FLORIDA PRISON BREAKOUT WITHOUT HAVING TO BREAK OUT

Forged court documents used by 2 convicted murderers as ‘get out of jail free cards’

Judge Perry was exactly right when he said, "It's very ingenious. It's a breakout without having to break out."

FORGED FLORIDA COURT DOCUMENTS BLAMED FOR MISTAKEN RELEASE OF TWO CONVICTED MURDERERS
One of the escapees had tried to forge release papers before

By Elizabeth Chuck

NBC News
October 18, 2013

One of two convicted killers who walked out of a Florida prison thanks to forged court documents had tried once before to escape with bogus papers.

Joseph Jenkins, 34, was released from the Franklin Correctional Institution in Carabelle, Fla., on Sept. 27 after falsified paperwork bearing the signatures of a judge and members of the State Attorney's Office flew through the Florida Department of Corrections and the Orange County Clerk of Courts. But in 2011, a similar counterfeit document got flagged and didn't make it through as easily.

It is unclear who filed the forged documents for Jenkins and for Charles Walker, the other escapee, who was released from the same prison on Oct. 8. Misty Cash, deputy communications director for the Florida Department of Corrections, said an open investigation was underway as law enforcement scour Orange County in a massive manhunt for the two convicted murderers after learning Tuesday of their release.

The first attempt to change Jenkins' fate of life in prison came in June 2011, according to The Orlando Sentinel, when documents were filed asking the Orange County courthouse to reduce his sentence.

Leesa Bainbridge, spokeswoman for the Orange County Clerk of Courts, told The Sentinel that the papers were passed along to state prison officials but didn't result in the release or reduction of a sentence for the convict. Bainbridge didn't know who filed the paperwork in 2011 or why it had been rejected.

The motion that got Jenkins freed on Sept. 27 was filed in August. Walker's came a month later.

According to Judge Belvin Perry — who gained fame as the judge in the Casey Anthony criminal trial and whose signature was forged on the documents — the inmates had to have had help from outside prison.

"Anyone with any computer skills can look at a document and take that document off of the Internet lift the signature and paste it somewhere else," he told NBC's TODAY show. "It's very ingenious. It's a breakout without having to break out."

A third Florida convict, Jeffrey Forbes, tried a similar scheme earlier this year, but failed, authorities said. Forbes is serving time for killing a police officer; he tried to use forged documents to get out of prison but was stopped in his tracks by an alert detective.

Jenkins and Walker's release, which the Orange County Sheriff's Office was notified about on Tuesday, sent prison officials and prosecutors into a scramble to determine whether any other prisoners had been freed early.

The Florida State Attorney's Office said in a statement Thursday, "It is now clear that the use of forged court documents to obtain release from prison is an ongoing threat."

Jenkins was found guilty of first-degree murder in the 1998 killing and botched home invasion of an Orlando father of six named Roscoe Pugh. It was Pugh's family that first alerted the State Attorney's Office to Jenkins' release, according to The Associated Press.

State Attorney Jeffrey Ashton said Pugh's family contacted his office, prompting them to review the paperwork and discover it was bogus, then notify law enforcement, reported The AP.

"We never thought of the possibility of this happening due to he was sentenced to two 50-year sentences plus life," Pugh's children, who said they witnessed their father "murdered in cold blood," told TODAY in a statement. "The event [has] always played over and over again in my head since I was 9 til now."

They added that Jenkins had "no remorse" for the fact that he killed their father in front of them.

After discovering the discrepancy in Jenkins' paperwork, the State Attorney's Office later found Walker's release documents were also falsified.

"It is now clear that the use of forged court documents to obtain release from prison is an ongoing threat which all law enforcement, prosecutors, judges, court clerks and prison officials must address and stop," Ashton told the AP.

Walker, 34, was convicted of second-degree murder in the 1999 slaying of Cedric Slater, 23, in Orange County. He told investigators that Slater was bullying him and he fired three bullets intending to scare him.

Both men have lengthy rap sheets which include arrests for drug-related crimes and violent crimes. They're believed to be in the Orange County area, where they have relatives and friends, but the Orange County Sheriff's Office does not believe they are traveling together.

"We have no indication to lead us to believe that they're together. They were released on different dates," said Capt. Angelo Nieves.

Walker's and Jenkins' cases are not the first in which have scammed their way out of prison. There have been several similar cases in the past decade, including three inmates in Wisconsin who were charged with using forged papers to reduce their prison time in 2012 and a man suspected of escaping twice from Florida prisons in two years using forged documents.