Verdict on the Judge: He Goofed : Courts: A murder suspect surrenders four days after being mistakenly released. The jurist was imprecise in his order from the bench.

Superior Court Judge Richard P. Neidorf pleaded guilty Tuesday to a judicial goof that allowed a murder suspect to go free.

Neidorf had meant to dismiss charges against one of two men who were awaiting trial in a gang-related slaying, but when he said “case dismissed,” a chain of events was set off that led to four giddy days of freedom for 19-year-old Leandro Amalillo.

The embarrassed judge breathed a sigh of relief Tuesday when Amalillo, in the company of his father and lawyer, turned himself in at the downtown Criminal Courts Building.

“The court made an error,” Neidorf acknowledged from the bench. “I probably should have been more precise.”

Amalillo, for his part, had assumed that authorities knew what they were doing when they let him go.

“I knew I didn’t do nothing wrong” in getting released, he said shortly before he returned to custody. “So I came back.”

Amalillo also said he did not want to be hurt by police officers looking for him.

The succession of errors began Friday when Deputy Dist. Atty. Daniel Ramirez asked Neidorf to dismiss an accessory-to-murder charge against Thomas Vaquerano, 20, Amalillo’s co-defendant.

Amalillo is charged with killing Paul Ortiz, 20, last July in a dispute over drugs near Virgil and Prospect avenues. He has pleaded not guilty. Vaquerano was charged with driving him from the scene.

Both men had been held without bail since August, when they were arrested.

James Sussman, Vaquerano’s lawyer, said his client had protested his innocence since he and Amalillo were arrested. New evidence presented last week, Sussman said, “convinced the prosecution that my client was not guilty.”

In dismissing the case against Vaquerano, Neidorf used the words “case dismissed,” he admitted Tuesday.

“I probably should have said the case is dismissed on Vaquerano only,” Neidorf said. “It appeared to everyone in the courtroom that the whole case was dismissed.”

Neither the defendants nor their lawyers were present at the time.

Neidorf’s clerk, Joe Pulido, noted on the paperwork to Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies that the case had been dismissed and passed on what he thought was Neidorf’s order to release both defendants.

Both men were released a few hours later, and it was not until this week that anyone realized what had gone wrong.

Neidorf would not comment on the case after his pronouncements from the the bench, but a source said someone tipped the judge to his error Monday.

Richard Walton, Amalillo’s lawyer, said he learned of the mistake from Ramirez. Amalillo found out when he called Walton on Monday to talk about his good fortune.

“I told him: ‘Leandro. There’s been a dreadful mistake. You’re not supposed to be out,’ ” Walton said.

Amalillo decided to turn himself in after consulting with his father, Walton said.

The lawyer said he will ask the judge at a hearing scheduled Thursday to set bail for Amalillo based on his responsible conduct.

“I hope he gets some brownie points out of this,” Walton said.

Times staff writer Nieson Himmel contributed to this story.