Warrant mistake lands Briargate woman in jail
Warrant mistake lands Briargate woman in jail
January 27, 2013 8:08 PM
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LANCE BENZEL
lance.benzel@gazette.com
A Briargate woman was arrested, booked into jail and held without bond for nearly a week in early January because of an extradition warrant mistakenly issued by an Orlando, Fla., law enforcement agency.
El Paso County authorities have confirmed that Catherene “Katie” Lee Wilson, 56, spent five days at the El Paso County jail and nine days free on personal recognizance as an alleged fugitive from justice — until local authorities determined her warrant was issued in error by the Orange County, Fla., Sheriff’s Office.
Orange County sheriff’s officials rescinded the warrant without explaining what happened, or issuing an apology, said Wilson, who called her incarceration “an experience in terror.”
“That’s the only way I can describe it — just sheer, abject terror,” said Wilson, a 5-foot-3, silver-haired homemaker and grandmother of nine who picked up a fitting nickname in lockup: “Abuelita” — Spanish for “The Little Grandma.”
Her release came after frantic efforts to clear her name by her husband, Jim — whom she calls her “knight in shining armor” — and help from attorneys in Florida and Colorado, including Daniel G. Kay of Colorado Springs.
Three Colorado Springs SWAT officers arrested Wilson on Jan. 3 at her home on a Briargate cul-de-sac, police have confirmed.
Lt. Sal Fiorillo, who oversees the police tactical team, said Colorado Springs police were legally obligated to execute a Dec. 27 request from the Orange County Sheriff’s Office that Wilson be arrested and held for extradition.
Told by a panicked Wilson the charges were a mistake, the officers took the additional step of requesting a further confirmation from Orange County sheriff’s officials, who verified her warrant was active and confirmed they wanted her taken into custody pending her transfer to Florida, Fiorillo said.
“We don’t have discretion on that,” Fiorillo said. “If there’s an arrest warrant and it’s signed by a judge and it’s in the system, we have to arrest them.”
The warrant alleged that Wilson was guilty of a probation violation related to her sole brush with the law: A 35-year-old credit card fraud conviction in Orange County, Fla., involving $1,500 worth of expenditures.
It’s unclear when the warrant was signed by a judge. Wilson said her attorneys told her the warrant dated to 1980; law enforcement authorities couldn’t immediately confirm that detail.
According to an Orange County sheriff’s report obtained by The Gazette, Wilson was one of two women arrested Aug. 23, 1976, on suspicion of using stolen credit cards at the Walt Disney World theme park.
Wilson, who said she didn’t know the credit cards were stolen, pleaded no contest at the urging of her court-appointed attorneys and received a five-year probation — a wake-up call that she kept secret from most of her family, including her two children, for nearly four decades.
“I was young, estranged from my family and I got into trouble that I immediately cleared up,” Wilson said. “For lack of a better term, I’ve walked the straight and narrow ever since.”
Her co-defendant signed a written confession in which she admitted stealing the credit cards, according to the 1976 sheriff’s report.
According to the Florida Department of Corrections, Wilson completed her probation in 1982 and her case was closed — end of story.
“We have her as a clean, no-problem record,” Florida prisons spokeswoman Ann Howard affirmed after 10 minutes of research.
How the Orange County Sheriff’s came to revive the matter is unclear. A spokesman, Capt. Angelo Nieves, said he had no information about the arrest. Nieves said he didn’t recognize the name of an Orange County sheriff’s employee cited by Colorado Springs police as the person who authorized the arrest.
El Paso County Undersheriff Paula Presley, who reviewed Wilson’s jail booking file at the newspaper’s request, said Orange County sheriff’s officials didn’t specify how the mistake occurred.
She said the jail occasionally sees similar errors when law enforcement authorities fail to remove outdated warrants from the National Crime Information Center, or NCIC, a national law enforcement database.
“Does it happen frequently? No. But it does happen,” Presley said.
Fiorillo said he was also aware of rare cases in which outdated information has led to the arrests of Colorado Springs residents.
Wilson’s husband, Jim, said he scrambled to retain an attorney in Florida to investigate the issue and obtained documents from Florida prisons officials verifying his wife’s parole had been discharged.
The documents were sent to the El Paso County jail a day after his wife’s booking, but jailers said they couldn’t do anything without a judge’s order.
At first confident he would be able to clear up confusion over his wife’s arrest, Jim Wilson said he grew disconsolate as it became clear sheriff’s officials would hold his wife through the weekend.
His emails and phone calls to El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa went unanswered, he said.
“I’m in my 50s, and I thought I had experienced every emotion life had to offer,” said Wilson, whose fears over his wife’s well-being in jail left him sleepless at night and overcome with emotion. ”Those events set a new level of despair.”
On the fifth day of her incarceration, Wilson was released from jail on a recognizance bond by Fourth Judicial District Judge Thomas Kennedy, whom the couple credit for listening to their story when others were indifferent.
The case against Wilson was dismissed by El Paso County prosecutors on Jan. 16 — about 12 days after Wilson’s attorneys first produced documentation that cast doubts on the validity of the warrant.
Jack Roth, the El Paso County prosecutor assigned to the case, said the office needed to confirm the documents’ veracity and sort through the tangle of conflicting information before taking action.
“I sympathize with her,” Roth said. “What happened is horribly unfortunate. But the warrant was legitimate and we had to go off that.”
El Paso County Undersheriff Paula Presley echoed those comments and attributed the error to the Orange County Sheriff’s Office.
“We legally cannot release somebody based on documents we receive from an attorney that state ‘This is all a mix-up,’” Presley said.
Wilson and her husband say they blame Orange County and are reluctant to condemn local law enforcement authorities.
But they are haunted by memories of their powerlessness — and the idea that others in their situation may not have the financial resources to fight false charges, which cost them thousands of dollars.
After her release from custody, Wilson learned of another case with eerie similarities – that of a Connecticut woman named Robin Hall arrested in January on a 21-year-old probation violation after debarking a cruise in Port Canaveral.
Her original offense: Shoplifting a pack of cigarettes from an Orange County, Fla., Walmart at the age of 18.
Hall, now 41, spent a week in jail before her release, according to news reports.
“I was raised believing this could never, ever happen in the United States,” Katie Wilson said. “This made me think: If there’s two of us, how many more are there?”
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