Finally wanted: Police to chase thousands of fugitives

Correction: Authorities in Bibb County, Ga. changed the listings for at least 501 fugitives to indicate they will be extradited if caught outside Georgia. An earlier version of this story misstated how those records had been changed.

PHILADELPHIA — Five years after he ran from charges that he assaulted a sleeping college student on an overnight flight from Los Angeles, Yamin Ren is finally a wanted man.

For years, authorities said they would not spend the time or money to pursue Ren — who lived in California — as long as he stayed out of their state. For years, he remained free.

Now, after a USA TODAY investigation, authorities here and across the USA have promised to bring Ren and thousands of other fugitives back to face justice regardless of where they are found.

The newspaper found this year that more than 330,000 accused felons — including some wanted in rapes and murders — can escape the charges against them merely by crossing a state border because police and prosecutors secretly decided in advance not to go that far to retrieve them. In the months that followed, officials from Florida to Pennsylvania reversed those decisions by the thousands, informing the FBI that they intend to retrieve fugitives from anyplace in the USA.

In Philadelphia, prosecutors reviewed thousands of the city's old felony case files and identified hundreds of fugitives they plan to retrieve if the suspects surface in other states, a process known as extradition. Prosecutors approved extradition in at least 500 new cases, promising to seek people from other states for crimes as minor as drug possession, according to FBI records and court files.

"Philadelphia took to heart the story and realized that maybe they weren't doing as good of a job as they could have been. So I think they've certainly increased their efforts," said Pennsylvania Victim Advocate Jennifer Storm.

Progress in Philadelphia and elsewhere has nonetheless been halting, illustrating the challenges officials face in pursuing fugitives across the nation's patchwork justice system. Despite having identified hundreds of fugitives who should have been approved for extradition, many of the changes had yet to be entered into the FBI's fugitive tracking database as of mid-October, meaning some of the suspects could continue to get away. In many other cities, the number of fugitives police say they won't pursue has shot up dramatically

More fugitives are on the wanted list:

•In Bibb County, Ga., which surrounds Macon, police changed the listings for at least 501 fugitives to indicate they would now be extradited if found outside Georgia. "I said they should make it clear that we'll go get anybody unless it's for something like a traffic ticket," District Attorney David Cooke said.

•In Manatee County, Fla., outside Sarasota, the number of warrants marked as not extraditable dropped 77% since mid-2013 after prosecutors and the county sheriff agreed to change their extradition process. "I think that a change needed to be made, and that's what we did," State Attorney Ed Brodsky said.

•In Greensboro, N.C., police cut the number of non-extraditable warrants nearly in half. That happened mostly because police wanted more help from the U.S. Marshals Service, which will help track fugitives only if the authorities first promise to extradite them if they turn up in another state, Assistant District Attorney Howard Neumann, said. "Officers are much more apt to do the extra work of getting them approved for extradition if they know somebody's actually going to be out looking for the guy," he said.

Police from California to New Jersey made similar changes, according to FBI records. In Shasta County, Calif., for example, the share of warrants marked not extraditable dropped from nearly half in 2013 to just 1% in October.

Pennsylvania lawmakers are considering new ways to pay for extradition, in part out of concern that some smaller counties were exhausting their budgets before the end of the year. "When you're a victim and you know the person who committed the crime against you is roaming free because there wasn't enough money to pick him up, that has to be traumatic," said Republican state Rep. Mike Regan, a former U.S. marshal, who leads the effort.

Philadelphia prosecutors, who are responsible for making that city's extradition decisions, declined to answer questions about the specific steps they had taken and turned down repeated requests for interviews. The district attorney's office filed two lawsuits against USA TODAY to prevent internal documents about those changes from becoming public. Instead, USA TODAY reviewed FBI records and more than 4.6 million pages of Philadelphia court dockets to determine how the city's extradition practices had changed.

In addition to Ren, those records show Philadelphia authorities told the FBI that they will extradite a man wanted on charges that he raped a co-worker in 2006, another charged with attempting to rape a young relative, and another accused of participating in a gang rape involving a knife in 2007. The warrants for their arrest were entered into the FBI's fugitive-tracking database in May, along with a code indicating police would retrieve them from anyplace in the USA.

Police arrested Ren on charges that he groped a sleeping college student sitting next to him on a red-eye flight from Los Angeles to Philadelphia. The student, Vanessa Waltz, said she woke up shortly before the plane landed and found Ren's hand up her shirt and a blanket across both of their laps. Waltz flew across the country to testify against Ren. When he went home to California and stopped showing up to court, police in Philadelphia would not go get him.

"I tried to do what I could to have some consequences put on this. I definitely would like them to do their part," Waltz said. "I really hope they would be trying their best to get him."

A judge signed a warrant for Ren's arrest in 2009. In 2011, the city's court entered his name into the FBI's fugitive database with a code indicating he would not be extradited, according to state and federal records. It wasn't until more than three years later that the authorities notified the FBI they would extradite him back to Pennsylvania if police find him elsewhere. They haven't found him.

"Basically, he took his chances," Ren's attorney, Jonathan Schiffman, said. He said Ren probably guessed "they're not going to come get me, and he was right."

Schiffman said he found Waltz's account credible but questioned whether Ren could be prosecuted in Philadelphia for something that happened in the air. USA TODAY was unable to reach Ren.

Tasha Jamerson, a spokeswoman for Philadelphia District Attorney Seth Williams, said in an e-mailed statement that officials have sent the names of hundreds of fugitives who have been approved for extradition to the city's courts to have them entered into the FBI's database. She said the courts "are likely to complete this process by the end of the year."

The fact that it took so long to approve some of those cases for extradition means the authorities have missed repeated chances to lock up fugitives they want to pursue. For example, prosecutors notified the FBI in April that they would extradite Frank Richardson, who has been wanted on robbery and gun charges since 1998. Richardson has been arrested repeatedly since then, including as close by as in Baltimore, but was not returned to Philadelphia because the authorities had not approved extraditing him. Another man, Michael Konopka, wanted on charges that he approached a 21-year-old woman with a knife and threatened to rape her, was convicted of battery less than two years later in Florida, according to court records.

Despite their decision to seek extradition of some fugitives, officials continued to turn down opportunities to pursue others, even when they were locked up in Philadelphia's New Jersey suburbs. Using court records, USA TODAY found that at least 290 Philadelphia fugitives were arrested and let go over the past year after officials said they would not extradite them.

In September, for example, the city court's small police force received a notice that Lawrence Woods, wanted on charges of kidnapping an 11-month-old after he had "choked and robbed" the child's mother, had been jailed in neighboring Burlington County, N.J. Because prosecutors had not approved the case for extradition, officers declined to go get him, and Woods was released instead.

Officers received a similar notice in May when police in Westchester County, N.Y., arrested Jose Ortiz, who is charged with shoving and trying to punch a Philadelphia police officer. They received another when authorities in Camden, N.J., located Omar Coverdale, who is charged with poking a woman in the face with a knife and "strangling" her. The warrant for Coverdale's arrest was signed the day after USA TODAY published its investigation of Philadelphia's extradition practices. Officers declined to retrieve both men.

Even when extradition does work, records suggest the city struggles to convict in cases. In February, Philadelphia authorities brought Dwayne Slaughter back from New Jersey to face robbery charges. Slaughter confessed to the crime in an interview with USA TODAY and in the presence of a prison official: "I'm the one that committed the robbery," he said. Even so, when Slaughter finally appeared in a Philadelphia court, prosecutors dropped the charges.

Contributing: Mark Hannan in McLean, Va.

Follow investigative reporter Brad Heath on twitter at @bradheath.