A sad story: "My name is not Robert"

Besides being black and having the last name Sanders, mentally ill Kerry Sanders was nothing like Robert Sanders the escaped convict.  But the cops, his public defender and the system weren't going to let the facts get in their way... they thought they had captured Robert Sanders, the escaped convict.

So, the system puts Kerry in prison for two years and kept him sedated with Haldol because nobody really gave a damn enough to check his identity.

The full story (and it's a long one)

Quote :

In Los Angeles, he was not given the required screening that could have revealed his poor mental state. Police and corrections officials in Los Angeles and New York never noticed that the photographs of the two men did not match -- nor that Robert had multiple tattoos, while Kerry had only a small one on his hand. No one saw that the jaywalking ticket Kerry Sanders received in Los Angeles on July 14, 1993, was issued while Robert Sanders was serving a three-to-nine-year prison term more than 2,800 miles away.

No one ever compared the two men's fingerprints and matched them through the vast national computer database. Had they been checked, a routine law enforcement practice when a felony suspect is apprehended, it could have taken just hours to show that Kerry was the wrong man.

He kept asking "Why am I here?"  He asked the guards in the main unit of the maximum-security prison, where he spent most of his time alone in Cell No. 22 on the third level, crying and praying and drinking too much coffee. He asked the doctors, social workers and nurses in the psychiatric unit, where he was often sent to deal with the voices in his head.

If it hadn't been that the real Robert Sanders got arrested for cocaine, Kerry would still be in prison.

My description in the first post doesn't do justice to what happened to this man. It is worth reading the story... but it is a long one.

This story is soooo sad. I don't see how that could have happened. Don't they automatically fingerprint everyone who is booked? And then run the prints? It looks like the system failed this man at several points.

It's frightening. This could potentially happen to any of us.

The real Robert got caught in Cincinnati with a bunch of cocaine and is now in a Cincinnati prison, but New York still wants him for his prison break from years ago.  New York still has a warrant out for his arrest.  

Yep!  Kerry was picked up AGAIN in California and jailed for 3 days because they were convinced they had Robert.   California called New York to tell them that they "had their man".  

This time New York had enough sense to check and verify that the real Robert is in a Cincinnati prison.

It's just a racket by the judges and prosecuters to get more numbers, no matter if it's the right person or not, then they get released by the judges so they can catch them again to get another number for the next election.. How many repeat offenders are released and re-caught with 5 or more convictions and are still released after serving a small part of the sentence.. I hope Kerry Sanders gets a good lawyer and sues the judges and prosecuters who sent him to prison using false info instead of doing their jobs..