Shocker, not.
On December 23, 2015 the Washington State Department of Corrections (DOC) announced they had accidentally released approximately 3,200 inmates early (over a 13-year period) from Washington’s prison system due to a “sentencing computation issue.”
A week later, it was announced that the software fix to correct the error that led to the early release of thousands of offenders was delayed 16 times over the past three years.
DOC Secretary Dan Pacholke
On December 28, it was announced that one of the prisoners released early, Robert Jackson, killed Lindsay Hill in a car accident. The DOC Secretary Dan Pacholke said he apologized to Hill’s family. “Nothing I can say will bring back Ms. Hill. I deeply regret that this happened,” Pacholke said in a written statement.
Governor Inslee had called the news “absolutely gut-wrenching and heart-breaking. Inslee said in a written statement. “We must make sure nothing like this happens again.”
Well guess what? Too little, too late. It already happened again.
Inmate released early, Jeremiah Smith, killed a person while out of jail
Jeremiah Smith, 26, was mistakenly released from a Washington state prison three months early. He has been charged with shooting and killing a teenager when he should have been locked up, officials said Thursday.
The Everett Herald reports that less than two weeks after his early release, he gunned down Ceasar Medina, 17, outside a tattoo parlor in Spokane.
Smith had previously been convicted of robbery, burglary and assault and shouldn’t have been released until Aug. 10. He is now in jail and charged with first-degree murder and robbery in the May 26 killing.
DOC Secretary Dan Pacholke is now in major PR spin control mode. “I’m very concerned about what we’ll uncover as we move forward,” Pacholke said in a conference call with reporters. (I’ll bet they are.)
The attorney general’s office advised the Department of Corrections in 2012 that it wasn’t necessary to manually recalculate prisoners’ sentences after the software error was brought to light, according to documents released by the department late Wednesday. (I love how they keep releasing details slowly. They should just rip the Band-Aid off quickly but have probably been advised by state attorneys to not do so.)
The assistant attorney general assigned to the agency wrote in December 2012 that from a “risk management perspective,” a recalculation, by hand, of hundreds of sentences was “not so urgent” because a software reprogramming fix eventually would take care of the issue, according to the emails released in response to a public records request by The Associated Press.
DCG