MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Eight years was added to man’s prison sentence by error, but now it has been corrected after we called attention to it.
WREG’s investigator Jessica Gertler has been working to get Tavarius McKay’s sentence fixed since this summer.
The Tennessee Department of Corrections website finally reads “12 years.” That’s the correct sentence McKay received for numerous burglary convictions. But for months, the state listed his sentence as 20 years.
McKay was behind bars when he found out eight more years had been added to his sentence in error.
He first alerted his father, who contacted WREG, worried a longer sentence could impact when his son would be eligible for parole.
Sure enough, in August when we first started looking into it, we saw 20 years listed on the TDOC’s website.
Related: Memphis inmate sentenced to 12 years, but error shows him serving years longer
Judge Lee Coffee, who was over McKay’s case, said he also tried to correct it, but said the “TDOC had a problem with understanding the judgments.”
He submitted paperwork, over and over again — 13 amended judgments in all.
Finally, after our story aired in November, he submitted one more. It did the trick.
Josh Spickler with Just City, a criminal justice reform advocacy group, said this situation should be alarming, especially for those inmates who don’t have advocates on the outside.
“People who have sentences that may have an error are at the mercy of that system,” Spickler said. “And if we were concerned about the lives and futures we incarcerate, we would have an answer to that question.”
The TDOC wouldn’t say how often this happens, just that if an offender thinks their sentence is incorrect, they can write a letter to TDOC sentence management or speak to a counselor if they’re in a state facility.