Carlos Harris has already served a 20-year sentence for a crime he says he did not commit, and a judge ordered his release from Santa Clara County Jail last week. But thanks to bureaucratic red tape, the jail can not release him.
A Santa Clara County man named Carlos Harris was convicted of robbery and attempted murder in 2005, though has maintained his innocence the whole nearly two decades he's been in prison.
Setting aside his guilt or innocence, it seemed like a nice story last Thursday when KTVU reported that a judge ordered that Harris be released from Santa Clara County Jail, reducing Harris’s sentence so that he had already served his full time. His cousin told KTVU that "This is an overjoyed moment of just relief and just glory," and Harris’s wife reportedly started planning a second honeymoon for the couple to renew their vows.
Carlos Harris released from prison after sentence reduction in Santa Clara County https://t.co/0R6mtKedQX
— KTVU (@KTVU) October 19, 2024
But despite that a judge ordered Harris’s release from jail, he has not actually been released from Santa Clara County Jail. Now five days after he was granted his release effective immediately, KTVU is now reporting that Harris still has not been released from jail, because of some bureaucratic slow-walking with the state department of Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
"I don't know what to do," Harris told KTVU. "I don't know when I'm getting out."
The Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office says they’d be happy to release Harris, but their hands are tied given the lack of response from state corrections officials.
"By 11:15 a.m. Friday [October 18], the Sheriff’s Office learned that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) must process Mr. Harris for release since he is technically in CDCR custody at the Santa Clara County Main Jail," a sheriff's spokesperson said in a statement to KTVU. "At 11:30 a.m. It was determined without CDCR dropping its hold, the Sheriff’s Office could not release him from jail."
NBC Bay Area reported Monday night that now the NAACP of Silicon Valley is getting involved. "We are calling for Carlos’s immediate release right now," that chapter’s board member Lynn Rose told NBC Bay Area. "Right now. Not tomorrow. Not the next day. Right now. There’s a lot of politics being played right now."
But right now, as of press time and five days after he was ordered released, Carlos Harris is still in Santa Clara County Jail.
Related: Mayor Breed’s Brother Gets His Prison Sentence Shortened, Could Be Out Within a Year [SFist]
Image: Google Street View