FILE - This undated file photo provided by the Colorado Department of Corrections shows paroled inmate Evan Spencer Ebel. A clerical error allowed Ebel, suspected of killing Colorado’s prisons chief, to be released from custody about four years early, officials said Monday, April 1, 2013. (AP Photo/Colorado Department of Corrections, File) (The Associated Press)
DENVER – Court transcripts show that the man suspected of killing Colorado's corrections chief knew he was being sentenced to four more years in prison for punching a guard in the face.
But a paperwork and communication mistake in court led to Evan Spencer Ebel's release in January.
The transcripts show Ebel told the judge he'd be 33 when he was released, and asked for a more lenient sentence. The judge told him at the 2008 hearing that four years on top of an already under way eight-year sentence was fair.
The judge, however, didn't use the word consecutive, and the court clerk didn't write it down. So prison officials let Ebel serve the term at the same time as his previous sentence. Ebel died in a shootout with Texas deputies.
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