Prisoner released from custody after NDOC rescinds warrant

A convicted murderer recently arrested after spending more than a year out of federal custody and seemingly unaccounted for was ordered to be released from custody again on Wednesday.

The Nevada attorney general’s office, acting on behalf of the Nevada Department of Corrections, requested that a judge issue a fugitive warrant for the arrest of 43-year-old Jeremy Kelly, shortly before he was set to appear for a parole hearing.

Kelly had been serving time in federal prison on drug and weapons charges, and was released to the streets in June 2022 despite having time remaining on his state sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole for a 1996 fatal shooting, prosecutors wrote in a request for an arrest warrant.

According to a recent motion filed by the attorney general’s office, the Department of Corrections requested that prosecutors withdraw the warrant for Kelly’s arrest on Feb. 15.

On Wednesday, District Judge Jacqueline Bluth granted the motion to quash Kelly’s arrest warrant and ordered that he again be released from custody, confirmed John Sadler, a spokesperson for the attorney general’s office.

Kelly was arrested on Feb. 16, as prosecutors with the attorney general’s office were “researching the process” for withdrawing the warrant, according to the motion.

“But given that the Parole Board is scheduling a further review of parole for Kelly, the NDOC no longer requires Kelly to be in custody,” prosecutors wrote in the motion.

Asked for clarification on why the warrant was no longer needed, or why the prison system requested the warrant in the first place, Sadler directed questions to the Department of Corrections. A spokesperson for the prison system did not respond to a request for comment.

In a Tuesday emailed statement, a spokesperson for the Bureau of Prisons wrote that “for privacy, safety, and security reasons,” the agency does not provide information on people no longer in federal custody.

In the same statement, the spokesperson included information on how prisoners can be released from custody early by completing programs or earning time for good conduct.

Kelly was convicted with two other men for the 1996 fatal shooting of 47-year-old Terry Dixon during a robbery-turned-murder, court records show.

State prosecutors argued during trial that Kelly, who was 15 at the time of the murder, was the likely gunman and had stolen the murder weapon from a neighbor several days before the shooting, the Review-Journal has previously reported.

He was initially released from state custody and placed on parole in 2016 but was picked up two years later on a federal weapons and drug charge, court records show.

When the Bureau of Prisons was set to release Kelly, the federal agency contacted the Clark County Detention Center, which is operated by the Metropolitan Police Department, but the jail said “they did not need him back,” prosecutors wrote in the application for Kelly’s arrest warrant.

“The BOP did not contact the (Department of Corrections) and the (Department of Corrections) did not place a hold with the BOP for Kelly,” according to the warrant.

Kelly did not appear in jail records as of Wednesday afternoon.

Contact Katelyn Newberg at knewberg@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0240.