Claim:
In 2000, a Missouri man received a 13-year prison sentence but didn’t serve any time until 13 years later due to a clerical error.
Rating:
Context
Cornealious “Mike” Anderson served a little more than a year of his sentence between 2013 and 2014 when authorities discovered the clerical error. A judge released Anderson on May 5, 2014, saying that continuing to incarcerate him would reportedly serve “no purpose, would be a waste of taxpayer dollars and punish a good man.”
In the fall of 2025, a decade-old (archived) rumor circulated online that a Missouri man avoided a 13-year prison sentence in 2000 due to a clerical error.
For example, one X user (archived) claimed that Cornealious “Mike” Anderson “was convicted of armed robbery” but, due to the administrative mistake, officials “mistakenly thought he was already behind bars, so he was never taken into custody.”
The X user added that Anderson “lived a law-abiding life,” volunteered and started a family and business during the 13 years he was meant to be in prison, but authorities arrested him in 2013 when corrections officials discovered the mistake. The user claimed the judge released him in 2014, recognizing that Anderson had “lived as a reformed man” and “essentially served his sentence by becoming the person prison aims to create.”
The claim also circulated on Instagram (archived), Reddit (archived), TikTok (archived) and Facebook (archived), where users said Anderson was from Missouri.
In short, the story, including accounts that Anderson spent the 13 years he should have been in prison building a business and a life without further involvement from the law, was true.
According to court records and a local Missouri outlet, in March 2000, a judge sentenced Anderson to 13 years in prison for taking part in a robbery at a Burger King restaurant in St. Charles, Missouri, on Aug. 15, 1999. Anderson lodged appeals with the district appeals and state supreme courts until 2002, when the Missouri Supreme Court upheld his original conviction. Anderson then expected his bond would be revoked or that the court would issue a warrant for his arrest. Neither happened.
Though Anderson effectively skipped his sentence, authorities did eventually come for him on July 25, 2013, when the court system finally discovered it had never imprisoned him. He spent nearly a year in prison while the system decided if he still owed time. A judge eventually decided to release Anderson, and a photographer from The Associated Press captured him walking out of the Mississippi County Courthouse in Charleston, Missouri, on May 5, 2014, finally a free man, with his wife and daughter at his side.
A clerical error
Jessica Lussenhop, an investigative journalist who at that time covered the greater midwest region, reported extensively on Anderson’s story in September 2013 while he was in prison. In her reporting for the St. Louis Riverfront Times, Lussenhop described a post-conviction appeal in 2004 that could have been the clerical error that kept Anderson a free man.
According to Lussenhop’s reporting, the first line of his 2004 post-conviction appeal, filed by his lawyer Michael Gross, read: “Movant is not presently incarcerated.” At the time that was true — Anderson bonded out in June 2000 and remained free while his appeals worked their way through the system.Â
Despite this, when the judge brought up this line during a hearing on Anderson’s case, the prosecutor, reportedly James Gregory, “jumped up” and said his team had checked that morning and found that Anderson was in prison. Gross was said to have told Lussenhop in 2013 that he took Gregory’s assumption to be true because he had not spoken to Anderson for a few days at the time of the hearing and because Anderson was not present.
“This American Life,” a radio program and podcast that features true stories revolving around a set theme each week, discussed Anderson’s story on Feb. 14, 2014, in an episode, titled: “Except For That One Thing.”
During the episode, Anderson told Lussenhop that he called Gross a few days after the hearing. Anderson said (time code 11:01):
He was shocked. He said, “You aren’t in jail?” I said, “No, I’m not.” And so I was like, “What are we supposed to do? Am I supposed to turn myself in?” And it was just like, well, at this time, it’s a mistake. They’ll figure out their mistake. He says, “Temporary — expect to be picked up. They’re going to pick you up.”
Anderson told Lussenhop that though he never considered turning himself in when nobody came for him, he also never made himself very hard to find (time code 12:09):
I registered my business through the state with a Social Security number, address, everything. I’m four streets over from the address that they had on file. I built a house over there. So there was never any running or strategy of, hey, I don’t want to go here because there’s going to be authorities. No, I lived a normal life.
Lussenhop was not able to determine through her reporting exactly how Anderson was able to remain free after the 2004 post-conviction appeal. Regardless, in 2013, after U.S. Marshals finally picked Anderson up, the initial opinion of the Department of Corrections appeared to be that he must now serve the full time from his sentence in 2000.
Tim Lohmar, who at the time was the prosecutor in St. Charles, the county that prosecuted Anderson, reportedly told Lussenhop: “As unfair as it may seem to he and his family, he’s got thirteen years he owes the state. I don’t think there’s much more to say than that.”
Anderson’s lawyers disagreed, and a petition for his release gained more than 35,000 signatures.
On May 5, 2014, a judge released Anderson, reportedly saying during a 10-minute court session: “I believe continuing to incarcerate you serves no purpose, would be a waste of taxpayer dollars and punish a good man.” According to Lussenhop’s reporting, the judge counted the 13 years from Anderson’s first sentence in 2000 to his arrest in 2013 as “time served” and allowed him to return to his wife and four children.
A twist in the story
In February 2014, around three months before Anderson’s release, there was another twist in his story: Lussenhop reported on “This American Life” that she had spoken to the victim of Anderson’s crime from 1999. The man, named in the episode as Dennis, reportedly contacted Lussenhop directly after her article for the St. Louis Riverfront Times published.
Dennis told Lussenhop he was initially “pretty angry” that Anderson never served his sentence but, with time, decided that the justice system’s intent for him to serve it 13 years later was “not right.” Dennis said (time code 19:24):
He wasn’t out robbing other people, doing this, that, and the other. He seemed to have gotten his life together. You’ve got to give the guy a little bit of slack. I mean, yeah, he screwed up when he was little. But the law dropped the ball. The law ought to drop it completely. They need to leave the man alone.
Anderson had one more might-have-been run-in with the law when, in November 2015, St. Louis prosecutors accused him of stealing a woman’s purse. Prosecutors dropped charges after an investigation cast doubt on how a witness identified him.
Snopes could not reach Anderson for this report. We did, however, ask Lussenhop why she thought Anderson’s story still resonated with people so many years later. She replied:
I think we all want to be redeemable, better than the worst thing we ever did. Mike’s story really challenges us to confront our assumptions about what the purpose of incarceration is — are we interested in making people more productive members of society or do we simply want to punish? I’m grateful that my work has made it possible to have those kinds of conversations.
