Typo helped alleged child abuser get out of jail on reduced bond
The omission of one zero helped Cedric “Dirty” Burton walk out of the Spokane County Jail last month after he was accused of brutally beating and choking a 2-year-old girl.
Burton met a $25,000 bond, an amount that likely would have been higher if it weren’t for the typo.
Burton, a 29-year-old gang member with a history of violence, is accused of beating his girlfriend’s daughter on Oct. 29. The girl, Jayonna Walker, now lives with her biological father and is recovering from surgery with casts on both arms and both legs. They are asking for help with the girl’s medical bills on GoFundMe.com.
Burton was arrested on Nov. 11 on a warrant signed by Superior Court Judge Gregory Sypolt.
That arrest warrant initially set Burton’s bond at $250,000. It was filed in the county clerk’s office, where an employee mistakenly omitted a zero while copying the amount onto supplementary paperwork.
During Burton’s first court appearance on Nov. 14, the deputy prosecutor, Geoff Kristianson, argued to maintain the bond amount listed on the paperwork from the clerk’s office – $25,000.
Burton’s public defender argued for an even lower amount, but Judge Harold Clarke III, who was filling in for Sypolt that day, sided with the deputy prosecutor.
Burton posted bail and was released from jail on Nov. 18.
Spokane County Prosecutor Larry Haskell said it’s possible that Kristianson should have recognized the error, but he noted that deputy prosecutors have an immense caseload.
Prosecutors could file a motion to increase Burton’s bond and potentially keep him in jail, but that’s difficult because he has attended his scheduled court hearings.
“If someone shows up in court not once but twice, then any argument for a higher bond kind of goes away,” Haskell said.
The county clerk, Tim Fitzgerald, said the omission of the zero was a rare mistake in an office that processes thousands of documents each day.
“This has not happened to us before, so we were all scratching our heads and looking at some procedural issues,” Fitzgerald said. “We immediately found out what was wrong.”
The clerk’s office employee made the mistake while filling out a supplementary document stapled behind a form completed by the prosecutor’s office, Fitzgerald said. From now on, deputy prosecutors will fill out both pages so fewer people must transcribe the bond amount, reducing the likelihood of errors, he said.
It’s not clear how much the parties discussed Burton’s criminal history during the Nov. 14 hearing. He has several felony convictions and ties to a street gang based in Compton, California. He’s also skipped bail at least twice before.
In 2010, Burton was arrested in Los Angeles County while awaiting trial on attempted murder charges, although he was barred from leaving Spokane County. Those charges later were reduced and he was found guilty of assault for trying to run over two men in a downtown Spokane parking lot. He also was accused of assaulting his then-girlfriend before fleeing to Los Angeles.
That same year, Burton pleaded guilty to four felonies after serving as the getaway driver for another gang member who fatally shot a man. He also has an assault conviction stemming from a 2005 gang riot and fatal shooting; another man was convicted of murder in that case.
Burton now is charged with second-degree assault of a child. If convicted on that charge, the offense would be his third strike.
Judge Clarke said Tuesday he had no recollection of the Nov. 14 hearing. Attempts to obtain a transcription of the court hearing were unsuccessful.
Initial court appearances typically last less than 10 minutes, and dozens are scheduled each day.
Clarke said he’s confident in any decisions he has made regarding bond amounts. He noted those amounts are subject to change once a defendant is in custody.
“It would be unusual for us to take that arrest bond amount and just assign that to the hearing amount,” he said.
Burton’s public defender, Victoria Blumhorst, did not respond to a message seeking comment.