A man who admitted to police that he shot another man in Pioneer Park in 2005 has gone about his life for more than two years.

That is until prosecutors recently discovered that paperwork they thought was filed in 2007 never made it to the courthouse.

Since his original case was dismissed because a state witness failed to show up in court in February 2007, Johnny Eugene Howard, 48, has been arrested a couple of times and even spent some time in the state hospital. But on multiple occasions he has been released from the Salt Lake County Jail because of overcrowding, without any reference to an attempted murder case.

The missing charges against Howard were refiled this week, accusing him of attempted murder, a first-degree felony; and two counts of discharge of a firearm, a third-degree felony.

The original charges were dismissed without prejudice, as is customary in that circumstance, allowing prosecutors to refile charges at a later date, which they fully intended to do.

"The prosecutor had decided he wanted to refile the charges back in 2007 and prepared them, but for some reason they never got filed," said Alicia Cook, a spokeswoman for the Salt Lake County District Attorney's Office.

Cook said that the prosecutor was under the impression that the charges had been filed, but somewhere along the line there was a "paperwork flow error."

In June, Howard was arrested and charged with retail theft and that same prosecutor recognized his name and decided to see if there had been any resolution to the earlier charges, Cook said.

When the prosecutor noticed that no attempted murder case had been filed, his office began to try to figure out what happened, which led to the discovery that the charges had never actually been filed years ago, according to Cook.

Prosecutors normally prepare the written charges and then police officers take the charges and file them at the courthouse, where they are assigned case numbers and a judge to hear the case, Cook said.

"There are hundreds of charges filed a week, but this is the first one that I know of where this has happened," Cook said. "The system in place usually works quite well."

According to the charges, on Sept. 1, 2005, a man entered the 400 South Clinic, 404 S. 400 West, and said he had been shot. Officers responded and found the man lying on the floor with a wound to his lower right abdomen, his upper back and his left arm.

The man told police he was sitting in Pioneer Park when another man approached him and asked, "Do you remember me?" He told him that he didn't and then the man "pulled out a gun and shot (the victim) three times," the charges said.

Howard turned himself in at the West Valley Police Department in December 2005, saying that he was the man who had pulled the trigger in that shooting, according to the charges.

Howard told police that he had shot the man three times because of an incident that happened with the two men in New Orleans the year before, the charges said.

The original charges were filed just a few days after Howard turned himself in.

Howard is being held in the Salt Lake County Jail. His bail has been set at $200,000.

e-mail: ethomas@desnews.com