FARMVILLE – Piedmont Regional Jail superintendent Ernest Toney reported Tuesday afternoon that U.S. Marshals have apprehended the inmate mistakenly released by the jail in May.

“They have (him) in custody,” Toney told The Herald. “He was captured near Houston, Texas.”

Carter Sherrod Tillery was released from the jail on May 17 after charges against him in Dinwiddie were Nolle prosequi, or not pursued.

Tillery, who had been brought to the jail in January-Dinwiddie paid the jail to house the inmate-was picked up at the jail by a friend and taken back home to the Petersburg area.

Seven days later, when Dinwiddie law enforcement came to the jail to pick Tillery up, the mistake was discovered and the search began to return the inmate to custody.

Toney explained the mistaken release, saying that the jail did not “look further into the file to see that a writ was in there-and a writ is from a local or state jurisdiction to transport and hold a federal inmate. Had (we) looked in the files, in the complete file, (we) would have seen the writ. The writ would have automatically alerted (the jail) that even though all the charges from Dinwiddie were settled (Tillery) still couldn't be released because he had that writ, which meant he was the property of the federal government.”

U.S. Marshals were provided surveillance tapes by Piedmont Regional Jail, including tapes of phone conversations, to help locate the friend who had picked Tillery up and taken him to Petersburg upon his release by the jail.

“They do have him in custody,” Toney said Tuesday of Tillery. “And this nightmare is over.”

Last week Toney said the mistaken release “never should have happened, but we've made sure it won't happen again.”

Of the more than 50,000 people booked into Piedmont Regional Jail in 24 years, he'd said, “you can count on two or three fingers how many people have been released inadvertently.”

Considerably more than 50,000; 85,807 booked into the jail, as of Wednesday, to be precise.