The Wrong Man

None of the Maryland authorities could or would answer her questions, Milligan says. She left messages for the Baltimore law firm. She tallied her savings, figuring there would be bail to pay. Then she did the only thing left to do: "I prayed and prayed and prayed."

Fishburne's military ID had gone missing more than a decade ago, he remembered, just before he shipped out to Desert Storm while in the Navy. He had gone clubbing one night in Norfolk and discovered his ID gone when he returned to base; without it, he had to be escorted to barracks by military police. But it wasn't until he returned to port and transferred to duty at National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda that Fishburne applied for credit and discovered his identity had been stolen. Thousands of dollars in debt had piled up in his name for things he hadn't purchased -- furniture in Maryland, clothing and cellphones in Georgia. He remembers thinking everything was fine after his former captain cleared up the worst of it -- $4,000 in furniture -- by writing a letter swearing that Fishburne had been at sea when the purchase was made.

Fishburne left the Navy, trained as a cosmetologist and began working at salons in Silver Spring. He managed to save enough to buy a small rowhouse in the shadow of FedEx Field in Landover. It irked him to see the drug dealers doing their business in his neighborhood, loitering on the corner when he walked his dog. Fishburne called the police so often to complain that he remembers the dispatcher recognizing his voice. Nothing ever changed.

When Elias was 6, living with his single mother in Harlem, two gunmen held a .45-caliber pistol to the boy's head while mugging GeorgeAnna Milligan in an elevator. Even now, when Elias describes his terror, it is not the gun he recalls, but the sight of his mother shaking and crying. "It was the first time I'd ever seen her not in control," he says. He had never realized that the world could slip out from under an adult like that.

Now he sat shivering in jail, confused, angry and scared. Even though it was May, all the bare concrete made the place feel like a walk-in freezer.

A trim, smallish man with high cheekbones and large, almond-shaped eyes, Fishburne enjoys raspberry martinis and spa days. He makes Easter baskets for his clients. He loves scented candles. He didn't come out to his own mother until he was 29, but he knew it wouldn't take long for the other inmates to figure out he was gay. He slept sitting up, with his back to the wall. No one bothered him.

Five days after his arrest, Fishburne was awakened one morning and taken before District Court Judge Robert W. Heffron Jr. "I'm not pleading anything because number one, I don't have a lawyer, and number two, I didn't do it," Fishburne remembers saying, asserting yet again that he was not Jarvis Tucker. By then, though, it was moot. Having waived extradition, he would have to fight the charges in Atlanta.

A slip of paper in the court file states that the arresting officer did not perform the required NCIC computer check of the defendant because the computer system was out of service. Nothing in the court file indicates any further attempt was made to confirm the identity of the man in custody. Each of at least six entities to handle Fishburne's case -- the Maryland State Police, the state Department of Corrections, the Prince George's County Sheriff's Office, the state's attorney, the District Court administrator and the sheriff issuing the warrant in Georgia -- maintained that responsibility for confirming the prisoner's identity fell to someone else.

"We trust that's already taken care of," said Cpl. Mario Ellis, spokesman for the Prince George's Sheriff's Office, which endorsed the warrant stating the fugitive Jarvis Tucker was in custody.

"The onus wouldn't be on the Department of Corrections," countered Logan, adding, "The judge could have done something."

Requests to court administrators seeking comment from Judge Heffron were denied.

Fishburne said no one told him that the required criminal database check had not been done, and after his hearing, he returned to jail believing, still, that someone would compare fingerprints any moment now and correct this horrible mistake. He had been behind bars for five days already.