State says Jenkins’ crimes not its fault

8-21-2014 Nebraska:

Nebraska can’t be held liable for what the felon did outside prison, the Attorney General’s Office argues

As another victim’s family sues over the release from prison of Nikko Jenkins, state attorneys are asking a federal judge to dismiss a similar wrongful death suit.

The Nebraska Attorney General’s Office argues that the state had no control over — nor a duty to exercise control over — Jenkins once he was released from prison.

Nor did the state have much choice but to release Jenkins, the state argues.

“An inmate’s properly calculated mandatory discharge date is precisely that: mandatory,” wrote David Lopez, an assistant under Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning. “State (officials) could not have anticipated Jenkins’ murderous rampage, nor were they subject to any legal duty to do so.”

The families of two of Jenkins’ victims vehemently disagree. Jenkins had vowed to kill and to drink the blood of innocents when he was released from prison.

Three weeks after his July 30, 2013, release, Jenkins made good on his murderous promises — killing Jorge Cajiga-Ruiz and Juan Uribe-Pena on Aug. 11, Curtis Bradford on Aug. 19 and Andrea Kruger on Aug. 21. He is awaiting a death-penalty hearing.

In two lawsuits filed this week in federal and state court, Bradford’s family aired several allegations that were filed in a previous lawsuit by Kruger’s family.

Attorneys for Bradford’s mother, Velita Glasgow, said the state abdicated its duty to protect its citizens when it released Jenkins. The state let Jenkins go, even after Jenkins begged to be committed to the Lincoln Regional Center for fear that he would kill.

Glasgow’s attorneys, Judith Wells, Tim Ashford and William Harris, also alleged that Jenkins was released early after then-Corrections Director Robert Houston ordered him and numerous other inmates to be transferred from inpatient mental health treatment to outpatient treatment. The same claim was made by Kruger’s family.

Harris said he has been told of Houston’s purported order but has yet to receive state documentation to buttress that claim.

A committee looking into Jenkins’ release is expected to scrutinize that issue this fall.

The lawsuits also contend that authorities — from judges to corrections officials to police — didn’t act on Jenkins’ repeated threats to kill.

“Words can’t really describe how someone with those issues was allowed out and allowed to take multiple lives,” Harris said Wednesday. “The system broke down at the state level, the county level and the local level.”

Local law enforcement officials have questioned whether they were expected to put Jenkins under surveillance and monitor his movements from the moment he got out. A judge presented with one of Jenkins’ ramblings turned it over to sheriff’s deputies.

And in a brief filed last week in federal court, the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office argued that authorities could not be found liable for failing to prevent Jenkins’ bloodshed. Writing on behalf of the state, Lopez cited several cases in which appellate courts have thrown out wrongful-death claims filed against the government over a killer’s actions.

“There is no constitutional right to be protected by the state against being murdered by criminals or madmen,” Lopez wrote, quoting from a 1982 appellate court ruling.

Lopez also pointed to a 1980 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the matter of a California parolee who murdered a 15-year-old girl.

In that case, the high court ruled that a parole board was not responsible for the killing committed by the parolee, a sex offender.

In essence, the court ruled, state officials didn’t commit the slaying and couldn’t be expected to prevent it.

“Her life was taken by the parolee five months after his release,” the high court wrote in that case. “He was in no sense an agent of the parole board.”

The state’s attorneys pointed to another ruling — out of the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals in 1989 — in which a woman was abducted and raped within a day of a prisoner’s release.

In that 1989 case, the court held: “There is no general substantive due process right to be protected against the release of criminals from confinement, even if that release violates state law.”

In turn, the Nebraska Attorney General’s Office argued, the families of Jenkins’ victims are not entitled to damages.

“Particularly given that (the victims were) murdered by Nikko Jenkins three weeks after his lawful and mandatory release date,” Lopez wrote.

Authorities have alleged that Jenkins and his sister, Erica, killed Bradford after leading him to think that they and Bradford were going to commit a robbery.

Bradford and Jenkins had been hanging out that night — the two were shown in a photo posted on Facebook.

Harris and attorneys for the families of Bradford and Kruger have alleged that state officials had a duty to treat Jenkins in prison, to extend his sentence based on his aberrant behavior and, above all, to act on his promises to kill.

“In a nutshell,” Harris said, “the state failed to protect Mr. Bradford.”

A state legislative committee is exploring Jenkins’ release — along with the department’s unrelated release of hundreds of prisoners years before they were supposed to get out. Two hearings are planned for September. ..Source.. by Todd Cooper