Devoun Cetoute
Miami Herald
MIAMI — James Edward Daniels, the fugitive killer and kidnapper wrongly freed from a Miami-Dade jail over the weekend, was caught by law enforcement in Georgia after spending four days on the lam, officials said Wednesday night.
Daniels, 60, was captured in Macon, Georgia, sometime on Wednesday, the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office announced. A reward of up to $30,000 was being offered for any information that led to his arrest.
MDSO officials did not say when Daniels will be taken back to South Florida.
He was erroneously released from the custody of the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department on Saturday afternoon after a “procedural error,” the department said. An investigation was opened “to review the circumstances surrounding this incident and any potential failures to follow departmental policy.”
Daniels was found guilty of kidnapping and torturing Osmar Oliva, Julio Verdecia and Juan Gonzalez from an Opa-locka truck yard in December 2020. He and two other men killed Oliva and Gonzalez; Verdecia survived a gunshot wound to the head.
As a result, he was sentenced to four life sentences in March. He was in federal custody until Sept. 24, when he was transferred to the Turner Guilford Knight Correctional Center in Miami-Dade to close a 2021 state drug case that had been put on the backburner.
The U.S. Marshals Service, the agency responsible for transporting Daniels between facilities, had placed a federal detainer on him. That designation flags jail and court personnel, notifying them that he must remain in the Miami-Dade jail and not be released, the agency said.
On Sept. 25, Circuit Court Judge Christine Hernandez convicted Daniels on drug charges and credited him with time served, forgoing any prison time due to him already serving a life sentence.
A fiasco ensued when court and jail records show Daniels was released Saturday because of Hernandez’s sentencing, despite the federal detainer, which should have returned him to the custody of the Marshals Service.
It’s not yet clear who’s responsible for missing, ignoring or putting aside the federal detainer.
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