Jail Break

Miami Police Lt. Victor Estefan neared the end of his watch on March 30, 1988 when he spotted a gray Mazda traveling through Little Havana with its lights off at 9:25 p.m. What started as a routine traffic stop ended with Estefan fatally shot, just blocks from the 20-year veteran’s home.

Dennis and Douglas Escobar, two Sandinista soldiers from Nicaragua, were in the stolen Mazda when Estefan spotted them on Calle Ocho. After a short chase, Douglas pulled into a residential yard and said to his brother, “If he gets out, shoot him.” After Estefan jumped out, Dennis allegedly shot him with a .357 magnum. Douglas then backed into Estefan’s patrol car and sped away. The Escobars threw the gun in a canal, ditched the car and headed west, where the next month they were arrested after another shootout, this time with a California Highway Patrolman who survived.

 The Escobars are two of more than a thousand inmates in Miami-Dade jails who have been in the county’s custody longer than a year while awaiting trial, sentencing or transport to prison. Such extended stays aggravate overcrowding at the jail and cost taxpayers some $20 million each year.

According to a report compiled by the Miami-Dade Corrections and Rehabilitation Department, which oversees the jail, there were five inmates who will have been in the county’s custody for more than 12 years by the end of 2010. As of December 7, 2009, when the report was compiled, there were 1,234 inmates who had been in jail more than a year. Those inmates comprised roughly 20 percent of the jail population, which at last count was 6,300.

The jail has five facilities with a rated capacity for 5,645 beds. Yet on average, 7,000 inmates reside there awaiting trial or serving sentences of 364 days or less. The overcrowding will decline with fewer extended-stay inmates, says Tim Ryan, the Miami-Dade jails director.

“The courts in fact are not moving them fast enough,” Ryan says, pointing out that of the 200 most egregious cases, all but 33 are being handled by private attorneys. “There’s a whole other system that goes on,” he explains. “The private attorney doesn’t get any money unless he goes back and forth to jail. From my standpoint, justice delayed is justice denied.”

[Taxpayer’s Tab]

The American Civil Liberties Union won’t address the issue, and county Mayor Carlos Alvarez looks on the bright side. “[The] jail population is the lowest it’s been in years,” he says, despite ongoing overcrowding and inmate costs exceeding twice that of prisons.

Last year it cost an average of $134.27 per day to house an inmate in the Miami-Dade County jail, says jails spokeswoman Janelle Hall. In contrast, the publicly-run prisons spent $55.09 per day per inmate, says Marta Villacorta, who is the Region IV director of Florida’s prison system. Privately-run prisons spent $48.63 a day, or nearly a third of the expenditure to house someone in the local jail.

The bill for 1,234 inmates equals roughly $60.5 million a year—when you multiply $134.27 every day for 365 days. However, Ryan estimates the taxpayer would save only a third of that if they all moved out. The savings would equal about $20 million a year, he says, explaining certain expenses such as utilities and personnel remain constant regardless of the number of inmates.

The longer someone stays in jail, the higher the bill. Long-term inmates receive annual checkups, including mammograms and pap smears for women and prostate exams for men.

In the last fiscal year, Jackson Memorial Hospital—which is bleeding money and laying off medical personnel—spent about $74 million a year caring for Miami-Dade inmates, says spokeswoman Jennifer M. Piedra.

Part of the problem lies in maxed-out courthouses and the delay tactics of defense attorneys. “Delaying sometimes is a strategy, hoping and praying that a case will fall apart. But that’s no way to service your client,” acknowledges veteran defense attorney Richard Sharpstein. “That’s a failure of someone responding to constitutional rights and it’s a failure of the lawyer.”

Some defendants also orchestrate delays. Miami-Dade prosecutor Abbe Rifkin points to Harrell Braddy, who fired his attorney whenever his case neared trial. In 1998, Braddy threw a five-year-old girl to the alligators in the Everglades to get rid of evidence. She was alive at the time, says Rifkin, who succeeded in sending Braddy to death row after he went through 10 lawyers and delayed his trial nine years.

Rifkin also handles the case involving the inmate with the longest stay—Joseph Toomer, booked into jail on February 23, 1998 for first-degree murder. In 2000, a jury convicted Toomer on two murders but he still sits in jail fighting his conviction, claiming he had ineffective assistance of counsel.

“Clarence Darrow couldn’t have gotten him off,” Rifkin says. “This guy is manipulating the system.”

Stanford Blake, administrative judge for the criminal division of Miami-Dade’s Circuit Court, says although frustrating, some cases have their own lifecycle. Capital cases are particularly nettlesome because the stakes are so high, he adds. “As the Supreme Court says, ‘Death is different.’”

[Part of the Solution]

Death cases aren’t the only ones clogging the system. In January 2006, Blake met with the State Attorney and Public Defender to clear the backlog of non-capital cases by establishing the Repeat Offender Court. ROC exclusively handles cases involving habitual violent felony offenders, violent career criminals and people who re-offend after their release from prison. Known as “Red Files” in the State Attorney’s Office, the legislature deemed these cases receive mandatory sentences of five to 40 years without parole.

“We found in our research that those cases, where someone was charged with an armed robbery and had a bad prior record or an occupied burglary, they weren’t being moved through because there was no incentive to move them,” says Blake, adding that the new court quickly reduced 18-month delays by half.

Eleventh Circuit Chief Judge Joel H. Brown recognizes the cost of delays and regularly meets with the top prosecutor and public defender to expedite cases. In February he started a third back-up court to help resolve more complex criminal cases.

“It’s an ongoing process to make sure those people who are in custody for an extended period of time are afforded their due process, as well as victims get their day in court,” Brown says.

[Resolving the Escobar Case]

As for the Escobar case, Ronald Lowy, the defense attorney who successfully handled Douglas Escobar’s appeal 13 years ago, expresses shock that no one is pushing for a speedy resolution. “I think,” Lowy says, “you have a formula for two defendants who may eventually die in the county jail of old age.”

Former prosecutor Abe Laeser admits it’s a difficult case because the two defendants fight with their attorneys as trial nears. “That worked for one brother several times,” Laeser says. “He went through multiple teams of defense attorneys. He’s probably been through five sets. The other brother—he’s crazy. What happens is he sits there and makes moaning noises or something else strange.”