Thomas Breen photo
Demetrius Anderson with his attorney, Mike Dolan.
Demetrius Anderson may have to leave his two jobs, his condo in Westville, his local “church family,” and the stable, crime-free life he has built for himself in the Elm City — and go to prison. All because of an apparent miscommunication over a decade ago between the Connecticut state judicial system and the federal court in Philadelphia.
His hope now is the federal government — maybe even President Donald Trump — will cut him a break.
On Feb. 28, Paul Diamond, a judge with the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, signed a warrant for Anderson’s arrest for his failure to serve an outstanding 16-month federal sentence.
The sentence dates to a crime that occurred 16 years ago.
The federal court issued that sentence to Anderson, now a 43-year-old employee for the city’s parks department, in 2005 after he pleaded guilty to two felony counts of possessing and passing counterfeit currency and one count of identity theft while living in Pennsylvania. He committed the crimes in 2003.
Anderson never served that federal sentence. Even though he thought he had.
That’s because he served a three-year sentence in state prison in Connecticut after pleading guilty to similar but separate charges in New Haven in 2005.
He said he believed he was serving his state and federal sentences concurrently while locked up in Webster Correctional Institution in Cheshire.
After finishing that state sentence in November 2006, the state judicial system didn’t remand him to federal custody in Philadelphia. He said no one reached out to him and said he had to report to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania to serve more time for the federal offense.
He thought he had done his time. He set about rebuilding his life in New Haven.
Thirteen years later, U.S. marshals came pounding on his door in New Haven last week, claiming that he had evaded arrest and demanding that he report back to Pennsylvania to serve 16 months in federal prison.
Local attorney Michael Dolan said he has been in touch with Philadelphia federal attorneys, and has urged them to reconsider requiring Anderson to serve federal time so long after he was sentenced and so long after he served time in state prison on similar charges.
“It would appear that the goals of the criminal justice system have been met,” he said about his thoroughly rehabilitated client.
Dolan said he plans on filing a petition to President Trump for a commutation of Anderson’s federal sentence.
Robert Clark, a spokesman for the U.S. Marshals Service, Eastern District of Pennsylvania, told the Independent that the marshals unearthed Anderson’s outstanding federal sentence and the slip-up between the Connecticut state judicial system and the Pennsylvania federal district court during a routine audit.
“During an internal audit of custody detainers by the U.S. Marshals in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania,” he said, “a case dating back to 2005 was found in which a sentenced man, Jermaine Demetrius Anderson, had been sent to Connecticut to face state charges. After a conviction and sentence served in Connecticut, Anderson should have been held for transfer back to federal custody; instead, he was mistakenly released.
“Upon the Marshals providing this information to a federal judge, the court issued a bench warrant for Anderson for failure to serve an outstanding federal sentence. Anderson was arrested in Connecticut March 20, released on bond and ordered to appear in U.S. district court in Philadelphia April 4.
“As the enforcement arm of the federal courts, the Marshals ensure that individuals with federal warrants are brought to face justice. Ultimately, the federal court system will make a determination on Anderson’s outstanding federal sentence.”
Dolan called Anderson’s case a prime example of someone who committed a crime, took responsibility by pleading guilty, served time in prison, and has subsequently successfully rehabilitated himself.
“He’s been crime free, drug free, has employment,” Dolan said. “And now they want to take him back into custody.”
“It’s called corrections,” Anderson said. “I corrected myself. I don’t want pity. I just want people to be ethical.”
“I wasn’t evading,” he continued. “I wasn’t on the run.”
Instead, in the 13 years since he got out of state prison, he’s done just the opposite, he said. He’s built a stable, happy life for himself in New Haven.
Anderson worked for four years as a store manager at Walmart. In 2012 he landed a seasonal job with the city’s parks department as a caretaker for the Lighthouse Point Park carousel.
In addition to his city job, Anderson works full-time in human resources for a downtown nonprofit.
He owns a two-bedroom condo in Westville, and is a proud member of the Joy Temple Church on Howard Avenue.
“I turned my life around,” he said. “I am not a product of recidivism.”
Ten years after his release from state prison, Anderson’s life received devastating shock. His younger brother murdered both of his parents and his sister in Richmond, Va. in 2016. Anderson had to fly down South to identify his family members’ bodies.
For support, Anderson leaned heavily on his “church family,” a distant aunt, and domestic violence counselors from BHcare.
“I don’t know what I would have done without them,” he said about the domestic violence counselors.
Despite the trauma of losing his family, he continued on with his new life. He stayed out of trouble with the law. He returned to his city and human resources jobs.
Now, after 13 years of freedom, after rebuilding his life in New Haven following three years in prison for nonviolent crimes committed while in his 20s, Anderson faces a year-plus return to prison. Several states away from his New Haven home.
After the marshals delivered last week the arrest warrant for a crime and a sentence he thought was over a decade behind him, Anderson said, he thought the same thing he thought after learning about the death of his parents and sister. “Oh Lord, why me?”