A woman accused of spitting on a zoo officer was ordered released from jail, but days later she remained locked up, caught in a bureaucratic tug-of-war that led her lawyer to plead at the end of a court filing: “HELP!!!!”
The Justice Department charged a woman who spat on a National Zoo police officer after she was removed from a staff-only area in the Bird House, wrote Reuters legal reporter Brad Heath. The woman was ordered to be released before trial, and the DOJ agreed with the request.
In the emergency motion for release, the woman's lawyer explained that the woman was detained Aug. 20 over the incident. She was charged two days later, brought to court on Monday, and ordered to be released.
But as of Tuesday, she remained behind bars.
New Mexico civil litigator Owen Barcala pointed to the motion detailing the outreach to the federal authorities to determine why she hasn't been released.
"The United States Marshal in U.S. District Court says they cannot remove a Superior Court Warrant from WALES," said the lawyer. "The US Marshal in D.C. Superior Court referred me to D.C. MPD. AUSA Nestor has been informed of the problem. At this time, Ms. Rios Esquivel remains incarcerated at DC DOC DCDC 394869 in contravention of the Court's release Order."
The lawyer ended the motion with the unusual request: "HELP!!!!"
"Not standard practice to end an emergency motion with 'HELP!!!!,' but I'll allow it in this case," Barcala joked.
The woman's lawyer confessed at one point in the filing, "But the undersigned naively believed that its judicial order compelled the appropriate outcome. This was not the case."
The city jail "has chosen not to comply with this Court’s Order," the lawyer added.
It prompted Barcala to comment, "Federal judges are really going to have to get over this thing with believing the feds will comply with their orders in good faith."
In the Order to Show Cause, U.S. Magistrate Judge Zia M. Faruqui wrote, "The Court will not tolerate further delay, especially given there is no adequate remedy for false imprisonment. No later than 1:00 p.m. today, either the Department of Corrections should coordinate with the Department of Justice to withdraw that hold and release Ms. Rios-Esquivel, or else appear at 1:15 p.m. in-person in Courtroom 4 to explain why Ms. Rios-Esquivel has not been released."
"What is especially troubling is that this is not even the first time in the past four months that the Court has encountered this same problem of false imprisonment," wrote Faruqui. And still "the greater question of why it takes moving heaven and earth to ensure a person who is ordered to be released is actually released—in a timely manner—remains unanswered."
Barcala noted that the docket doesn't show any specific update. "So, hopefully, that means she was released after a certain AUSA changed his or her trousers."