Correction: After an Aug. 6 hearing, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Johnson set bond for Tony Perry, a convicted rapist and parolee facing new rape allegations. The judge's last name was incorrect in this article.
A convicted rapist and parolee facing new rape allegations was released on bond last week from the Pulaski County jail despite a new state Department of Community Correction policy that should have kept him in jail pending a parole-revocation hearing.
Tony Perry, who was arrested and charged on June 30 in the rape of a 14-year old girl in North Little Rock earlier this year, was released Wednesday after posting a $40,000 bond and is at large. He is scheduled for a parole revocation hearing next Tuesday.
Perry, 50, was held for 38 days at the Pulaski County jail on no bond. But after an Aug. 6 hearing, Pulaski County Circuit Judge Leon Holmes set bail for Perry, which was met, and he went free.
That shouldn’t have happened, according to Department of Community Correction policy.
Whenever a parolee is charged with a new violent or sexual felony, the department’s policy states that a revocation hearing will be sought.
New policy mandates from the Board of Corrections on June 21 stated that any new felony charge should trigger a request for a revocation hearing and also states that parole officials are required to place parolees awaiting such a hearing on a parole hold in a jail.
But according to Lt. Carl Minden, Pulaski County sheriff’s office spokesman, no request for a parole hold or a parole-violation warrant from the Parole Board came through on Perry.
Perry, who was convicted in 1991 of the rape of a 9-year-old, paroled out of prison in July 1997 only to go in and out of prison on new charges and parole violations. He was most recently paroled in September 2011 after serving less than a year of two concurrent 84-month sentences for felony theft by receiving.
His most recent arrest came after a girl told police that Perry “asked her to lie in the bed and talk with him” at his home and then, after asking her about her sex life, forced himself on her.
Typically, whenever a parolee is arrested, his name goes through the Arkansas Crime Information Center, which then alerts parole officers that a parolee has been detained, Minden said.
In cases like Perry’s, Minden said, a parole officer will then contact the jail in which the parolee is being held, if the parolee is still there, and request a hold be placed on him. That didn’t happen with Perry.
Sheila Sharp, the interim director for Community Correction Department, the state agency that oversees parole and probation, said that the jail shouldn’t have released Perry.
Sharp sent a letter to all sheriff’s offices on Aug. 1 asking that any parolees facing new felony charges or any sex crimes be held until the parole office could arrange a revocation hearing.
According to Minden, Sheriff Doc Holladay didn’t see that letter until Monday.
On Aug. 2, the Parole Board signed off on a parole warrant on Perry, according to John Felts, executive director of the Parole Board.
Sharp said she thinks the department’s blanket request to sheriff’s offices for help in enforcing the new policy should have kept Perry in lockup.
“Our office talked with the sheriff this morning,” Sharp said, “and they were aware of our policy. I’m not sure what the breakdown is on why he was allowed to bond out, but we’re trying [fix it].”
According to Minden, the sheriff’s office doesn’t have the authority to put an indiscriminate hold on an offender. The office needs a specific request.
“[Parole officers] get contacted when a parolee is brought to the jail, so why not put a hold on yourself? We can’t do that,” Minden said. “If they’re waiting for a revocation hearing, that’s fine, then go ahead and put the parole hold on there. We can’t effect a parole hold.”
Perry’s release isn’t the first instance of finger pointing between the Pulaski County sheriff’s office and parole officials.
Days after a June 17 story was published in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette that illustrated the pattern of parole violations and new criminal behavior by an eight-time absconder, Darrell Dennis, who went on to be arrested in the May 10 kidnapping and murder of 18-year-old Forrest Abrams in Little Rock, the parole system’s spokesman, Rhonda Sharp, told reporters that the jail was partially to blame for releasing Dennis less than 30 hours before Abrams was found dead.
According to parole officials, Dennis, who was in jail after his May 1 arrest on his seventh parole absconder warrant, was supposed to be sent to a technical violator’s program but was allowed out of jail after parole officials sent a letter to jail officials stating that his parole hold was lifted.
Parole officials have said that the jail refused to hold cases like Dennis and that jail staff members called parole officers telling them they were going to release Dennis. Holladay disagreed with their understanding of what happened and said his jail officers do call parole officers, but merely to remind them they still have a parolee and want to know what will happen with them.
Several investigations and reviews involving legislative committees, Gov. Mike Beebe’s office and the state police began after the June 17 story and are examining the parole agency’s handling of the Dennis case, as well as other problems in the Community Correction Department’s policies and procedures.
On Monday, Minden said that the Aug. 2 warrant for Perry’s parole violation wasn’t entered into the state’s criminal system until Monday.
In short, Minden said, there was no way to know that the state’s Community Correction Department wanted him held.
When asked what took so long for Perry’s warrant to be issued or for his revocation hearing to be scheduled, Sharp said it was difficult to say.
For more than a month, Perry sat in jail, yet no requests for a revocation hearing were made and no parole warrants were sought.
A “critical incident report,” a report filed by a parole area manager noting an offense and one that starts the process for a revocation hearing, wasn’t filed until Aug. 1, according to Sharp.
The Little Rock area parole office, the state’s largest, has experienced nearly 50 percent turnover in the past year and is in the midst of a restructuring. Sharp said she has had to divert parole officers from other areas to come in and help share the caseload.
“Little Rock has been overwhelmed. We’ve got a lot going on over there trying to get caught up,” Sharp said. “They have a lot to do and a lot of turnover, and they need a lot of help … my guess is that was the delay in getting it done.”
When asked whether she thought that parole officers didn’t move immediately on Perry because he was being held on no bond by order of the court, Sharp said it is “very possible” that the court’s hold played a role.
She said that bringing Perry into custody and getting him to attend a revocation hearing is one of her department’s top priorities.
“We’ve got everyone looking for him,” Sharp said. “We won’t stop until we [catch him].”
Front Section, Pages 1 on 08/13/2013