No Charges to Be Filed In Prison Sentence Screw-Up, Nebraskawatchdog.Org, (November 24, 2014).

The Nebraska article depicts the frustration of an attorney general with a client state agency No Charges to Be Filed In Prison Sentence Screw-Up, Nebraskawatchdog.Org, November 24, 2014. 

Bruning: No charges to be filed in prison sentence screw-up By Deena Winter / November 24, 2014 / 8 Comments

LINCOLN, Neb. — An investigation into the prison sentence miscalculation scandal concluded that while state employees may have been incompetent, lazy and downright bad at their jobs, no crimes were committed.

“These were lazy bureaucrats disinterested in doing their job, which is not criminal,” said Attorney General Jon Bruning. “There’s no bombshell. This is a story of a very small handful of government workers who didn’t do their jobs and created a mess.”

Bruning announced the decision not to press charges Monday at a joint press conference with Lancaster County Attorney Joe Kelly, who also looked at the state Highway Patrol investigation and came to the same conclusion. Bruning also released a thick binder of investigative documents to reporters, in the interest of transparency.

The prosecutors looked at charging a handful of state employees, past and present, with official misconduct or obstructing government operations, but couldn’t prove intent. The maximum for both charges is one year in prison.

“Incompetence or negligence is not a crime under the applicable statutes,” Bruning said. “What the facts showed me was that this was incompetence, ineptitude, negligence — but not criminal intention.”

The investigation was launched after the Omaha World-Herald reported in June the prison system has been incorrectly calculating sentences for some prisoners for nearly 20 years, even after 2002 and 2013 state Supreme Court rulings clarifying the proper process. Hundreds of prisoners were released too early or scheduled to be released too early.

Bruning said he was embarrassed, disappointed and angered by the level of incompetence displayed by some state employees, particularly former lead attorney George Green, who retired rather than be fired.

“If I thought we could ethically bring charges, we would,” Bruning said. “The incompetence displayed in this case does not reach the level of a crime.”

Kelly said one of the problems is corrections employees still do some of the sentence calculations by hand — the same way they did it in the 1980s. He said there should be a way to completely computerize the calculations and eliminate human error.

Four corrections employees have already been disciplined in connection with the scandal. Bruning said the two prison attorneys who lost their jobs deserved to lose their jobs.

The attorney general aimed his harshest criticism at the former lead prisons attorney, Green, calling him lazy. Before the prison scandal broke, he said he’d “heard stories” about Green being “perennially unprepared and unhelpful if you ran into him at corrections.”

“He was not known as a bright light for a long time,” Bruning said.

He was less critical of former records manager Jeannene Douglass, who urged corrections employees to keep calculating sentences the incorrect way they had been, noting inmates wouldn’t complain because they’d serve less time and it would be a “real mess” to have to recalculate sentences. He called her an “honest actor moving in the right direction” but one of those people who’s “always certain but seldom right.”

Bruning was more forgiving of his former Assistant Attorney General Linda Willard, who sent the Supreme Court opinion to corrections employees, alerting them they may be calculating sentences incorrectly. He said she brought the issue to their attention, but they opted not to heed her advice.

“She said clearly you need to do it the right way,” Bruning said. “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make ’em drink.”

Bruning said there are still plenty of good people working in corrections. “This is the classic few bad apples spoiling the bunch,” Bruning said.

Three state employees refused to be interviewed by criminal investigators: Douglass, Green and former prison attorney Sharon Lindgren. They were subpoenaed to testify before a special legislative committee looking into the matter.

Bruning said he felt the prisons committee, led by Sen. Steve Lathrop, D-Omaha, got “badly diverted.”

“I think at one point it ended up just being theater. I thought the whole subpoena of the governor was odd and unnecessary,” he said. “Many times it seemed like it was a made-for- media moment.”

Criminal investigators didn’t interview the governor, Bruning said.

“This was a criminal investigation, and he was nowhere near that,” he said. “He wasn’t even in the realm of possibility.”