The West Virginia Regional Jail & Correctional Facility Authority website says Wendell Smallwood is still an inmate in Doddridge County — but that might not mean much. The Delaware attorney general office told me it is a security policy to keep extradition details under wraps, which makes perfect sense. Smallwood might be gone, for all we know, and the system will catch up later.

Smallwood has acquired legal representation in West Virginia, but he also signed his extradition papers yesterday.

That office also said Smallwood will face a Class D felony charge for an act of intimidation. It is punishable by up to eight years in prison. It’s also the lesser of two available felony charges for witness intimidation. A charge for an aggressive act of intimidation is punishable by two to 25 years in prison.

What’s interesting to us, I bet, is that that’s the language proposed and passed in Senate Bill 177 that reclassifies felony offenses. I’m efforting an official explanation, but someone I know up there whose work involves such matters said the attorney general office does that, and can do that, because the charge came after the law was passed.

UPDATE: The spokesperson at the Delaware attorney general office now says Smallwood will be charged with a Class G felony that is punishable by up to two years in prison. It would appear someone passed along charge of “act of intimidation,” someone looked it up and saw the current classification and penalty and didn’t account for the change in the law. Diligence!