PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "In March 1995, a jury convicted Howard of murder and arson and sentenced him to 80 years in prison. At trial, (Detective) Dowdy testified he never suspected the murders involved sexual assaults and that he never investigated them as such. The prosecutor, Mike Nifong, suggested the sperm on the teen was the result of consensual sex before the murder, The News & Observer reported. Nifong, then an assistant district attorney, was later disbarred for prosecutorial conduct in the Duke lacrosse case. Judge Orlando Hudson vacated Howard’s convictions in 2016 after lawyers affiliated with the Innocence Project, a nonprofit that seeks to exonerate the wrongly convicted, argued police and prosecutorial misconduct tainted the case."
--------------------------------------------------
STORY: "NC (North Carolina) man spent 23 years in prison. Did the lead detective fabricate evidence?, by Reporter Virginia Bridges, published by The News & Observer, on November 10, 2021.
PHOTO CAPTION: “A judge found that new DNA evidence raised questions of Howard's guilt and vacated his conviction in 2016. “I want to go see my grandchildren, go see my mom and go home,” Howard said at the time. Gov. Roy Cooper pardoned Howard in April 2020."
GIST: “About 30 years ago, just after midnight firefighters found Doris Washington and her 13-year-old daughter naked, lying face down on a bed with signs they had been strangled in an apartment set ablaze.
Four years later, a Durham County jury convicted Darryl Howard of their murder and the arson after a few days of testimony. Now, a jury is revisiting the case in a federal courtroom in Winston-Salem.
This time, jurors aren’t directly deciding whether someone is guilty of killing the pair. Instead, they are considering whether a detective deprived Howard of his constitutional right to a fair trial by fabricating and suppressing evidence and performing an inadequate investigation.
Howard contends former lead Detective Darrell Dowdy’s actions misled the 1995 jury and resulted in him spending 23 years and four months incarcerated for crimes he has always said he didn’t commit.
Howard’s attorney Nick Brustin’s started his opening statements saying Doris Washington, 29, and her daughter Nishonda were sexually assaulted and killed by members of the New York Boys.
The gang recruited Few Garden residents to sell or store drugs and wanted to send a brutal message after drugs had gone missing from Washington’s apartment, he said. Dowdy ignored a tip about a gang killing and the sexual assault evidence, Brustin said.
He manipulated vulnerable Few Gardens residents to fabricate evidence against Howard in a case that offered a $10,000 reward, he said.
Dowdy fabricated a statement from a crucial witness, Angela Oliver, to make his case, Brustin said.
He later fabricated other evidence to explain away the sexual assault evidence that didn’t link Howard to the crime, Brustin said.
Dowdy contended sperm found on the teen was from consensual sex with her boyfriend, with whom she had been staying until the murder, but there is no evidence Dowdy investigated that contention, Brustin said. “A detective can’t decide who is worthy of constitutional protection and who is not,” Brustin told the jury Tuesday.
‘SEVEN WITNESSES’:
While much has changed since the 1995 trial — a judge vacated Howard’s conviction in 2016 and Gov. Roy Cooper pardoned him in April — some of the detective’s arguments around the case remain the same.
Dowdy’s attorney Nick Ellis told jurors that Howard’s overturned conviction, the new DNA and other evidence revealed over time don’t prove him innocent.
Ellis told the jury that Howard’s trial was fair and supported by witness after witness whose testimony implicated Howard in the hours and days after the killing. “Seven witnesses placed him at the scene,” he said.
Those witnesses said Howard fought and threatened Doris Washington and her daughter hours before the murders, that he was in and near the apartment during the killings, and that he later bragged about it at a liquor house, he said.
Oliver even described Howard entering the apartment, beating Washington — who died from blunt force injury to the abdomen — and later saying he had to burn the bodies to cover up evidence. Howard contends Dowdy manipulated Oliver’s 10-minute taped statement during a 45-minute interview, but Dowdy denies it.
Oliver has since recanted her statements made in court and on the tape, according to court documents.
Ellis also pointed to one of the prosecutors’ contentions in the 1995 trial that indicated sperm found on the teen was from consensual sex before the murder.
Howard didn’t attend the opening arguments.
His attorneys said he has been hospitalized with a leg infection and plans to come as soon as he can.
Dowdy, 65, who retired from the police department in 2007, has been present in the courtroom.
Nine jurors were selected in the case, but one woman was dismissed Tuesday after she brought her 3-year-old to jury duty because her child care fell through. A minimum of six jurors are needed to deliberate the federal civil case.
LAWSUIT NARROWED:
Howard’s May 2017 federal lawsuit initially sought damages against the city of Durham, former and current officers, and a fire department employee involved in the investigation.
But over time, the defendants were narrowed to Dowdy. Howard has to prove the former detective intentionally withheld evidence that was key to the 1995 jury’s decision.
The specific questions center on whether Dowdy: ▪ Fabricated evidence regarding Oliver’s statement and evidence that supported Nishonda Washington having consensual sex before the killing. ▪ Withheld evidence regarding another important witness’ connection to the New York Boys and role as criminal informant.
BACKGROUND: "Washington and her daughter were killed while living in Durham’s Few Gardens public housing complex, which was leveled years ago due to concerns about drugs and violent crime. Washington died from her injury, and her daughter died of strangulation from a cord, according to court documents. Sperm was found on the teen, but DNA testing excluded Howard. Washington had a laceration in her vagina, but the autopsy found no sperm.
They were killed before the fire started.
In March 1995, a jury convicted Howard of murder and arson and sentenced him to 80 years in prison.
At trial, Dowdy testified he never suspected the murders involved sexual assaults and that he never investigated them as such.
The prosecutor, Mike Nifong, suggested the sperm on the teen was the result of consensual sex before the murder, The News & Observer reported.
Nifong, then an assistant district attorney, was later disbarred for prosecutorial conduct in the Duke lacrosse case.
Judge Orlando Hudson vacated Howard’s convictions in 2016 after lawyers affiliated with the Innocence Project, a nonprofit that seeks to exonerate the wrongly convicted, argued police and prosecutorial misconduct tainted the case.
The 2016 hearing outlined new DNA evidence produced after the court approved in 2010 new tests on the sexual assault evidence using modern and more sensitive testing not available during the trial.
The tests revealed previously undetected semen found in Doris Washington that matched the DNA profile to Jermack Jones, who was affiliated with the New York Boys, according to court documents. State officials later dismissed the charges against Howard. North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper pardoned Howard in April."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/crime/article255636021.html
--------------------------------------------------------------
An autopsy revealed that Nishonda had died of ligature strangulation and Doris, who also had ligature marks on her neck, died of blunt force trauma. Both appeared to have been sexually assaulted.
Shortly after the murders, police received reports that 29-year-old Darryl Howard, a friend of Doris Washington who frequented the same housing complex, had been seen in the vicinity of Doris’s apartment. Washington and Howard had known each other for more than five years and he often gave Doris rides when she needed transportation or needed help finding Nishonda, who frequently ran away from home because of her mother’s drug dealing. Evidence would later show that just days before the murders, Nishonda sought help from social workers, saying she feared for her life if she continued to live at home because her mother’s drug deals were going sour. Tragically, Nishonda’s plea was ignored.
In June 1992, police questioned Howard, but about a different investigation. At the time, Howard was in Duke hospital after he was shot five times in the back by a member of the New York Boys drug gang, which was responsible for much of the drug trade in Few Gardens. Police suspected the gang member who shot Howard was responsible for two other murders, but not the murders of Doris and Nishonda.
Even so, Howard told the detective that he believed the New York Boys killed Doris and Nishonda. Howard told the detective that on November 26—shortly before the bodies were discovered—he was in the apartment of a friend, Sharon Bass, in the same housing complex as Doris Washington’s apartment when a New York Boys gang member came by to purchase drugs. Howard said the gang member traded a VCR, a radio, and a jacket for drugs, which were similar to items that police believed had been taken from Washington’s apartment after the murders. However, the detective did not follow up on Howard’s information.
In October 1992, police arrested Angela Oliver on a charge of prostitution and she gave a statement that implicated Howard in the murders, though it was not corroborated by any other witness. The statement was recorded, in part. The statement took 46 minutes to make, but the police stopped and started the recorder so often that the actual recording lasted only about 10 minutes.
In the recording, Oliver said that on November 26, she and Howard went to Doris’s apartment to pick up money or drugs. At that time, Oliver said on the tape, Howard threatened to kill Doris if she didn’t have his money or drugs when he came back. She also said that late in the evening, she and Howard returned to the apartment with Howard’s brother, Harvey, and that Howard drew a gun and hit Doris in the face with it. Howard took Doris into the apartment and, Oliver said, she heard Doris screaming.
When the screaming ended, Howard called Harvey into the apartment and said he had to “burn them up.” Oliver said she went to the car and later the three of them drove to a drug house to get high.
On November 12, 1992, Howard was charged with two counts of capital murder and arson and Harvey was charged with arson.
Prior to trial, DNA testing on sperm that was found in the rape kit taken from Nishonda developed a DNA profile, but it was not Howard. Analysts said no sperm was found in the rape kit from Doris, so no DNA test was performed.
In March 1995, Howard went to trial in Durham County Superior Court. The first-degree murder charges against him were reduced to second-degree murder.
Howard’s case was prosecuted by Durham County assistant district attorney Michael Nifong, who argued that there was no sexual assault component to the crime, even though Doris suffered a ½ inch laceration in her vagina and a medical examiner testified that the injury was consistent with an object being forcibly inserted. Nifong argued that Nishonda had consensual sex with a boyfriend prior to the murders—although there was no evidence that it happened or even who the boyfriend might have been.
Several prosecution witnesses testified to seeing Howard near Doris’s apartment in the hours prior to the murders, although their accounts were contradictory and inconsistent.
Roneka Jackson, a friend of Doris’s and Few Gardens resident, said that on the afternoon of November 26, she saw Howard standing outside Doris’s apartment arguing with Doris, who was leaning out of her window. Jackson said Howard was arguing about his girlfriend and that he threatened to kill Doris and Nishonda. Jackson, who was in prison for violating her probation at the time of her testimony, later received $10,000 from a state compensation program in exchange for her testimony.
Dwight Moss, a convicted felon, testified that he was across the street from Doris’s apartment that same afternoon and that he heard Howard tell Doris that “you messed up the money” and “you messed up the drugs” before yelling, “I’ll kill you” and walking away. He also testified that he later saw Howard come out from the back of Doris’s apartment carrying a television.
Rhonda Davis testified that she was with Doris on November 26 from 10:30 a.m. until 10:30 p.m., less than three hours before Doris and Nishonda were found murdered. Davis said she did not see Howard speak to Doris or come by the apartment at all that day.
When Angela Oliver refused to come to court, she was arrested and brought to the trial. She recanted her statement on the witness stand, saying that the lead detective had threatened to charge her as an accessory to murder if she did not testify against Howard. “You can’t force me to come and tell something I didn’t see,” she said. “So, I am on the stand to make (the detective) feel good, so he ain’t going to charge me with it.”
Oliver testified that the reason the police kept stopping and starting the recorder was because she “wasn’t talking right or something.”
Oliver told the jury that she knew nothing about the murders and that when the fire broke out, she was “probably across town.”
As a result, the trial judge declared Oliver a hostile witness and allowed the prosecution to play the tape recording of her statement for the jury.
The detective who questioned Oliver testified and conceded that he had threatened to charge Oliver with murder if she did not cooperate. The detective also admitted that while he was questioning Howard’s girlfriend, Natasha Mayo, he showed her a fake warrant for murder and arson with Mayo’s name on it in an attempt to persuade her to implicate Howard (which she never did).
The defense contended that Doris and Nishonda were sexually assaulted, that the sexual assaults went “hand in hand” with the murders and therefore Howard was innocent because the pre-trial DNA testing excluded him. The defense also noted that the prosecution initially believed the sexual assaults were part of the crime, but changed its theory of the crime after Howard was excluded as the rapist by DNA testing.
Howard acknowledged that he was near Doris’ apartment on the day of the crimes, but maintained his innocence.
Mayo testified that she and Howard were at a friend’s apartment in the Few Gardens housing complex on the evening of the crimes. She said that around midnight she and Howard went out to get drugs for the friend and saw smoke coming from Doris’s apartment and then returned to their friend’s apartment.
The lead detective testified at trial that the murders were never investigated as involving sexual assaults. In his closing argument, Nifong told the jury that the case “was never investigated as a sexual assault and it was never suspected to be a sexual assault.”
On March 31, 1995, the jury convicted Howard of two counts of second-degree murder and one count of arson. He was sentenced to 80 years in prison. The prosecution then dismissed the arson charge against Harvey.
In 2009, Howard, represented by the Innocence Project and James Cooney III of Charlotte, North Carolina, sought DNA testing on the rape kits and in 2010, after the prosecution consented, a judge ordered the tests. By that time, Dwight Moss had recanted his testimony implicating Howard, saying that he had been coerced by the lead detective.
The testing of Doris’s rape kit revealed sperm for the first time and the testing produced a male DNA profile that was not Howard’s. The DNA profile was entered into the FBI’s DNA database and it was matched to Jermeck Jones, a career criminal with more than 35 convictions. DNA testing on Nishonda’s rape kit again excluded Howard and identified a second male DNA profile that did not come from Jones.
Despite the identification of Jones, then-Durham County District Attorney Tracey Cline declined to conduct any further investigation.
After moving for post-conviction DNA testing, Howard’s attorneys discovered undisclosed documents in the prosecution files that revealed that a few days after the murders, Durham police received a tip from an informant that the two victims were killed because Doris owed $8,000 to drug dealers from New York or Philadelphia. The informant said that residents of the housing complex had been offered $2,000 a week for use of their apartments to sell narcotics and that Doris had accepted. The tipster said that when the perpetrators came for the money they raped Doris before strangling her. The tipster said that Doris was murdered because the drug dealers learned that drugs were missing and Doris did not repay the $8,000 that was owed; her daughter was killed because she walked in during the crime. The informant also said that more than one perpetrator was involved.
In the margin of the memo was a handwritten note written by a captain in the Durham Police Department to the lead detective, stating, “There may be something to this. I don’t remember any public info on the rape.”
That tip was not only ignored, but also concealed by police and prosecutor Nifong for nearly two decades. (Nifong was disbarred in 2007 for failing to disclose evidence favorable to the defendants in an unrelated wrongful accusation of rape against several members of the Duke University lacrosse team.) The tip would have supported the defense theory that the crimes were committed by more than one perpetrator and by members of the New York Boys drug gang.
In May 2014, Durham County Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson Jr. vacated Howard’s convictions without a hearing and ordered a new trial based on the DNA test results, Nifong’s hiding favorable evidence from the defense, and the presentation of false and misleading evidence and arguments at the trial by Nifong and the detective.
The prosecution appealed and in April 2016, the Court of Appeals of North Carolina set aside the decision and ordered Judge Hudson to conduct a hearing on the motion for a new trial.
On August 31, 2016, after a hearing a three-day hearing, Judge Hudson again vacated Howard’s convictions and ordered a new trial. Howard was released on bond after more than 23 years in custody.
On September 2, 2016, the prosecution dismissed the murder and arson charges. No charges were filed against Jones as of September 2016.
Howard filed a federal civil rights lawsuit seeking damages in May 2017.
On April 30, 2021, Gov. Roy Cooper granted Howard a pardon of innocence, making him eligible for state compensation for his wrongful conviction
