Murder suspect in South Florida roamed among us despite house arrest. We need a real investigation | Editorial

An accused killer who was supposed to be on strict house arrest traveled all over South Florida — Midtown in Miami, South Beach, Islamorada, Key Largo — for an entire year without anyone notifying the judge that he had violated the conditions of his release “literally hundreds” of times.

An irate Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Andrea Wolfson on Wednesday called the Miami-Dade County Corrections and Rehabilitation Department to account for its failure to keep track of 29-year-old Joshua Burgos.

“I find it offensive that an organization would take a court order and absolutely ignore it. And that’s what happened here,” she said during a video hearing.

“He was just literally doing anything and everything he wanted to do at every moment in time, and never once was this court alerted. I’ve used the word appalled. It’s not even strong enough,” she said.

Burgos is accused of serious crimes — fatally shooting two men outside a Brickell-area bar in 2016, plus carjacking and arson.

His lawyers say he had permission to work at various jobs from corrections officers assigned to monitor him, and a corrections lawyer told the judge there will be an “administrative review” of the house-arrest program, which currently oversees about 1,200 inmates.

Gee, we’d hope so.

But this calls for more than that. We need an independent, outside investigation of what happened. How many other accused criminals on house arrest have been allowed — whether deliberately or through negligence — to simply ignore restrictions on where they can go and what they can do? And what kind of potential dangers has that posed to residents of this community?

In Burgos’ case, the judge allowed him — over state prosecutors’ objections — to leave his home to go to work from 1 p.m. to 6 p.m. each day starting last year, when he got a job helping a law firm. It wasn’t until prosecutors obtained GPS records from his ankle bracelet that they realized he had gone far afield — and at all hours.

He’s not being accused of any new crimes as a result of all this travel, but he’ll forfeit the money his family paid for his bond to be out of jail, and he’ll have to put up another bond. Plus, he’ll be confined to his home completely.

Corrections attorney Patricia Jones Cummings told the judge that Burgos’ case “is not reflective of the entire monitored release unit.”

But there was also this ominous note: Burgos was fired from one of his jobs, at a furniture store, because prosecutors say, “He had threatened co-workers with violence.”

Appalling. Offensive. And to those words used by the judge, we would add one more: Unacceptable.

This story was originally published May 20, 2021 at 2:05 PM.