Mistaken identity: Wrong man held in Mobile jail for 12 days

MOBILE, Al.
After 12 days in Mobile County Metro Jail, a Georgia man was released Thursday in what his lawyer and the Sheriff’s Office agree was a matter of mistaken identity.
Jose Fidel Funes — who speaks very little English — was arrested Dec. 10 at a west Mobile store on a charge of public intoxication.

Jose Fidel Funes

Jose A. Funes

At the jail, Funes, who had no driver’s license on him, was mistakenly booked under the name of a man who was already in the jail’s computer system, according to Ginger Poynter, his court-appointed lawyer.
That other man, Jose A. Funes, has nearly the same name as his own.
The other Funes, whose last known address was in the Theodore area, had a criminal record in the county — two DUI arrests and one domestic violence arrest — and was being sought by federal immigration officers, records showed.
Poynter said that no one checked her client’s fingerprints to see if the identities matched.
Jose Fidel Funes, 43, born in El Salvador in 1968, has been in the U.S. since 1992 and holds a work visa, Poynter said.

He lives in Norcross, Georgia, has a valid Georgia driver’s license and a valid Social Security card, she said. He had been working in the Mobile area, Poynter said.
Poynter, who speaks Spanish, was appointed to represent Jose Fidel Funes two days after his arrest. The next several days were spent correcting the mix-up, she said.
“The judges were awesome,” Poynter said of District Judge George Hardesty and Municipal Judge Holmes Whiddon. “When I pointed out the error, they did everything they could to fix it.”
Sgt. Tommy Colvin with the Sheriff’s Office also provided help, Poynter said.
“It was mistaken identity and took a while to figure out,” said Lori Myles, Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman.
The Dec. 10 arrest occurred at a convenience store on Schillinger Road. Cpl. Christopher Levy, a Police Department spokesman, said that officers went there after a clerk complained about a man being drunk.
Levy said that the man — Jose Fidel Funes — “was unable to communicate and unable to stand on his feet. He continued to fall down and had very slurred speech.”
Poynter said Funes indicated to the officers that he’d been robbed and beaten. Levy said, “The idea that he was a victim of a crime was never given to us.”
The booking system used by the Sheriff’s Office at Metro Jail does not have a way to electronically cross reference fingerprints, according to Myles.
When Poynter alerted the jail to the mix-up, “we confirmed and checked the fingerprints,” Myles said.
Poynter said that she believes that the other Funes — Jose A. Funes — may have already been deported. The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency, however, was unable to provide an update about his status.