Suing after doing 8 mos. excess time

AN INMATE who claims he was held eight months beyond what should have been his release date is suing the city and state for false imprisonment.

Glenn Kindler, 55, was set to finish his two-to-four-year sentence for burglary on Feb. 12, 2015.

But he spent an extra 252 days on Rikers Island after city Department of Correction officials failed to credit him with a prior stretch at the state’s Fishkill Correctional Facility, the lawsuit filed in Manhattan Federal Court alleges.

His case was complicated after he got busted for stealing a cup of coffee during a daylong furlough on April 19, 2014.

As a result, he was sentenced to an additional 15 days.

But he got stuck behind bars on Rikers Island for an extra 252 days before city and state officials finally figured it out and released him on Oct. 22, 2015, according to the lawsuit.

“He wrote to various people in state and city facilities,” said his lawyer, Nicholas Mindicino. “Nobody wanted to fix it.”

City and state officials each said they were not to blame for the sentencing snafu.

“(The state) Department of Corrections and Community Supervision has no legal authority to credit an inmate’s sentence with jail time without the requisite certification from the locality,” said spokesman Thomas Mailey.

“When that certificate was provided, the department acted in a timely fashion,” he added, noting Kindler was not held beyond his four-year maximum sentence despite the added time behind bars.

A city Correction Department spokesman said he could not comment on the pending litigation.

“But (corrections) personnel work diligently to make sure jail time certification is accurate,” said department spokesman Peter Thorne.

Kindler’s lawyer says have easily been fixed.

“There’s law that they are required to follow,” said Mindicino. “They just didn’t. This is an issue that anyone could have fixed at any time once the error became apparent.” Kindler is not alone. Legal Aid Society officials say they saved 47 clients a whopping 4,677 combined days of needless incarceration as part of its Time Saved campaign this year so far. That has saved taxpayers an estimated $2.5 million in prison costs.

Legal Aid lawyers say the mistakes are primarily due to handmade calculations and the government’s reliance on archaic computer systems. Inmate advocates say the state’s complicated sentencing laws are also a major factor. it could