Grieving mum ‘heartbroken’ after her husband’s suspected killer was released from prison due to ‘typographical error’

Written by Melissa Koenig for Dailymail.Com

23:38 June 26, 2024, updated 00:34 June 27, 2024

• Amarion Sanders, 22, was being held on $1 million bail
• He was released when court officials made a typo on Monday evening

A grieving mother was left “heartbroken” after her husband’s suspected killer was released from jail due to a “typographical error”.

Amarion Sanders, 22, was being held in the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, jail on $1 million bail ahead of the August 2023 murder trial of 39-year-old Derek Driskill.

However, he was freed Monday night after his case was “inadvertently dismissed” in Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court documents, prompting multiple law enforcement agencies to search the city of Cleveland and bring him back behind bars, Fox 8 reports.

“Unfortunately, due to a clerical error by the court, the defendant was released from the county jail where he was being held because he failed to post bond,” the judge wrote in court documents.

Court officials later clarified that another case with a similar case number should have been dismissed instead.

“In this case, sequentially numbered criminal cases…were randomly assigned to the same judge at the time of arraignment, which is rare when there are 34 judges on the bench,” the Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas said in a statement to Fox 8, noting “ We deeply regret this mistake.”

“If the cases were in different files, the system would signal an error when entering them.”

Prison authorities said they were unaware of any problems with the release order.

“Cases are always dismissed and the accused are released every day. There was no reason to question it,” said Deputy Chief Kevin O’Donnell Cleveland ’19.

Instead, prosecutors only noticed the error on Tuesday morning and immediately notified court officials.

But Andrea Johnson, Driskill’s wife, said she didn’t understand how the court could make such an error.

“I really don’t understand how this happens,” she told Fox 8. “I understand people make mistakes, but you’d think something like this would go through more than one person.”

She added that she did not think it was “fair” to release her husband’s alleged murderer.

“It’s not justice, it’s not our family’s sense of security,” Johnson said. “It means he’s on the street and could do this to someone else.”

Police said Driskill died in an altercation after a fender bender in the parking lot of a takeaway restaurant on September 23, 2023.

A car rear-ended his Mercedes Benz and, although the driver cooperated, a passenger in the vehicle began arguing with Driskill and shot him in the head before fleeing, Fox 8 reports.

“Of course I was devastated, but I thought everything was going to be OK, but he died two days later,” Johnson recalled.

According to WKYC, Sanders later turned himself in and was charged with aggravated murder, two counts of murder and two counts of assault.

The News-Herald reports that Sanders was returned to custody Wednesday after U.S. Marshals arrested him during an early morning traffic stop.

He will now be transferred to the Cuyahoga County Correctional Center for booking and housing.

“He is no longer a threat and has never been a threat to society,” interim corrections chief Nestor Rivera told Cleveland 19.

But both court and prison officials say they will now work to ensure nothing like this happens again.

The Cuyahoga County Courthouse will review its procedures and work with the sheriff’s office, while Deputy Chief O’Donnell said jail officials “will work together to try to – I don’t want to say it’s correct – but to carefully review the process and make sure that this will never happen again.