Man Mistakenly Released From Regina Courthouse
Wednesday, September 16, 2009 at 12:52
A man who should be in jail is instead out on the streets, after a mix-up at the provincial courthouse in Regina.
A spokeswoman for the Ministry of Justice, Laur’Lei Silzer, says 26-year-old Curtis Russell Francis should have been returned to the Regina Provincial Correctional Centre after his Sept. 1 court appearance.
Francis was on remand for mischief and assaulting a peace officer, as well as failing to appear in court and breaching his probation.
Silzer says confusion arose after Francis was taken to the police station to be interviewed, and then spent the night in police cells before going to court to face some new charges.
“Where the communication breakdown came was that because he was brought in by the police service and not by the usual transportation sheriff, court staff assumed that he was a new arrest, and processed him as such. So when the judge who heard the (new) charges to start with released him until his court date, there was no evidence or record that he needed to be returned to the correctional centre, which he should have been,” Silzer says.
The mistake was discovered yesterday, after a call from the courthouse to the jail to arrange Francis’ next court appearance.
At least a dozen people have been mistakenly released by Saskatchewan’s provincial courthouses or correctional centres since 2006.
Silzer says incidents like this happen for a variety of reasons, including paperwork mix-ups and mistaken identities.
Francis is now considered “unlawfully at large”, so if you know of his whereabouts, you are asked to call either the Regina Police Service or Crimestoppers.
He is described as 6’0″ and 174 lbs., with brown hair and brown eyes.