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Steve Lawrence Wright
Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department accidentally released a murder suspect over the weekend due to a paperwork correction that was overlooked, the Los Angeles Times reports.
Steve Lawrence Wright, 37, the susepct in a 2011 Pasadena gang-related killing, walked free from custody at the Inmate Reception Center on Saturday afternoon due to a mistake that went unnoticed until Sunday night.
Wright had been taken into custody facing a murder charge, when last week he was sentenced to five days in jail for a contempt of court conviction that he obtained while awaiting trial, Sheriff’s Department Cmdr. Keith Swensson explained to the Times.
After Wright was transferred to the Inmate Reception Center from court, the paperwork he had with him had an error; the docket number for his contempt of court case was written in the box where his murder case was meant to be. Thus, the paperwork made it look as if he was to be released on Saturday, instead of being held without bail pending trial, Swensson added.
The clerk dealing with the paperwork corrected the error adding a handwritten note at the bottom of the form, however, somehow three Sheriff’s Department employees overlooked it, releasing Wright on Saturday at around 1 p.m. No one noticed until Sunday at 9:30 p.m., the Times notes, when the district attorney’s office inquired if he was still in custody.
“This is just one of those things,” Swensson said, adding that ensuring that inmates are not accidentally released due to errors is “a cornerstone of our reform efforts.”
Jail officials are planning to launch “a critical incident review to make necessary improvements to the system.”
Read more at the Los Angeles Times.
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