When the newspaper gets it wrong

The story's title in Friday's Star Tribune reads:

"Suspect is mistakenly released before burglary charges filed"

Mistake?

The last paragraph of the story says, "She was arrested Tuesday and booked into the Hennepin County Jail to await charges on three burglaries. But because of a clerical error, she was released Thursday 12 minutes before a judge signed and filed the documents charging her with the crimes."

Clerical error?

Let me educate Tim Harlow, the reporter, how this works. A person is arrested by the police on "probable cause," in this case burglary. The time someone can be held on probable cause is 36 hours, starting at midnight the night of the arrest or 48 hours from the time of arrest if a judge has not reviewed the case. The purpose of this probable cause hold is to give the police time to investigate the case and present the case to the city or county attorney for them to charge out the case. If the city or county attorney doesn't believe there is a case the suspect gets released. The longest a person can be held without a formal charge is the 36 or 48 hour probable cause time. This is a protection for citizens to protect them from indefinite confinement without being charged.

When the police arrest someone on probable cause they are given a copy of the PC (probable cause) form with the time on the form that the PC time is up. Usually the jail gives a courtesy call to the arresting agency the day before letting them know that a detainee's PC time is coming up the following day. Finally when the PC time is up the jail calls the county and city attorneys offices to see if charges are pending. If they are the person remains in custody, if not they get released 36 or 48 hours expired. Thousands of people arrested on a probable cause hold get released 36 or 48 hours expired every year. This is a common place event.

The burglar released in Tim Harlow's story's 48 hours expired at 10:15 A.M., she was released at 11:43 A.M., ample time to have her charged.The time we could legally detain the inmate without charges was up, and the Minneapolis Police FAILED to present the case to the county attorney in time.

So if there was a "clerical error" it was on the side of the MPD, not the jail as it would appear to the average reader. We simply followed all of the rules in place to give the police time to get the case charged and the ones to protect citizens from wrongful detention. This was no "mistake," this was the only legal option the jail had in a lawful society. A society that doesn't allow a citizen to be held indefinately without a charge, there are time limits and those limits were up.