On the eve of his sentencing to nearly 10 years in prison, convicted carjacker Darius Trevon Brown was released from the Multnomah County Jail with instructions to return court.

No surprise, the 24-year-old was a no-show the next day.

Now, warrants are out for Brown’s arrest. And the prosecutor who handled his case says the plea deal agreeing to nine years and seven months in prison is off the table -- if and when Brown is caught.

Brown has been convicted of battery, forgery, stealing identities and car theft – and that list only got longer due to his latest crime spree last May. That’s when surveillance video captured him pointing a gun at a stranger on the way to work and taking the man’s car, according to court papers.

Three days later, Brown was arrested after police tracked him down and they say he responded by ramming the car he was driving into police cruisers, crashing into a telephone pole and then running through nearby yards with a gun, court records say.

Brown pleaded guilty on Feb. 8 to his sixth, seventh and eighth felony convictions -- first-degree robbery, car theft and being a felon in possession of a firearm.

So why on Feb. 11, the day before his scheduled sentencing, was Brown released to downtown Portland streets? What went wrong?

“It’s unclear,” said Sgt. Brandon White, a spokesman for the Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office, which operates the county’s two jails.

The answer is long, complicated and depends on who’s talking.

White said the Sheriff’s Office properly followed a signed order from Multnomah County Circuit Judge Christopher Ramras to release Brown.

The order states: “Release from custody on this case on Monday 2-11-19” and that Brown was scheduled to be sentenced the following day.

“We have to follow the order of the judge,” White said. “We can’t just hold him. We can’t just keep him in custody.”

Darius Brown walked out of the Multnomah County Detention Center on Feb. 11, 2019. (File photo)

White said defendants are sometimes released from jail before sentencing so they can get their affairs in order or because their sentence isn’t going to be lengthy.

Jail staff had no information that Brown was supposed to be sentenced to nearly a decade in prison, White said. As a result, the judge’s order wouldn’t have raised any red flags for jail staff, he said.

Deputy District Attorney Shawn Overstreet said the judge ordered Brown’s release only with the understanding that Brown would leave the Multnomah County jail system and go directly into the custody of the Washington County Jail, which had a “hold” on him.

Holds indicate that another jail wants to be notified if an inmate is about to be released. A secure transport van often picks inmates up and brings them to the county with the hold. Overstreet said that’s always been his understanding: A hold means an inmate is transferred to another jail.

The hold on Brown was linked to a Washington County Circuit Court case for allegedly violating his probation in a third-degree robbery case.

Overstreet said the plan was to postpone Brown’s carjacking sentencing so he could first be sentenced in the Washington County case. Then Brown was to return to Multnomah County for the carjacking sentencing and have his prison term run at the same time as any sentence handed down in his Washington County case, Overstreet said.

Darius Brown should have been headed to a jail bed in Washington County, but instead he was released, a prosecutor said. (File photo)

But none of that went as planned when the Washington County Jail didn’t transport Brown from Multnomah County’s jail system. The prosecution, the judge and the public defender all expected the transfer, Overstreet said.

The judge said he couldn’t comment because his trial schedule this week prevents him from immediately reading through the case file, and he doesn’t remember specifics of the case. Brown’s public defender, Peyton Lee, declined comment.

Washington County Sheriff’s Deputy Brian van Kleef said he can’t say for certain happened.

Van Kleef said Multnomah County jail staff had contacted Washington County staff to say a judge had ordered Brown’s release, and that Brown would be appearing for sentencing in Multnomah County the next day. Multnomah County then asked Washington County to give Brown a court date for Brown’s probation violation case.

What no one seems able to explain is why Multnomah County didn’t just ask to put Brown on the shuttle that runs daily between the jails, as is the usual practice when a defendant has separate cases in the two counties.

And why Washington County didn’t object to Brown’s release given that it had a hold on him.

“They asked for a court date, and we gave them one,” van Kleef said.

And then Brown was gone.

Clearly, van Kleef said, something was “lost in translation.”

-- Aimee Green

agreen@oregonian.com

o_aimee

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