By C1 Staff
DALLAS, Texas — A clerk’s error left man in jail for seven months, even though he’d never been convicted.
The man, whose attorney asked that his name be withheld, was placed in the Dallas County Jail for a misdemeanor criminal trespass case that never got rolling, according to WFAA.
He’s been a frequent visitor at the Dallas County Jail since 2009, being convicted of criminal trespass 27 times before.
But this time, the 28th time, he was arrested, booked, and arraigned. Then nothing happened for more than 200 days.
It’s believed a clerk within the DA’s office didn’t deliver case paperwork to the county clerk’s office, so the case was never filed with the courts and the man was never appointed an attorney.
His attorney says that the man tried to alert jailers and deputies to the problem, but “he was either met with people just ignoring his pleas or requests, or people saying ‘I don’t know what to do to help you. It’s not my area. It’s not my job.’”
A spokesman with the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department says he believes “someone would have listened to him if he was actually telling people that he was in there too long.”
Dallas attorney Peter Schulte said it would take unique circumstances to get a jailer to really look into a question like ‘when am I going to get a court date?’ due to the officers hearing that question so often.
Eventually the man got a letter to the public defender’s office, begging for help.
Questions still remain about how the man could have been left to languish in the jail for so long. The DA’s office ultimately dismissed the case against him “in the interest of justice.”
If the man had been convicted, the longest sentence that could have been imposed on him was just 0 days. Jail officials said it costs roughly $60 a day to house an inmate, so the man’s stay ultimately ended up costing the county more than $12,000.
Dallas County and other counties are working with the state to implement a new adult case management system, which would integrate all of the systems into one.
The goal is to have a standard case management system used statewide that would eliminate human error.