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Friday, June 08, 2007

Ind. Courts - "Court documents apparently forged"

Joe Gerrety of the Lafayette Journal & Courier reports today:

Indiana Department of Correction officials are investigating allegations of forgery involving a prison inmate serving a 15-year sentence for a Tippecanoe County armed robbery conviction.

Dexter L. Berry, 29, an inmate at the Wabash Valley Correctional Facility in Carlisle, is suspected of forging a document in order to reduce his sentence.

The jail received an amended abstract of judgment, purportedly issued from Tippecanoe Circuit Court on May 22, 2007.

Staff in Circuit Court received a telephone call last week from a staff member at the prison attempting to confirm the abstract.

"We had nothing in the file," Amber Laffoon, the court reporter, said. "That was nothing that I had typed."

Circuit Court Judge Don Daniel entered an order Tuesday finding that the documents are "false and deceptive, and that said documents appear to be the result of forgery." He ordered DOC to follow terms of an April 17, 2006, order sentencing Berry to 15 years in prison. * * *

Early this week, the prison faxed copies of the documents, which bear what appear to be date stamps from the Tippecanoe County clerk's office and a rubber stamp of clerk Linda Phillips' signature.

The stamped signature, however, was not initialed by a deputy clerk, which is the normal practice.

It also appears portions of the original abstract were whited out and dates changed. Supporting documents submitted with the abstract also show signs of having been doctored.

"Mr. Berry is one of our more prolific correspondents" in the DOC, Phillips said. "He asks for a lot of different records."

The story sounded familar, so I checked prior ILB entries and found this one, titled "Prisoner wrongly freed from Kentucky state facility based on a faxed, forged 'court order'". A quote from the AP story:
"It appears that the inmate arranged for someone to fax a forged court order to the Kentucky Correctional & Psychiatric Center," Major said.

The fake court order contained grammatical errors and it was not typed on letterhead. It falsely claims that the Kentucky Supreme Court "demanded" Rouse to be released.

Posted by Marcia Oddi on June 8, 2007 08:28 AM
Posted to Indiana Courts