By Robert Patrick
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
CLAYTON, Mo. — The plan was to move Shawn M. Grider to federal prison from state prison. But there were a couple of intermediate stops at local jails to clear up some pending matters.
After one of those stops, at the St. Louis County Justice Center in Clayton to be questioned about a different crime, Grider received a big surprise. He expected to be sent on to a federal penitentiary to serve almost 11 years on drug and gun convictions. Instead, he was simply released.
It’s not clear exactly what went wrong. A jail official said the Missouri Department of Corrections failed to pass word along that the federal system had a hold on him.
Spokesman David Owen said Tuesday that the Department of Corrections sends prisoners such as Grider to resolve their pending local cases before they go to federal prison. He said it was the responsibility of federal authorities to notify local jails of a federal “detainer.”
But the U.S. Marshals Service says the state prison is supposed to notify the local jails and the marshals.
Grider, 29, is back in custody, but perhaps only because he turned himself in.
His attorney, Kristy Ridings, recalled in a recent interview how a puzzled Grider called her soon after his release Oct. 24, saying, “I’m out. I shouldn’t be out. I’m at my mom’s house.”
Grider explained to his attorney that there had been a “wanted” out for him in St. Louis County as a possible suspect in a burglary. He was briefly questioned by detectives until they determined that he couldn’t have committed the crime because he was behind bars when it happened.
They told him he was was going to be released, Ridings said, but, “He didn’t think that meant released to go home. And the next thing he knew, they let him out the door.”
Ridings said she asked Grider what he wanted to do. Presuming that marshals would soon be hunting him down, he said he just wanted to turn himself in.
While Ridings figured out how to do that, Grider enjoyed a little more free time and a barbecue meal. His attorney picked him up a downtown restaurant, then took him to the marshals’ office in the federal courthouse downtown.
“They took his shoe strings off, gave me his coat and he was off,” she said.
Grider could not be reached for comment. He is now in federal prison in Kentucky.
He had served almost 13 months of a five-year state prison sentence on drug and gun charges from St. Louis, having received credit for the time he served in jail awaiting conviction.
Prison officials released Grider on Oct. 21 to Jefferson County, Owen said in an email.
Court records show that Grider was sentenced there on Oct. 23 to a total of eight days in jail for two misdemeanor traffic offenses dating from 2010.
St. Louis County police picked him up the next day for questioning, then he was released. A police spokesman told a reporter that he was unable to locate any information on the case involving Grider.
In 2011, Grider pleaded guilty in U.S. District Court in St. Louis of being a felon in possession of a firearm and possession of a firearm in furtherance of a drug crime, and was sentenced to 130 months in federal prison.
The charges stem from a search of his house on April 21, 2011, by task force officers with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. While several officers knocked at the front door of his apartment, others saw Grider at a window, tossing out a backpack that contained heroin, a loaded .45-caliber pistol and items Grider used to process and package heroin for sale, his plea agreement says.
Ridings said she had no idea how long Grider might have been loose if he had not chosen to surrender. “Honestly, I don’t know when they would have realized it,” she said.
But the marshals said they periodically audit the status of prisoners not in their custody and would have caught the mistake.
Officials said errors such as this happen occasionally, usually because someone searching the computer system for detainers or warrants before releasing a prisoner mistypes a name.
Copyright 2013 the St. Louis Post-Dispatch