He got out of jail because of missing paperwork. Then, police say, he raped and killed.

NEW YORK — It was a simple clerical error, a missing bit of paperwork.

But it had tragic consequences.

Danueal Drayton was arrested earlier this year on charges that he choked an ex-girlfriend in Nassau County. By that time, he had a left a trail of similar crimes in his home state of Connecticut.

Yet when Drayton came before a county judge for a bail hearing, no one there was aware that he had a history of violence against women — not the local prosecutor, not the public defender, not the court clerks. His out-of-state criminal history was missing from his court file, even though the Nassau County police insist they hand-delivered a copy to the court.

On July 5, the judge canceled Drayton’s initial bail of $2,000 and let him out of jail on his own recognizance to await trial.

Just two weeks later, the police say, Drayton raped and murdered a young nurse he met on the dating app Tinder.

The case highlights a weakness in New York’s system for providing courts with the criminal histories of people brought before them. Since the 1970s, a state law has required the police to distribute paper copies of defendants’ criminal histories to local district attorneys and courts, which share them with the defense.

Court clerks with clearances are now able to check criminal records themselves through the state’s electronic portal. But because of the law, judges rely on the local police instead, said Lucian Chalfen, a spokesman for the Office of Court Administration.

In Drayton’s case, state officials said his comprehensive records were sent to the police, the district attorney’s office and the court in Nassau County on July 1, four days before the judge’s bail decision, through an electronic portal called eJustice. But the judge and the prosecutor handling the case never checked the portal, court officials and the Nassau County District Attorney’s office said.

New York City detectives eventually tracked Drayton to an apartment in Los Angeles, where he had fled using one of the slain nurse’s credit cards, the police said. When officers came through the door, they found Drayton holding another woman captive, who told officers he had raped her, Los Angeles authorities said. Drayton is being held in Los Angeles on rape charges and New York is seeking his extradition.

Drayton’s case has ignited a debate in New York among court officials and law enforcement agencies about rap sheet procedures and what should be done to prevent future mistakes. The Nassau County police have not publicly accepted responsibility for the missing records, but after reviewing the case, the department updated its protocol to specify that criminal records from out-of-state must be shared with the court and district attorney.

P. David Soares, the Albany County district attorney and the president of the District Attorneys Association of New York, said the lapse was indicative of a larger problem with the criminal justice system relying on paper documents and analog processes. He argued that the onus should be on the courts to ensure they have the information judges need: “They should begin the practice of routinely pulling those records because it’s the courts that determine the issue of bail,” he said.

Chalfen in the Office of Court Administration did not agree. He said the error in Drayton’s case was an unfortunate mistake, but it did not expose a deeper problem.

“We have not found that the current method of how criminal background checks are provided to the court, at arraignment, have any systemic flaws,” he said. “New York state’s criminal procedure law is clear as to the fact that the local police agency is responsible.”

He added that, with 450,000 bail hearings a year, it would be impractical to shift that responsibility to courts in the state’s smaller towns and villages, where judges and prosecutors operate with only a few staff members. Even courts in larger counties depend on other agencies for many tasks, he noted, like bringing defendants to court. Some prosecutors have taken matters into their own hands. In district attorneys’ offices in Queens, Brooklyn and the Bronx, as well as in Albany, staff regularly retrieve defendants’ criminal histories from eJustice. The platform automatically searches state and national databases for convictions, warrants, orders of protection and parole or probation statuses after the police upload suspects’ fingerprints.

The Manhattan district attorney’s office reviews the records, for example, when prosecutors are deciding whether to charge someone with a more serious crime based on a prior conviction.

Other prosecutors and defense lawyers have said that the problem could be minimized if the Division of Criminal Justice Services provided the criminal history reports in a single document on the online portal. Currently, eJustice generates three separate reports that typically arrive within minutes, but reports containing out-of-state and federal data can sometimes be delayed by days or weeks.

Had Justice Erica L. Prager received Drayton’s criminal history before she decided his bail, she would have seen a dark portrait of a violent man.

Drayton had spent several years in jail for attacking women, he violated orders to stay away from them and he repeatedly skipped check-ins with his probation officers, according to records from the Connecticut Judicial Branch and news reports. In 2011, Drayton was arrested on charges that he beat and choked his girlfriend on Thanksgiving Day in East Haven, Connecticut. He was arrested in New Haven for choking the same woman four months later, despite a protective order, after a judge reduced his $20,000 bail to personal recognizance and released him, according to the Hartford Courant.

Judicial records showed Drayton was charged with felony strangulation and sentenced effectively to three years in jail and three years on probation. He was released on probation in November 2014, but returned to jail the following May after he was caught holding a woman captive in her Waterbury home, the Hartford Courant reported.

Drayton was arrested again while that case was pending after the same woman found him in her house, and he was eventually sentenced to three years in prison for unlawful restraint and violating a protective order, judicial records showed. He was released in April 2017.

In February, New Haven police arrested Drayton again for sending threatening messages to a male friend. He pleaded guilty to harassment in March and received a suspended sentence of 90 days in jail, plus one year of probation, according to judicial records.

Drayton was still on probation on June 30, when New York police arrested him for fare evasion in Brooklyn and extradited him on a warrant to Nassau County, where a former girlfriend had accused him of choking her.

By then, Drayton had missed three appointments with his probation officer in Connecticut and the authorities there were searching for him. But they were unaware he had been jailed in New York and only issued a warrant for his arrest on July 17, after his release without bail.

That same day, the nurse Drayton met on Tinder, Samantha Stewart, 29, was found beaten and strangled to death in her bedroom in Springfield Gardens, Queens. Investigators tracked Drayton to North Hollywood, California, a week later, where the authorities said a fugitive task force found him holding a woman captive. The police said he kidnapped and raped her after meeting her in an Uber; they believed he intended to kill her.

Drayton remains in jail in California, where he has pleaded not guilty to rape charges. He is expected to be extradited back to New York to face murder and rape charges, the police have said. The police said Drayton has claimed responsibility for several more rapes and murders in New York City, which detectives are investigating. Investigators said they believed he raped a 23-year-old woman on June 17 in Park Slope, Brooklyn, but no other victims have come forward.

The ex-girlfriend who accused Drayton of choking her told Nassau County police in June that Drayton attacked her when she tried to break up with him and that he returned a few days later and slashed her tires. In a chilling Facebook message, he wrote, “This is the beginning,” according to the criminal complaint against him.

A judge set his bail at $2,000 bond on July 1. But Prager let him go on his own recognizance at a follow-up hearing on July 5.

Prager declined to comment. A court transcript showed that she was never told of Drayton’s past, and in fact was given the opposite information. “He has no criminal record,” a public defender, Aubrey Chamberlain, told the judge, arguing against bail. “He has zero failures to appear.”

The prosecutor, Karen Lipton, said nothing about the defendant’s criminal record. Instead she argued that his bail should be set high because he had threatened the former girlfriend on Facebook, saying he would cut her brake lines and set her car on fire.

“I haven’t even used Facebook,” Drayton pleaded. “I am not here to cause any heinous acts.”

“Every case is different,” the judge said. “Every defendant is different. Every situation is different.” She asked if the prosecution had been in touch with the victim, but Lipton could not say for sure. Then the judge asked Drayton if he would return to court.

“Yes, I can come back to court,” he said.

“OK,” Prager said. “He is released on his own recognizance.”