Hunt for murderer mistakenly freed in Chicago

CHICAGO (AP) — Author­i­ties in Illi­nois and Indi­ana searched Fri­day for a con­victed mur­derer who was mis­tak­enly released after a Chicago court appear­ance, as ques­tions swirled about what caused the mix-up and why he was brought from his Indi­ana prison cell in the first place.

Steven L. Rob­bins, 44, was serv­ing a 60-year sen­tence for mur­der in Indi­ana and was brought to Chicago this week in a sep­a­rate case involv­ing drug and armed vio­lence charges — a case that a pros­e­cu­tor revealed Fri­day had actu­ally been dis­missed in 2007.

After appear­ing before a Cook County Cir­cuit Court judge, Rob­bins was taken to the Cook County Jail on Chicago’s South Side and was released hours later, instead of being sent back to Indi­ana to con­tinue his mur­der sen­tence. The pub­lic was not alerted that he was on the loose for about 24 hours.

Cook County State’s Attor­ney Anita Alvarez on Fri­day raised the pos­si­bil­ity that though the charges in Illi­nois were dis­missed, a cler­i­cal error might have kept law enforce­ment author­i­ties from see­ing that the arrest war­rant had been quashed. Rob­bins had writ­ten sev­eral let­ters to the court demand­ing to face trial, she said.

“The Cook County Sherriff’s Police, despite the fact that the assis­tant state’s attor­ney told them that they didn’t have to bring him back, they thought it would be bet­ter if they did bring him back to get this all cleared up because the guy keeps writ­ing let­ters demand­ing trial,” Alvarez told reporters.

Once in Chicago, Rob­bins appeared Wednes­day before a judge who made it clear on the record that he no longer had any pend­ing case in Illi­nois and still had time to serve in Indi­ana, Alvarez said.

As far as his release, the Cook County Sheriff’s Office sug­gested that also might have involved a cler­i­cal error. Spokesman Frank Bilecki said that when Rob­bins was taken back to Cook County Jail, there was no paper­work in his file indi­cat­ing that he should be held, rais­ing the pos­si­bil­ity that it was misplaced.

But the Indi­ana Depart­ment of Cor­rec­tions says it sub­mit­ted paper­work telling Illi­nois offi­cials that Rob­bins was sup­posed to be returned to Indiana.

“It’s quite clear that all of the paper­work from IDOC was in order, so that they would have known that he was sup­posed to be returned to us,” spokesman Dou­glas Gar­ri­son said.

Fed­eral and local law enforce­ment offi­cers search­ing for Rob­bins were knock­ing on doors in Illi­nois and Indi­ana on Fri­day, includ­ing those of his friends and rel­a­tives, Bilecki said.

Rob­bins, a Gary, Ind., native, was serv­ing a sen­tence for mur­der and weapons con­vic­tions out of Mar­ion County in Indiana.

Wit­nesses to the 2002 killing told police that Rob­bins was argu­ing with his wife out­side a birth­day party in Indi­anapo­lis when a man inter­vened, telling Rob­bins he should not hit a woman, accord­ing to court doc­u­ments. The wit­nesses said Rob­bins then retrieved a gun from a car and shot the man, Rut­land Melton, in the chest before fleeing.

He started serv­ing his sen­tence in Octo­ber 2004 and his ear­li­est pro­jected release date was more than 16 years from now, on June 29, 2029.

It is not the first time a pris­oner has been mis­tak­enly freed from the Cook County Jail.

In 2009, Jonathan Cooper, who was serv­ing a 30-year manslaugh­ter sen­tence in Mis­sis­sippi, was brought to Chicago to face charges that he failed to reg­is­ter as a sex offender.

Pros­e­cu­tors dropped the charges because, as an inmate, he could not com­ply with the Sex Offender Reg­is­tra­tion Act.

A clerk report­edly failed to include the Mis­sis­sippi sen­tence infor­ma­tion in Cooper’s file, and jail staff released him.

Cooper turned him­self in sev­eral days later.

In a more recent embar­rass­ment for law enforce­ment offi­cials in Chicago, two con­victed bank rob­bers escaped from a high-rise fed­eral lockup in Decem­ber by climb­ing down the side of the build­ing on a rope made of bed sheets and jump­ing into a cab. Author­i­ties recap­tured both men, one of whom remained on the run for about two weeks. Offi­cials have yet to pro­vide a pub­lic expla­na­tion of the jailbreak.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Feb 1 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.