Court official: We erred on Atwater

RALEIGH -- Wake County Superior Court Clerk N. Lorrin Freeman said Friday her office made mistakes but they did not keep a suspect in Eve Carson's killing from being locked up.

Demario James Atwater was in the Wake County Courthouse two days before Carson's death, accused of violating probation. "We did a number of things wrong," Freeman said Friday, including setting a March 3 hearing in the wrong courtroom.

But the violation likely would not have sent Atwater to jail then, she said. Atwater probably would have been advised of his right to an attorney and then had his case postponed, she said.

Officials in the Wake court system and state Department of Correction, which oversees probation programs, are examining how Atwater and his co-defendant, Laurence Alvin Lovette Jr., fell off their radar before Carson's March 5 death. Lovette had been put on probation in January for theft charges in Durham County.

Robert Guy, who heads the state's community corrections program, acknowledged that probation officers' supervision of Atwater was "minimal."

A judge gave Atwater intensive probation in 2005 for breaking into a southwest Raleigh home. Instead, probation officers monitored him less strictly.

"We should have known, and we didn't," Guy said.

On intensive probation, he would have had drug tests, weekly contact with probation officers and a curfew, Guy said.

During his three-year probation that was to expire in February, Atwater was arrested on charges of felony firearm possession in Granville County in June 2006 and in Durham County in November 2007, court records show.

It's unclear whether his June 2006 arrest and conviction two weeks later came to Wake County officials' attention. It would have been grounds to revoke his probation.

On Nov. 7, Atwater was arrested in Durham and charged with trying to sell marijuana and possession of a firearm by a felon, according to court records. Those felony charges are still pending.

Atwater had apparently moved to Durham, but his probation was never switched there, Guy said.

In Wake County, an arrest warrant for violating probation was taken out against Atwater on Nov. 16, a little over a week after his Durham arrest. He didn't get picked up until Feb. 20. He was released that day after making a $10,000 bail and told to return to court March 3, according to court documents.

Freeman thinks that Atwater made that court date but that clerks sent his file to the wrong courtroom. His case was reset for March 31, records show.