Convicted N.Y. Killer Is Freed on a Technicality: He Was Being Held in the Wrong Prison

Terrence Lewis served some three years for the murder of the New York father in 2015

A father of three was gunned down on a Rochester, N.Y. street in 2015. Now, his convicted murderer is free — because law enforcement accidentally put the man in the wrong prison.

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office confirmed in a statement Terrence Lewis’ vacated conviction and release from Five Points Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in Romulus, N.Y., earlier this month.

In the statement, the New York sheriff’s office said Lewis was walking out on a murder conviction because law enforcement had inadvertently violated the anti-shuttling provision of the Interstate Agreement on Detainers Law.

Sheriff Todd K. Baxter said in the statement that the decision to let a murderer go free based on a technicality “violates the principles of justice,” and demonstrates a “lack of fairness.”

The federal law, approved by Congress in 1970 and reviewed by PEOPLE, notes that once a prisoner has been moved to the state of the pending indictment, that case “must be completely disposed of (including any trial and sentencing, according to some courts) prior to returning the prisoner.”

But that’s not what happened when Lewis, who was already serving a sentence in a federal prison in Pennsylvania for unrelated crimes, and was indicted for Johnny Washington’s murder more than two years after the shooting, Monroe County Supreme Court Judge Stephen T. Miller reportedly ruled in a Feb. 5 decision.

In January 2018 – two months after the second-degree murder indictment was filed in Monroe County – Lewis was transported from USP Allenwood in Pennsylvania, a high-security federal penitentiary, to New York’s Monroe County Jail, where he was arraigned in local court on the murder charge, per the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office office, who included a timeline of events in their statement.

Four months later, that May, Lewis returned to Allenwood, Pa., while the murder charge remained pending in New York.

The sheriff’s office noted that it is their “traditional practice” to “return the incarcerated individual to his ‘home’ correctional facility,” and that the sheriff’s office was simply following their normal procedures.

But per federal law, Lewis should have remained in New York until the case was closed. Lewis’s trip back to Allenwood, Pa., constituted a breach of the law, the New York judge determined earlier this month.

In July 2018, Lewis had returned to New York for his murder trial, staying in the custody of the Monroe County Jail for the legal proceedings. In October 2018, he was convicted of murder in the second degree and sentenced to 22 years to life.

Lewis returned to Pennsylvania that December, finished his federal sentence at the high-security prison there, and in October 2020 began officially serving time on the murder conviction in a New York State Department of Corrections facility.

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office said they were first made aware that the interstate prison mix-up might lead to Lewis’s release at the beginning of this year.

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“No legal argument was ever raised before, during or after the trial about the transfer,” the sheriff’s office said in the statement, adding: “Unfortunately, any deviation” from the federal law “is subject to strict consequences.”

The Monroe County Sheriff’s Office said that their office has since audited all interstate prisoners that had passed through their county jail since 2018 and determined that “there were no other incarcerated individuals held on an IAD.”

The sheriff’s office added that they instituted other “corrective measures,” which included reviewing their transfer procedures and also training staff about the federal law.

The sheriff’s office said in the press release that they had reached out to Washington’s family after learning that Lewis might be released. The press release did not include any reaction from the man’s family, and a spokeswoman for the office said in an email to PEOPLE Thursday afternoon that she was unaware of the family providing any statement.

Back on May 26, 2015, Washington was shot several times in the torso on Sixth Street in Rochester, N.Y., around 10:15 a.m., according to a Democrat & Chronicle article at the time of the shooting.

The 29-year-old man was rushed to Strong Memorial Hospital, where he succumbed to his injuries, per the local article.

Photographs of Washington, shared on Gunmemorial.org depict the young man alternately in a cap and gown and surrounded by smiling family. Other photographs include a small baby.

People who had contributed to his profile on the page said he had three children.

“There are no words to take away the pain you are justly feeling that undoubtedly comes with the lack of fairness being served based on this decision, which violates the principles of justice,” Sheriff Baxter said in a statement addressed to Washington’s loved ones. “I extend my sincere apology.”

Ultimately, Terrence served more than three years for Washington’s murder.

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