Sometimes a life lived honorably can make up for a mistake you made. A Missouri man learned that valuable lesson when a knock at the door had him arrested and taken to jail – 13 years after he should have been imprisoned.
Cornealious “Mike” Anderson was convicted for his role in the armed robbery of a Burger King assistant manager in St. Charles, Mo. At the time, he was sentenced to 13 years behind bars. However, due to a clerical error, Anderson was never ordered to report to prison after sentencing in 2000. Despite reaching out to his lawyer for clarity, Anderson remained free.
“Day by day, month by month, year by year, time passed, and they never picked me up,” Anderson said. During the years he should have been serving his sentence, Anderson turned his life around. He started a construction business, married twice, raised three children, became a stepfather, volunteered at his church in Webster Groves, Mo., and coached youth football. Anderson never made an attempt to run or hide officials. But he did make an attempt at turning his life around.
Cornealious “Mike” Anderson walks out of the Mississippi County Courthouse with his grandmother, Mary Porter, left; and his wife, LaQonna Anderson, right; holding their daughter, Nevaeh, 3. AP Photo
But in what seemed like a twist from a movie, the Missouri Department of Corrections discovered the error just as Anderson’s sentence was set to end. A team of U.S. marshals arrived at his home early one morning to arrest him. “I was sleeping. It was about six o’clock in the morning, woken by knocking at the door,” Anderson said.
“I said, who is it? … They said, ‘marshals. Open it up or it’s coming down.’ As soon as I opened up the door, it was a small army. I mean, it was about eight of them,” he said. “They had the shields. They had the helmets. They had the AR-15 style machine-looking guns. And they had the street blocked off.”
And I said, hey man, you got the wrong person. And he just looked at me. He said, ‘no, you’re the right person.’”
Anderson spent nine months in the Southeast Correctional Center, 150 miles from his family, before his lawyers filed an appeal. The appeal argued that imprisoning Anderson after his years of good behavior was unjust. An online petition supporting his release gained more than 35,000 signatures, while Missouri’s Attorney General Chris Koster acknowledged the case was “difficult.”
Cornealious “Mike” Anderson walks out of the Mississippi County Courthouse with his wife, LaQonna Anderson, right; holding their daughter, Nevaeh, 3. AP Photo
During the court hearing, Judge Terry Lynn Brown credited Anderson for the life he built during his freedom. “You’ve been a good father. You’ve been a good husband. You’ve been a good taxpaying citizen of the state of Missouri,” the judge said. “That leads me to believe that you are a good man and a changed man.”
Judge Brown gave Anderson credit for the 4,794 days between his conviction and arrest. Anderson walked out of the courtroom with his wife, young daughter, and grandmother by his side.
