Posted on 08/07/2007 9:02:39 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
OCALA, Fla. -- The Internal Affairs Division of the Marion County Sheriff's Office has launched an investigation into a clerical error that mistakenly put a woman behind bars for nine days.
Amy Sellers, 22, of Ocala, was taken into custody about two weeks ago for a warrant that matched another 28-year-old woman named Amy Sellers.
Sellers, who had not committed any crimes, said she was taken into custody and immediately thrown into the inmate population.
"When I found out, I got no first appearance and I (didn't get) to see a judge," Sellers said. "They put me into population."
The Marion County Sheriff's Office admitted that Sellers' incident was a mistake.
"Due to a clerical error, the incorrect information was put into the computer system for a warrant that matched another Amy Sellers, who also has a criminal history in Marion County," a sheriff's office statement issued Monday said.
Sellers is in the system for drunken driving and driving with a suspended license four years ago but has not been arrested since.
Sellers' boyfriend said he spent days trying to show the sheriff's office the error. He said when the sheriff's office finally believed him, the jail kept Sellers another day to verify the mistake.
Sellers said she lost 15 pounds while behind bars and is considering suing over the incident.
"My faith in the justice system is crumbled and gone completely and I don't know if I will ever be able to salvage it again," Sellers said. "What if I was a single mother, 30 years old, that this happened to that for 10 days was in jail for the wrong reasons and lost her kids and job."
The sheriff's office said it would reimburse Sellers for any expenses she incurred while jailed.
Sellers said, "That is a joke," Local 6 reported.
The Internal Affairs Division is also investigating the warrant process in connection with the case.
(2) The Ocala police department aren't incompetent, as it turns out: they were given the wrong information by the court.
(3) She was not given an appearance because the actual subject of the warrant had already had an appearance date - the police were given the false impression by the court that she had already had her day in court.
(4) An attorney would have had her out of prison in a matter of hours, depending on what time of day she was taken into custody. A writ of habeas corpus is a very simple document for an attorney to draw up.
(5) In a state where $99 divorces are on offer, one can afford at least a couple of hours of an attorney's services.
Was there a prison pillow fight?
He probably did.
Where did you get that? The current warrant had nothing to do with her years old drunk driving record.
Lets see... If I kidnap someone and stick them in a closet for nine days then what? I go to jail for the rest of my life. I don't think seven figures is unreasonable for having the VERY SAME THING done to her under color of law. Yes, it's citizens' money, but citizens elect the sheriff and hire the incompetent boobs that run the system.
I don't think anyone in the US is serving a life term for kidnapping. Especially not for one that was ordered by a judge.
Brazil!
You are wrong AGAIN.
You keep spewing misinformation for some reason.
No police in FL are NOT competent, if anything competence is the rare exception NOT the rule.
Anyone can put ANY address on a DL or claim an address as their own. If this woman had her ID stolen or confused that is still no excuse for the Sheriff to not process her fingerprints.
As I said earlier, this happened to a client of mine. We had him out beyond rapid. It is not an easy process when coupled with law enforcement arrogance and “procedures must be followed” zombies. Contempt threats do clarify the minds though.
You constantly ignore the fact these people were treating her like the OTHER woman. The OTHER lawyers were getting notice, the OTHER woman had all the hearings.
It is a shocks the conscience moment for this woman to have been in custody for a SINGLE SOLITARY SECOND. Time of day is IRRELEVANT. Justices does not take a nap for lazy cops. There are duty judges on duty 24 hours. False imprisonment is a manifest harm within the procdural rules of emergency.
Finally perhaps you were in FL in the ancient days of 99 divorces however, since the state has taken over all the funding of the courts, filing fees have SIGNIFICANTLY gone hirer than 99 dollars. (unless of course you are talking about the form services that routinely screw up cases)
They did have the wrong woman.
Period.
The sheriff has legal liability period.
The fact someone in the court system screwed up in any way shape or form is irrelevent. False imprisonment is a strict scrutiny test which the sheriff can not win and any excuses he and his staff make now only dig a deeper hole.
They need to start making the check out. (and stop digging a deeper hole)
“You’re right — she does not deserve tens of millions of taxpayer dollars.”
I’m thinking that a year’s wage would be about right. Somewhere in the range of $30-60K perhaps.
(1) Are you really going to continue running in circles with this argument??? Yes, her name was in the system, does that make it her fault that the INCOMPENTENT employee chose the first name they saw without first checking at the very least the case number (which did not match up in ANY documents)... Which brings me to number 2...
(2) Great point, the employees who handled it at the court are also SEVERELY imcompentent, as well. Upon their mistake being revealed to them, they ran amock unsure of whether or not they should release her... And they STILL held her. Hmmm.. Yes, sounds like they truly know the ins-and-outs of their career choice.
(3) And yet, she is being questioned of why she didn’t IMMEDIATELY request a court appointed attorney???
(4/5) I am not exactly familiar with the rates of divorce attorneys in Florida (???), but it seems pretty irrelevant to how much an attorney would cost in a matter like this for probably much more service then is required for “a couple hours”... And I think it is quite ignorant to think that any 22 year old is able to afford “a couple hours” without knowing their financial situation. Most 22 year olds I come across live paycheck to paycheck, not sure about you...
In FL if you are arrested for skipping on a bond, more likely than not you already have an attorney and that attorney and bondsman will be noticed of your capture.
You will be denied bond due to your being a flight risk and you will be detained pending the hearing regarding your case (whatever type was in line and regarding your non-appearance)
She very well may have asked for a lawyer but the OTHER woman’s lawyer was noticed.
Pretty wild. “Amy Sellers” doesn’t even strike me as that unique a name. Considering the other woman had a record due to traffic offenses, why in the world would the arresting officer not corroborate her data against state issued ID? Birthdate, SSN/license number ...
My surname isn’t common across the country, but there are 3 of us sharing the same first & last name within 50 miles of each other, often within a 20-mile radius during any weekday. One time I heard my name paged in a retail store to answer a phone call. *Nobody* actually knew I was there, so I walked up to the desk anyway to intorduce myself to one of my “others.” In very general terms, we resemble each other. My other “other” is younger, married to my cousin.
Oddly, there’s another couple around here with the same first & last names as my folks. We know because evidently the other couple doesn’t pay their bills, so collectors end up reaching my parents sometimes.
Oops, nevermind about corroborating data on her ID. I see the wrong info was entered for her.
The sheriff has legal liability period.
Well, it wasn't the Sheriff's office that screwed up, so you have the wrong branch of the county government, but the county government does definitely have a civil liability related to this mistake.
They have admitted that and have offered to make restitution.
False imprisonment is a strict scrutiny test which the sheriff can not win and any excuses he and his staff make now only dig a deeper hole.
False imprisonment is a criminal act. Where is the evidence of criminal intent? Since attempts by the officers to verify that they had the person for which the warrant was issued would indicate (incorrectly) that they had the right person, it's doesn't appear that there is evidence that they were overtly negligent in investigating her complaints that they had the wrong person, the mistake simply happened in such a way as to mask itself from their reasonable efforts.
They need to start making the check out.
They need to make restitution, which they have offered to do, and they need to investigate how this happened and take steps to make sure it doesn't happen again, which the appear to be in the process of doing.
and stop digging a deeper hole
What actions by them are you interpreting as digging a deeper hole? It doesn't sound like they have made any effort to cover this up or to deny that a mistake was made. It appears they are accepting responsibility for making that mistake and working to make sure it doesn't happen again.
It was a horrible mistake, but I'm not seeing evidence of maliciousness or of a cover-up.
You apply punitive damages when their was overt negligence or malice.
Jailing an innocent person is breaking the law.
I hate to bring reality into the picture, but accidentally jailing the wrong person is not a criminal act unless there was extreme negligence involved.
Once they realized a mistake had been made, they released her. This isn't criminal false imprisonment.
Unless something like this happened before and they failed to take steps to prevent it, this is a serious mistake, but not a criminal, intentional or overtly negligent act.
We're not a totalitarian state where citizens have no rights to seek to have official injustice corrected.
Of course we aren't. She has every right to receive restitution for what this mistake by the county cost her.
However, our civil court system doesn't (or at least isn't supposed to) award punitive damages unless there was malice or overt negligence. Otherwise people would get bankrupted any time they make a mistake, and we all make mistakes.
Do you want to pay punitive damages any time you accidentally damage someone's car or property? I caught pneumonia from a coworker that wasn't smart enough to stay home when he was sick, and ended up spending 5 days in the hospital two weeks ago. Should I sue him for punitive damages?
Our lawsuit society has an overdeveloped sense of injustice.
People make mistakes, and bad things sometimes happen to innocent people because of them. Those people who suffer the consequences of those mistakes deserve to have restitution made, if we go through life playing the lawsuit lottery game, our society will fall apart, and the same civil laws need to apply equally to everyone. They need to apply the same way to private individuals, large faceless corporations, and even government entities.
You said - “warrants are not issued by searching some non-existent general database of all citizens”.
Respectfully, and from my own experience, I have to strongly disagree.
Please refer to my post #61 on this thread.
I have never been arrested, have never been to jail, have never been in front of a judge, have not even had many traffic violations in my nearly thirty years of driving. I am totally invisible as far as the justice system is concerned.
The “non-existent general database of all citizens” you refer to is actually VERY existent. It’s called a phone book. This situation I described, in which a warrant was issued for my arrest, happened shortly after I changed my phone number status from “unlisted” to “listed”.
The court records were entered incorrectly and indicated that she was the person for which the warrant was issued. Checking her ID would only confirm for them that they had the right person because the records showed incorrectly that she was the right person.
The Sheriff's department didn't screw up. The county court system screwed up. It still means the government as a whole screwed up, but the Sheriff's department had no indication that they didn't have the right person, so it took a long time for them to discover that a mistake had been made.
It was likely something they had never seen happen before and they didn't have reason to suspect that they didn't have the right person, because the court records indicated that she was the one they were supposed to arrest.
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