‘Moderate supervision deficiencies’
By Sarah Ovaska, Joseph Neff
The News & Observer
Hamstrung in NC: Probationers kill, state dawdles
RALEIGH, N.C. — These four cases show how probation officers can struggle to keep track of their charges -- and how those probationers can land in serious trouble. State officials provided limited information on these cases.
Robert Reaves’ probation officer made minimal attempts to supervise the Durham preacher, once going 10 months without trying to contact him, according to an internal review of the case.
Reaves is now facing a murder charge in Wake County in the killing of Latrese Curtis, a recently married N.C. Central University student found stabbed to death in January on the side of a highway in northern Wake County. Investigators also are looking at the possibility that she was raped.
Reaves, convicted of trying to use a stolen gift card, received minimal supervision, at best. A judge had ordered that he comply with a number of conditions: pay restitution, be tested for drugs and submit to searches. None of that was done for the bulk of his probation sentence.
Reaves, 43, should have been a priority; he spent three years in a South Carolina prison for a 1988 conviction for a sex offense. But from November 2005, when Durham probation officer Calvin Mizzell received the case, until August 2006, after an audit was conducted, Mizzell made no notes that indicated he had visited or contacted Reaves. He was told by a supervisor to take out an arrest warrant against Reaves in September 2006 for violating his probation, but the warrant sat in a file.
Probation records show that probation officials ceased attempts to serve the warrant on Reaves in October 2006 -- until he was arrested in Curtis’ killing. Mizzell then tried to revoke his probation, but a judge found that Mizzell had waited too long.
A supervisor who evaluated the handling of Reaves’ probation case after his arrest in Curtis’ killing remarked that Mizzell “was holding onto the files for reasons I do not know.”
Mizzell resigned March 11.
Antonio Chance was on probation when he walked into a downtown Raleigh parking garage Aug. 22, 2006, and kidnapped Cynthia Moreland, a Wendell woman found partially clothed and smothered or strangled behind a Harnett County farmhouse.
When Moreland was kidnapped, Chance was snorting more than a gram of cocaine a day and selling drugs to support his habit, he told a state forensic psychologist. A convicted sex offender, Chance registered his stepfather’s Garner address with Wake County deputies in May. But his stepfather later said Chance never lived there.
Chance was seen once by a Wake County probation officer in June 2006 but skipped an appointment planned for July. He was due in the Wake probation office on Aug. 22 -- the day Moreland was kidnapped.
Chance was given a year of probation after a November 2005 conviction for marijuana possession and littering but wasn’t placed on a specialized caseload for sex offenders because his recent crime wasn’t a sex offense. That policy changed the day before Moreland was kidnapped, according to an internal probation memo.
A review of the case by probation officials found “moderate supervision deficiencies.”
Chance is serving a life sentence for killing Moreland.
Roderick Wooten was sentenced to a year of probation Sept. 12, 2005, for possession of marijuana.
He never reported to his probation officer. The officer searched for him Oct. 18, 2005, but didn’t find him.
A week later, on Oct. 26, the officer’s supervisor approved filing an order for Wooten’s arrest. The probation officer failed to swear out the warrant, so police and other probation officers did not know to arrest Wooten if they encountered him.
On Dec. 9, 2005, Michael Jason Harrington was shot and killed on Scout Street just south of downtown Durham. Police announced that Wooten was wanted in Harrington’s death; the two were acquaintances.
On Jan. 5, 2006, a probation supervisor noted that the “PPO” (probation and parole officer) had done nothing since Oct. 26: “PPO HAS YET TO SWEAR OUT WARRANT. PPO NEEDS TO DO THIS ASAP! ABSCONDING PACKET NOT DONE AS OF YET AND EFFORTS TO LOCATE OFFENDER HAS NOT RESUMED SINCE 10-18-05. PPO NEEDS TO CONTINUE TO SEARCH FOR OFFENDER & COMPLETE ABSCONDER PACKET ASAP!”
The probation officer filed the probation violation report in court three weeks later, on Jan. 27, 2006. Wooten was arrested five months later in Brooklyn, N.Y.
He is awaiting trial on the murder charge in the Durham County jail. In July, his attorney wrote a letter to Tracey Cline, who had been elected as Durham’s district attorney, stating, “My goals are to ... resolve his case by plea to second degree murder as soon as is feasible.”
Omar Herrera was wanted by probation officials for more than a year before Raleigh police arrested him in May and accused him in a gang rape of a woman at a Raleigh motel.
Herrera, who uses the alias Wuilmer Galea, was placed on probation in March 2007 after he pleaded guilty in Wake County to two break-ins that amounted to more than $10,000 in damage and losses. He was told to begin paying back the money.
But his Wake probation officer was never able to confirm his address and couldn’t find him. Herrera came once to the probation office, but he later was declared an absconder. Probation officials issued a warrant for his arrest under the name Omar Herrera two months after he was placed on supervision.
After the warrant was issued, little was done to try and find Herrera, according to a review of the case conducted by probation officials. He spent six months on one officer’s caseload, but no attempts were made to find Herrera, according to probation records. Then he was switched to a caseload awaiting a new officer to be hired; no one was conducting mandatory checks every 90 days.
“The file was not supervised per policy while in suspended status,” a supervisor wrote about the case.
It wasn’t until this fall that a new probation officer specializing in fugitives realized that Herrera was sitting in the Wake County jail, under the name Wuilmer Galea. Raleigh police had arrested him and three others after a woman reported that she was snatched and raped by a group of men at a Raleigh motel May 24.
Herrera has since had his probation revoked. The rape and assault charges related to the May attack are pending.
Copyright 2008 The News and Observer