Wichita Massacre PingPosted on 12/10/2002 5:29:52 PM PST by KS Flyover
The husband of a slain Wichita cellist is suing the state, claiming it negligently paroled Reginald Carr, the man who would later murder his wife.Don Walenta filed the lawsuit Monday in Sedgwick County District Court, little more than three weeks after a jury sentenced Reginald Carr and his brother Jonathan to death. The Carrs were convicted of murdering cellist Ann Walenta and four others during a December 2000 crime spree.
The complaint says that if the state had not mistakenly released Reginald Carr from parole, he would have been in jail the night Ann Walenta was shot.
Walenta's suit is the latest indictment of the state parole system, which has been under scrutiny in recent years for putting violent offenders back on the streets.
"This is a wake-up call to the state of Kansas, that they have to implement better safeguards and procedures to protect the public from these predators," said Andy Hutton, Walenta's lawyer.
Kansas Department of Corrections spokesman Bill Miskell declined comment Monday on the lawsuit, saying he hadn't yet seen it.
Kansas law limits damages to about $500,000.
The Carrs' crimes included the shooting of Walenta on Dec. 11, 2000, and culminated in five other people being raped, robbed and then shot execution-style in an east Wichita soccer field before dawn on Dec. 15. Four of the five died.
In the three years before those killings, about two dozen Kansas parolees faced murder charges. Those included Wesley Purkey, who received life in prison for beating an elderly Kansas City woman to death with a hammer, and Stanley Elms, who is awaiting execution pending an appeal for the murder of a Wichita woman.
A well-documented clerical error, called an isolated incident by the Corrections Department, led to Reginald Carr's early release. The mistake drew criticism from Gov. Bill Graves and surfaced in political campaigns during the gubernatorial primary last summer, before the Carr brothers' trial began.
Reginald Carr left prison March 28, 2000, paroled on 1995 convictions of theft, aggravated assault and drug possession. He was not a model prisoner, drawing more than 50 disciplinary incidents during his stay, so he wasn't eligible for any good-time credit.
Still, state records show parole officer Preston Miller entered the wrong number onto Carr's worksheet in September 2000, giving him 180 days' good-time credit. Supervisor Jim Chastain then entered the mistake into the computer system that helps the state track parolees.
Reginald Carr should have stayed on parole until June 1, 2001. If his parole hadn't erroneously expired Dec. 1, 2000, he would have remained in a Dodge City jail on an intoxicated driving arrest. Instead, he posted bond and left.
The Corrections Department disclosed the errors a month after the December 2000 slayings. The department fired Miller and suspended Chastain. On appeal, the Kansas Service Board gave Miller his job back with a demotion but upheld Chastain's seven-day suspension.
Walenta's suit says Miller caught his error on Reginald Carr's worksheet before Dec. 1 but failed to make the corrections necessary to keep the parole from expiring early.
The complaint alleges that Miller simply crossed out the "1" and "8" and left only the "0." But the 180 days of good time had already been entered into the computer system. So when Dec 1 rolled around, Reginald Carr's parole expired, enabling him to post bond four days later.
Just days after that, on Dec. 7, Andrew Schreiber was carjacked and forced at gunpoint to withdraw money from drive-up automated teller machines. It was one of the 50 crimes a jury would convict Reginald Carr of committing in a nine-day stretch.
Wichita Massacre Ping
"You are taking up bandwidth from Trent Lott threads and all the useless moral puffery that goes along with them. "You are so right and it was totally insensitive of me to post this meaningless thread during these troubled times.
I shall write an apology to Jesse Jackson immediately. :`)
There's the problem. The taxpayers will pay out 500k for a mistake THEY didn't make, while the morons who did this keep their jobs.
I recall a cop comitting suicide recently over a gun he wrote down the wrong serial number on leading to a recidivist murder much like these.
Perhaps someone should tell these guys their actions helped lead to five murders, hand them a gun, and tell them to do the right thing and shoot themselves with it.
no, not because of a clerical error...
5 dead because the Carrs wanted the 5 dead...plus more if they could have gotten away with it...
one happy outcome from all this is that these evil, mentally challenged ,low-life scum of the earth, degenerates will not be out and about making more of themselves...
we need to rid the gene-pool of these types....
but I can just see their mother howling in the background how her "boys" were not criminals......
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