A Missouri man who avoided a 13-year jail sentence because of what state officials called a clerical error will learn Tuesday if he will have to keep fighting to avoid being incarcerated.
In 1999, Cornealious “Mike” Anderson was convicted of armed robbery after taking money from a Burger King manager who was making a bank deposit. He was sentenced to 13 years in jail, but after he posted bond and went home during the appeals process, he was never forced to serve his sentence.
“He then waited and waited and waited for the Missouri Department of Corrections to give him a date to surrender and begin his serving his sentence,’’ Anderson’s attorney, Patrick Michael Megaro, told TODAY. “That day never came.”
The state mistakenly believed Anderson was already in prison serving his sentence, when in fact he was living life on the outside.
“He got married, had children, opened a successful business, coached youth football, (and) joined a church group,’’ Magaro said in a report from NBC’s Joe Fryer. “Did everything that you would expect a normal person to do because in his mind, he believed that maybe the courts had changed their mind.”
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