DENVER — The early results of an audit of the sentences of prisoners in Colorado has found potentially hundreds of errors.
Corrections officials are alerting judges throughout the state to the errors.
The reviews are happening after it was disclosed that the man accused of killing Department of Corrections chief Tom Clements and Commerce City father Nathan Leon was released from prison prematurely.
Evan Ebel is accused of killing both. The DOC admitted Ebel was released early because of a clerical error.
Gov. John Hickenlooper ordered the audit of sentences, which is expected to be finished in July.
According to the DOC, an early analysis has found “serious questions” in the sentences of 281 individuals. These people were either already released from prison or are scheduled to be released earlier than appropriate.
Those cases have been sent back to the courts for review.
Of those, judges have amended sentences in 56 cases.
Reasons for the errors are still not clear. Possibilities include judicial clerks giving incorrect information to prisons officials or corrections officials interpreting rulings incorrectly.
For example, Ebel was released early because a clerk interpreted an extra prison sentence stemming from a prison assault Ebel was involved in, to be added concurrently instead of consecutively.
That word “consecutively” should have added four years to the end of the sentence, so Ebel couldn’t get out until 2017.
If the current error rate continues for the remainder of the audit population, there may well be 1,000 errors in sentences of people already released from prison or scheduled to be released early.
Ebel is suspected of killing Leon on March 17. Leon was working as a pizza delivery driver and authorities believe Ebel used Leon’s uniform to get close to Clements and kill him on March 19.
Ebel was killed in a shootout with Texas authorities two days later.
In 2006, Ebel, while serving a sentence for robbery and menacing, was convicted of assaulting a corrections officer. He was sentenced in 2008 to four years additional time in prison, but because of the error he was released without serving those four additional years.
DOC working to rebuild reputation after Ebel errors
The Colorado Department of Corrections has been working to repair its image after a series of errors and missed warning signs allowed Ebel to allegedly commit his crimes.
After he was released, authorities were supposed to keep track of Ebel using a ankle monitor. However, four days before Clements was killed, Ebel removed his ankle monitor.
According to state documents, Ebel stopped reporting to his parole officer and his ankle bracelet signaled it was tampered with on March 14.
Authorities received the “tamper alert” at 1:54 p.m. that day. A parole officer tried to contact Ebel including visiting Ebel’s Commerce City home on March 19.
The officer determined Ebel was not there and notified the Colorado Parole Board and requested a warrant for his arrest on March 20. That was three days after Ebel had already allegedly killed Leon and one day after Clements was killed.
In April, the DOC announced it would implement new measures to find parole absconders including monthly roundups of fugitives who break parole and a new rule requiring a two-hour response time for investigating all ankle bracelet tampering alerts.