Jail and courts change procedures after accused murderer set free

Courts and corrections officials modified their operations after an accused murderer was mistakenly released from the Hilo jail last summer, and the Hawaii island courts now send bail documents to the jail via email as well as having them hand-carried to the facility, state lawmakers were told Tuesday.

Hawaii Department of Public Safety Director Nolan Espinda said Tuesday an investigation is ongoing into the release of Honaunau resident Brian Lee Smith from the Hawaii Community Correctional Center on July 24, but said the department has hired more staff and changed its procedures to try to guard against freeing another inmate by mistake.

Smith, 49, was charged with second-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder in the shootings of Thomas Ballesteros Jr., 42, and another man in South Kona on the evening of June 24. Ballesteros died at the scene, and the other man was hospitalized with a non-life-threatening gunshot wound. Smith was also shot in the incident, police said.

Smith, who was also charged with four firearm violations, was sent to jail after he was released from the hospital, but was then released in error from HCCC on July 24. He called police two days later from South Kona to turn himself in, and was returned to HCCC with bail set at $2 million.

At a briefing for the Senate Ways and Mean Committee on Tuesday, Espinda said the staff at HCCC never received the bail documents that would have instructed them to hold Smith in connection with the murder case. Smith was therefore released when other cases against him were resolved.

Hawaii uses a hand-to-hand process to transmit documents between the courts and state jails, Espinda said, and “it is an antiquated process that, as you might expect, has its glitches, and the delivery of those documents sometimes do not occur as anticipated.”

As for the Smith case, “It is near impossible to pinpoint where the documentation was not transmitted,” Espinda said in an interview after the hearing. “The jail did not have it, the courts insist that they provided it and we have no reason to believe otherwise. None of us are trying to point fingers at each other.”

The Hawaii Tribune­-Herald newspaper last year reported there have been 23 mistaken releases of prison or jail inmates since 2013, and 16 of those occurred on Hawaii island.

To address that problem, Espinda said, the department has launched a pilot project in the 3rd Circuit Court system on Hawaii island in which court documents are transmitted to HCCC by email, by fax and are also hand-carried “for the sake of public safety on the Big Island.”

The email system also will create an electronic trail for documents as they move between the court and the jail, he said. A spokeswoman for the Department of Public Safety said that emailing system is limited to bail-related documents for now, but corrections officials hope to expand it later.

The corrections system also has “reinstituted” an open line to the state attorney general’s office to help corrections officials provide legal expertise to help sort out any confusion in inmates’ paper trails, he said, and corrections staff now has access to the state Judiciary’s electronic filing system to allow them to review court documents online.

State Sen. Kai Kahele, who questioned Espinda about the mistaken releases of inmates from the Hilo jail, said in a written statement that “one inadvertent prisoner release is one too many and is frankly unacceptable.”

“My immediate thought was why did (corrections officials) not review court documents (online) prior to last year?” said Kahele (D, Hilo). He added that the corrections system “can and must do better.”

Espinda said corrections officials have accelerated the training process for all correctional center staff who process inmate releases, and the state has created two new “court liaison officer” positions staffed by sergeants working at HCCC. Those liaison officers oversee court-related documentation and also prisoner transport, he said.

The department also has reinstituted an audit and “double-check” process for inmates who are about to complete their sentences, Espinda said.

Finally, Espinda said two of the three civilian clerical positions at the jail tasked with handling paperwork for the intake and release of inmates had been vacant but have now been filled.

Even with all of those changes, Espinda said an inmate could be accidentally released again. “These things occur, and we will do everything we can technology-wise and training-wise to ensure they don’t, but I’m never going to be stuck in a situation when I tell somebody, ‘I promise you this won’t happen again,’ and then it does.”

Espinda said the department released 12,693 inmates last year.