Spokane family rejected court plan for son’s holiday furlough

All Jimmie-Lee Kinard wanted was to spend time with her son before he went to federal prison on a cocaine dealing conviction.

To her family, it seemed like a simple request: five days out of jail – electronic ankle monitor included – starting the day before Thanksgiving.

Instead, a federal magistrate granted her son a five-hour furlough from Spokane County Jail for Thanksgiving on the condition the family pay for two law enforcement officers to accompany him.

It never happened.

Terrence A. “T-Baby” Kinard, 52, spent the holiday in jail with his brother, Steven D. Kinard, who’d been arrested two days earlier on a drug charge.

“It just got out of hand,” Jimmie-Lee Kinard, 78, said Tuesday of the request. “It was supposed to be a quiet little family gathering for a week.”

The family didn’t want to pay armed guards to join them during dinner and said five hours just wasn’t enough time, she said.

Also, police presence during the holiday would have been awkward, family friend Jessee Smith said.

The Kinards made the furlough request through defense lawyer Kim Deater on Nov. 17. U.S. Magistrate Cynthia Imbrogno granted the five-hour furlough the next day.

Terrence Kinard has failed to show up for court 75 times and is expected to be sentenced to 80 months in prison Dec. 8. He was arrested in November 2008.

Kinard said she learned of Imbrogno’s decision when friends called her Nov. 19 and told her about a newspaper article about her son. Her son Steven Kinard, 50, was arrested the week after the article appeared in what the police describe as an unrelated investigation that began months ago.

“(It) had absolutely nothing to do with a decision of a federal magistrate judge,” said police spokeswoman Officer Jennifer DeRuwe. “It just ended up to be a coincidence.”

Smith, the family friend, and Jimmie-Lee Kinard believe differently.

Sitting in the East Fourth Avenue home where her family has lived since 1958, Kinard said her sons have problems with drugs but are good, nonviolent people who are targeted by police.

“Every time one gets out, they put the other in,” Kinard said.

Her oldest son, Odell J. Kinard, was sentenced to a year and a half in prison in March for cocaine possession. Steven Kinard was sentenced to five years in prison in 2005 for two cocaine dealing convictions. He was arrested again Nov. 24 and is being held on a Department of Corrections probation violation.

New drug charges against Steven Kinard haven’t stuck – a judge ruled Monday there was no probable cause for one charge; another charge wasn’t filed within three days of his arrest as required.

In May, sheriff’s deputies arrested Steven Kinard on suspicion he was dealing cocaine, according to court documents.

Documents filed Monday mention another alleged drug sale in August and say Steven Kinard had cocaine in his home when he was arrested last week.

“We can’t pick and choose when we arrest people if we have probable cause,” DeRuwe said.

Despite her sons’ absence, Jimmie-Lee Kinard said her Thanksgiving was wonderful.