Ebel was to be sentenced to up to four additional

years in prison, to be served after he completed the eight-year sentence

that put him behind bars in 2005, according to a statement from Colorado's

11th Judicial District.

 

However, the judge didn't say the sentence was meant to be "consecutive," or

in addition to, Ebel's current one. So the court clerk recorded it as one to

be served "concurrently," or at the same time. That's the information that

went to the state prisons, the statement said.

 

So on Jan. 28, prisons officials saw that Ebel had finished his

court-ordered sentence and released him. They said they had no way of

knowing the plea deal was intended to keep Ebel behind bars for years

longer.

 

Two months later, Ebel was dead after a shootout with authorities in Texas.

The gun he used in the March 21 gunbattle was the same one used to shoot and

kill prisons chief Tom Clements two days earlier.

 

Police believe Ebel also was involved in the death of Nathan Leon, who was

killed March 17 after heading out to deliver a pizza.

 

"The Colorado Department of Corrections values its long-standing partnership

with the 11th Judicial District and the district attorney's office to

maintain order at the prisons in Canon City," Gov. John Hickenlooper's

spokeswoman Megan Castle said in a statement.

 

"We commend both the 11th Judicial District and the DOC for reviewing their

own internal processes and procedures."

 

Charles Barton, chief judge of the 11th Judicial District, and court

administrator Walter Blair, said in a statement that the court regrets the

oversight "and extends condolences to the families of Mr. Nathan Leon and

Mr. Tom Clements."

 

Leon's widow said the apology wasn't going to cut it.

 

"How do I tell my 4-year-olds, 'Daddy was murdered because of a clerical

error,'" Katherine Leon told KUSA-TV in Denver.

 

Leon's father-in-law told AP he had no immediate comment.

 

The attack that led to the plea deal took place in 2006. According to prison

and court records, Ebel slipped out of his handcuffs while being transferred

from a cell and punched a prison officer in the face. He bloodied the

officer's nose and finger, and threatened to kill the officer's family.

 

 

"If Mr. Ebel was prosecuted for an assault on an officer, it had to be

pretty severe, because in the course of day-to-day work, correctional

officers are regularly assaulted or threatened," said Pueblo County

Commissioner Buffie McFadyen, who is executive director of the correctional

officer group Corrections U.S.A.

 

"It sounds like a horrific oversight," she said of the mistake that led to

Ebel's release this year. "It's a tragic clerical error."

 

How often such errors happen is unknown. Examining court documents for

typographical and such errors would be a huge undertaking. The only thing

that comes close is case management efforts that ask questions such as, "can

we find the file," said Bill Raftery, an analyst at the Williamsburg,

Va.-based National Center for State Courts.

 

Ebel spent much of his time behind bars in solitary confinement and had a

long record of disciplinary violations. Records show he joined a white

supremacist prison gang.

 

Ebel's early release was just the latest twist in a case full of painful

ironies. His father is friends with Hickenlooper and had testified before

the Colorado Legislature about the damage solitary confinement did to his

son. Clements was worried about that very issue.

 

Hickenlooper raised the case with Clements when the governor hired him to

come to Colorado in 2011. The Democratic governor said he never mentioned

Ebel's name and the inmate received no special treatment.

 

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