Nearly three years ago, Lake Superior Court Judge Diane Ross Boswell imposed a 10-year sentence for Charles Taylor for aggravated battery, with six years served in the Indiana Department of Correction and four years in Lake County Community Corrections.
When prison authorities transferred him to the Community Transition Program on Oct. 21, 2013, where he was housed at Lake County Community Corrections, there was no paperwork that included the original sentencing order indicating that Taylor, of Gary, had four years to serve in LCCC.
So when Taylor was told he was being released Feb. 14, 2014, he told the judge he asked LCCC authorities to check to make sure, and they said he was free to go. “They let me up,” said Taylor, who said he has a job lined up and can pay the $2,085 he owes in back fees to the alternative sentencing program.
“I understand you thought you were being released but you knew you had more time (to do),” Boswell said.
A few weeks after his unauthorized release, Taylor, 25, was charged with murder in the March 10, 2014, shooting death of Brian Cooper during a Gary robbery and with aggravated battery in the injury of a second person who is blind as a result of the incident. U.S. Marshals arrested Taylor in Memphis on May 27, 2014.
Defense attorney Derla Gross argued that her client should be allowed to serve his remaining time on an electronic monitor because he was released and didn’t escape or flee the program.
Deputy prosecutor Michael Toth said Taylor knew he faced a penalty if he walked out of LCCC because of the sentence he received in April 2012.
While he was in Lake County Community Corrections in the Community Transition Program through the Indiana Department of Correction, Taylor had not been showing up for work, community corrections official Missy Reeder said. Because he was AWOL from work, he was returned to the residential component of LCCC for those violations, Reeder said. Reeder asked that Taylor be expelled from community corrections and returned to the DOC to finish his four-year sentence.
Boswell sentenced Taylor to three years in DOC, but he will remain in the Lake County Jail because his jury trial in the murder case is scheduled for May 4. Taylor has pleaded not guilty in that case.
Reeder told the judge that community corrections officials now check the online court docket on each individual who is slated for release to verify the sentence and ensure no one is prematurely released.
Ruth Ann Krause is a freelance reporter
