Man mistakenly arrested, jailed for four days on child abuse charge

Despite a grand jury declining to indict him, authorities mistakenly arrested a Cordova man and booked him into the Shelby County Jail on a charge of aggravated child abuse before releasing him Tuesday — four days later, according to court records.

Quentin Brown, 37, was booked June 2 into the Shelby County Jail , said Shelby County Sheriff's Office spokesman Earle Farrell. Records show a grand jury returned a "not true bill" declining to indict Brown on May 18, but Brown was still arrested two weeks later on the B felony charge.

"This is a symptom of a system that often assumes guilt when an accusation is made," said defense attorney Blake Ballin. "Even in this instance where the grand jury declined to indict, the momentum of the criminal justice machine could not be stopped."

Thankfully, Ballin said, all parties worked quickly to secure Brown's release when the mistake was revealed. 

Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Bobby Carter ordered Brown's release after Ballin had the file brought to court showing Brown had not been charged. 

"A not true bill was returned under this indictment number ... therefore the warrant issued in this cause is invalid and the defendant shall be released," Carter said in a court order.

Ballin said Brown wants to speak with civil lawyers before talking to the media.

In a statement, Criminal Court Clerk Richard DeSaussure said his office is performing an internal investigation into the matter and "the preliminary results would tend to rule out a problem with the new 'Odyssey' computer system and instead point to errors of another type."

Problems ensued in the courts and jail after the implementation of a $9.7 million criminal justice information systems project late last year. The project in part involved implementing a case-management system called Odyssey, reformatting decades of information on cases, creating new websites for public information and putting into effect a new offender-management system for the Shelby County Sheriff's Office, Shelby County Jail and Division of Corrections.

Shelby County Criminal Court Judge Lee Coffee said the records system problems are ongoing.

"It's not functioning," Coffee said.

In one case, Coffee said a woman who was not indicted was still summoned to report to court in an assault case. Coffee apologized for her having taken off work, paid for parking and reported to court on a case that the grand jury declined to indict. In another case, Coffee said the indictment for a man, William Gregory, did not show up in the computer system for 23 days. Gregory was charged with attempted first-degree murder and other charges in the shooting and wounding of a child.

In Brown's case, records indicate the Shelby County Sheriff's Office arrested Brown and that the case was investigated by the Memphis Police Department. DeSaussure said Brown's "not true bill" from the grand jury was brought to the criminal court office along with and mixed in with "true bill" indictments.

"This office regrets the unfortunate circumstances that resulted in the arrest of Quentin Brown," DeSaussure said.