Repeated failures by District agencies to communicate about criminal charges allowed at least two wards of the city’s juvenile justice agency to be on the streets — where authorities say they committed murder.
Detailed within documents obtained by The Washington Examiner from three juvenile criminal cases are examples of warrants slipping through the cracks among the D.C. Attorney General’s Office, the Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services, the U.S. Attorney’s Office and law enforcement agencies.
> On May 28, 16-year-old Javon Hale allegedly shot and killed day-laborer Manuel Sanchez in Southeast Washington while out on a one-day pass from the group home Boys Village, where he was serving time for November 2009 drug and robbery convictions. DYRS records show that in the months before he received the pass, Hale’s case manager reported the teen’s attitude was steadily improving. But the case manager and DYRS weren’t aware that as they thought Hale was rehabilitating, the attorney general had obtained on Feb. 12 a warrant to arrest the teenager on new robbery charges. Hale has pleaded not guilty. D.C. Attorney General Peter Nickles did not respond to requests for comment on the case.
> In March 2006, 16-year-old Lafonte Carlton was charged with drug possession
and later released from the city’s juvenile jail on pre-trial supervision under Court Social Services. Three months later, the attorney general’s office obtained a warrant to arrest Carlton on robbery charges, CSS records show. Carlton’s probation officer told the teen to turn himself in on July 26. But he didn’t, and two weeks later, Carlton shot and killed Ricardo Jones during an argument in Northwest. Carlton was released from DYRS a little more than two years after he killed Jones, and within a year was back behind bars, accused of killing two more people in Northwest.
> On March 17, 2009, the U.S. Attorney’s Office received a warrant charging 17-year-old Alexis Santos with murdering Barbara Carl the previous summer in Northwest. Three weeks after the murder warrant was issued, Family Court records show that the court was unaware of it when convicting Santos of robbery and drug possession on April 6, 2009. The murder charge was dropped this spring. On Wednesday, Santos was among nine people arrested on drug charges in a regionwide drug sweep.
Bill Murray, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office, said Thursday that he couldn’t comment on a specific case, but added that his office generally does not play a role in the warrant notification.
“It is up to the court or a law enforcement officer to ensure the warrants are executed and that proper notifications get made through the electronic databases,” Murray said.
