By Richard A. Webster and Emily Lane

The Times-Picayune — A 55-year-old man suffering from paranoid schizophrenia was illegally imprisoned 95 days past his official release date, according to the latest in a series of lawsuits alleging people in Louisiana are being systemically overdetained in prisons and jails.

The suit, filed Jan. 14 in Orleans Parish Civil District Court by attorney Emily Posner, claims the state Department of Corrections miscalculated the release date of Keith Bryant, failing to take into account the good-behavior time credit he was owed according to state law.

Instead of being released Jan. 14, 2018, Bryant remained in prison until April 18, the suit said.

“It’s like a scar,” Bryant said of the experience during an interview. “I ain’t never going to forget. It was like abuse.”

NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune detailed in a February report how Louisiana routinely keeps people locked up for weeks, months, some even years, after they are supposed to be released. In response, the Edwards administration last week announced plans to ask the Legislature to move this spring to get the state Department of Corrections, local sheriffs and clerks of court to work together to end the statewide problem.

“We know that there is an issue here and we want to solve it,” Corrections Department spokesman Ken Pastorick said last week.

DOC’s reform efforts, however, are focused primarily on a specific form of overdetention caused by delays in processing involving local sheriffs and clerks of court. Those circumstances do not include cases like Bryant’s, which are allegedly caused by internal errors and miscalculations within DOC.

If the department is serious about addressing this problem, it needs to cast a wider net as opposed to being so narrowly focused, said public defender Stanislav Moroz, who intervened on Bryant’s behalf to secure his release.

“I think it’s really great they’re looking at this issue seriously,” Moroz said. “Unfortunately, I think there is a lot more out there in terms of people who are in prison who, in many cases, don’t even know that they are missing out on an entitlement to early release.”

In response, Pastorick said, “With regard to internal calculation errors, we’re always looking to improve that process. DOC routinely trains its time computation staff on policies, procedures and time computation, and recently updated its training module.”

‘I need help’

Bryant was arrested in April 2017 for stabbing a 17-year-old man during a fight in Algiers. A judge initially declared him incompetent to stand trial and sent Bryant to the state-run forensic psychiatric hospital in Jackson. Three and a half months later, he was declared competent, and pleaded guilty Jan. 14, 2018.

Orleans Parish Criminal District Judge Robin Pittman sentenced Bryant to one year at hard labor in DOC custody, but gave him credit for time served, which at that point was 271 days.

Under Louisiana law, Bryant was eligible for so-called “good-time” credit – or time reduced for good behavior – which meant he only had to serve 75 percent of his sentence, or 274 days. Given that, he should have been released on or before Jan. 14, his lawsuit argues.

“My public defender told me, ‘Mr. Bryant, you take this year, you go home in five days,’” he said.

The lawsuit says DOC officials “failed to correctly calculate Mr. Bryant’s release date and credit him the good-time credit to which he was statutorily entitled.” Instead of setting his release date for Jan. 14, the department scheduled it for April 18. Corrections officials also failed to send Bryant notice of his release date, so he and his attorney weren’t immediately aware of the error.

After a week passed, Bryant began writing letters to DOC officials, explaining his situation. He also requested help from staff at the New Orleans jail, where he was being held, but his requests went unanswered, according to the suit.

“The deputy would come in every night and make the rounds and I said, ‘Sir, I need to show you something.’ I’d show him my court papers. I said, ‘I need help.’ But in there, they don’t care.”

A known problem, lawsuit claims

Previous lawsuits and a legislative auditor’s report have exposed long-standing problems about how the Department of Corrections calculate sentences and set release dates.

“DOC does not have any policies, procedures, manuals, or standardized guidance that outlines the correct way to calculate release dates,” the 2017 audit said. “This leads to inconsistent calculation methods.”

The audit included an example in which two DOC staffers calculated the release date for the same person “and each used a different method. The two results differed by 186 days.” That would be a difference of about six months more in prison.

Bryant’s suit argues the corrections department “failed to take appropriate action to cure this systemic problem.”

The department spent $3.6 million to replace its antiquated data system in 2015, but took that new system down less than two months later because DOC didn’t properly test it or train staff, the auditor wrote. The department is updating that system now, but that is expected to take 3 to 5 years.”

Bryant, with the help of public defender Moroz, was eventually released April 18, more than three months past when he was legally entitled to his freedom, according to his lawsuit.

Bryant said he walked out of the jail after midnight wearing only a pair of pants and shoes without laces. Deputies didn’t give him a shirt or his wallet, phone or identification, he said. He was told those items had not yet been delivered from Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel, where he was previously housed.

His sister and fiancé picked him up at South Broad and Tulane avenues and brought him home.

When Bryant woke up the next morning, the first thing he did was walk into the kitchen and open his “icebox,” he said. He wasn’t hungry. He just wanted to look inside.

“Even if there ain’t nothing but one egg in there, it’s yours, can’t nobody tell you, ‘You can’t have it,’” Bryant said. “It’s a good feeling, waking up, my air-conditioner blowing, putting on my slippers.”

Bryant, who has two children and three grandchildren, said he is trying to focus on the future, to move on with his life, but the three months he says he spent in jail past his release date have been hard to shake.

“I don’t wish that on no one,” he said. “One hour is too much.”

Read the original story in the Times-Picayune here.