John Lewis (Photo of Baxter County Sheriff’s Office)
John Leroy Lewis should not have been driving the truck that smashed into a van carrying railroad workers in the early morning hours of February 6 near Jonesboro.
In fact, John Leroy Lewis should have been in prison or headed in that direction on the day of the accident but somewhere along the line paperwork did not arrive where it should have, when it should have.
The paperwork glitch led to Lewis’ release without spending a day behind bars on a new 60-month prison sentence that had been handed down Aug. 12 last year.
The accident in which he was involved took the lives of three people, including the 58-year-old Lewis. According to the Arkansas State Police, Lewis was traveling toward Jonesboro on U.S. Highway 63 when his pickup truck reportedly collided head-on with the van that was traveling in the opposite direction.
The state police reported the road was wet at the time of the 5:40 a.m. accident.
Lewis was driving a 2005 Dodge Dakota pickup truck and the other victims were traveling in a 2016 Ford Transit van. The van’s occupants were reported to be employees of a contractor doing work on the Burlington-Northern Railroad at Sedgwick.
The five people injured were all passengers in the van. They were taken to two Jonesboro hospitals for treatment.
Lewis pled guilty to a number of charges last year and was sentenced to five years in prison. The sentencing order was initialed by the prosecutor’s office on Aug. 12, 2024, the day of the court session, signed by the presiding judge Aug. 26 and then filed in the county and circuit and clerk’s office Aug. 29 just after 1 p.m. It did not make it to the jail.
The same prosecutor and judge are responsible for four counties – Baxter, Boone, Marion and Newton – which compounds the amount of paperwork that must be handled.
Jail staff say they could not have received a “certified copy” of the sentencing order until after Aug. 29 when it was filed by the county clerk — 13 days after Lewis had been released when an Act 570 hold was lifted.
It was this gap that resulted in Lewis being released from jail when the Act 570 hold was released.
The inmate tracking system at the jail was checked and it shows Lewis was scanned out to court on the morning of Aug. 12.
Records from the court session in which the plea was entered show that after Circuit Judge John Putman pronounced sentence on Lewis, he was remanded into the custody of the sheriff.
The KTLO, Classic Hits and the Boot News story on Lewis’ Aug. 12 plea can be accessed here.
Another layer of involvement in the Lewis case came when a probation/parole officer in the Arkansas Division of Community Correction’s (ADCC) Mountain Home office put the Act 570 hold on Lewis. He was released from the county jail on Aug. 16 after the hold was lifted.
An Act 570 hold is placed on a person who has violated the terms and conditions of probation or parole. Lewis had an extensive criminal record and there were a significant number of earlier cases in which he might have violated parole or probation.
After the Act 570 release, Lewis should have remained in jail to be transported to the state prison system when bedspace was available, but the jail says they had no idea about the new sentence without the paperwork.
The exact location along the paper trail where things went awry is somewhat difficult to pinpoint because of the complex way the heavy volume of paperwork generated by the circuit court/criminal division is handled, the number of hands it must go through and the large number of criminal cases handled in Baxter County.
Members of the jail staff conducted an extensive search of computer and paper files in February and reported they were unable to locate documents from the court or “any other authority” showing Lewis was to go to prison, so when the ADCC Act 570 hold was lifted on Aug. 16, there was no reason to hold Lewis any longer, and he was released.
When Lewis entered his plea on Aug. 12, 2024, his five-year sentence was to run concurrently and cover the charges in all three of his active cases.
Jail records show Lewis spent from Aug. 9 to Aug. 16 in jail on the Act 570 hold which would have put him behind bars in the Baxter County Detention Center when the new sentence was handed down four days earlier on Aug. 12.
The backup list maintained by the Arkansas Department of Corrections showing how many prison-bound inmates are being held in local jails across the state on any given day does not indicate that Lewis was ever put on the list following his Aug. 12 sentencing.
An officer from Arkansas Division of Community Correction (ADCC) office in Mountain Home sent an email to the jail on Aug. 16, 2024, reminding jail staff to inform Lewis to report to his supervising parole officer within 24 hours after he was released from jail on the Act 570 hold.
Jail staff did an extensive review of the situation and say they are not clear why ADCC sent such a message unless the agency was unaware Lewis had been sentenced to five years in prison on Aug. 12 and thought the Act 570 hold was the only thing keeping him behind bars.
KTLO News obtained the ADCC e-mails by way of a Freedom of Information Act request. The agent/officer who wrote the messages mentions only the Act 570 hold. The new five-year prison sentence was not mentioned.
After the hold was lifted and Lewis let go, a probation/parole agent is reported to have done a home check on him but there was no contact. He was listed as an absconder on Sept. 20 last year.
According to records, the absconder status was still valid when the fatal accident occurred.
Evidence shows something out of the ordinary did happen as the paperwork was making its way through the system.
– Jail staff report not finding any evidence they ever received documents on the new sentence.
– Lewis was never put on the Arkansas Department of Corrections backup list showing he was being held locally until a bed opened in the prison system.
– An e-mail from an ADCC probation/parole officer to the jail reads as if that agency was not aware of the new sentence — and Lewis was released from jail after the ACT 570 hold was lifted even though he was supposed to be on his way to prison.
– Lewis never spent a day behind prison bars on the new sentence, according to available records.
– All of the events/non-events appear to show the court documents or notes were never received by the jail staff after court. The offical signed court sentencing order was received 17 days later.
There were a number of stops along the way as the documents on the new sentence made their way through the system. The documents were prepared in the prosecutor’s office, signed off on by the prosecutor’s office, signed by the presiding judge, sent to the county and circuit clerks’ office to be filed and then should have gone to the detention center.
In addition, another layer was added when ADCC became involved by putting the Act 570 hold on Lewis stemming from an earlier case.
KTLO News was told that staff constraints will not permit the sheriff’s office to have a person in the courtroom during an entire session to record the disposition of cases.
Baxter County and Circuit Clerk Canda Reese told KTLO News that Lewis’ new sentencing orders were file marked in her office Aug. 29. She said when the filing process is completed, the documents are put in a container and picked up by a staff member from the sheriff’s office/detention center.
Reese told KTLO News that since being contacted about the Lewis matter, she has instituted a new step in the procedure for handling documents coming from the circuit court/criminal division and headed to the sheriff’s office.
She said she instructed her staff to prepare a “spreadsheet-type form” on which documents going to the sheriff’s office/detention center will be recorded. The person picking up the documents will be required to sign the sheet showing the paperwork was picked up by the sheriff’s office.
“This new step will give us stronger checks and balances and will serve as proof that documents going to the sheriff’s office were put in the custody of a sheriff’s office employee by this office,” Reese said.
Another major question associated with the Lewis case is: where was he for the almost six months he was free because of the paperwork problem? Prosecutor David Ethredge said that aspect of the case is still being investigated.
The Lewis case unfortunately turned into more than a paperwork glitch in that it did have fatal consequence.
Instead of heading to prison, Lewis was out of jail and free to be driving a truck on U.S. Highway 63 in the early morning hours of Feb. 6 when he crashed into a Ford Transit van killing two people on their way to work. Lewis also died in the accident.
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