In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police who investigate crime and the district attorneys who prosecute the offenders. This is their story.

It is the story of Robert Douglas Preece, a career criminal who was mistakenly released from jail just minutes after another agency filed an arrest warrant to try to keep him locked up longer.

Now Salt Lake County officials are trying to figure out how the convicted killer could walk out of the jail when he should have been behind bars.

"It seemed like something out of a bad 'Law and Order' script," County Councilman Joe Hatch said of Preece's arrest, release and recapture Monday morning. Police in Oregon nabbed the convicted killer and serial robbery suspect while he was sleeping in his car in Portland.

Fingers pointed every which way for the mishap at Tuesday's meeting of the Salt Lake County Council.

Sheriff Jim Winder blamed technology and miscommunications. And District Attorney Lohra Miller said the fault rests with a clerical error and low staffing levels in her office.

"With the existing resources we have and haven't had, human errors will occur," Miller said. "We just can't have the human strain of these cases without mistakes happening."

Miller said the average in her offices is about 300 cases per felony prosecutor, while the national average is about 90 felony cases per prosecutor.

No matter what is to blame, it was either what Winder called a "perfect storm from a technological and investigative perspective that led to his releasing," or what Miller deemed "a series of unfortunate circumstances."

The saga started on Sept. 13, when a man used a knife to rob a Quizno's restaurant in West Valley. The police caught up with Preece later that night and booked him in the Salt Lake County jail early the next day.

Four days later, at 8:47 p.m., Preece walked out of jail a free man after the district attorney's office failed to file charges against him in time. Miller said a clerical error by the court made her believe she had more time to file charges.

The district attorney's office filed aggravated robbery charges the day after he was released.

It turns out the jail could have kept him behind bars even without the aggravated robbery charges. A judge issued an arrest warrant at 8:44 p.m. that day after Preece failed to appear in court on drug possession charges.

As soon as he got out, the Federal Bureau of Investigation said, Preece robbed a Holladay bank — the same one he is accused of robbing before he was arrested in September.