STORY: 'Don't make me remember': North Carolina man, doctor describe trauma from wrongful conviction," by Reporter Virginia Bridges, published by The Charlotte Observer, on November 24, 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: Darryl Howard walked slowly to the stand with his head bent forward over his broad shoulders. He spent a night in the hospital this month with a skin infection in his leg. Not yet 60, he walked with the hunch of an older man.
After he settled into the witness chair in the federal courtroom, his attorney asked him to introduce himself. “My name is Darryl Anthony Howard,” he said in his gravely smoker’s voice.
Mr. Howard, his attorney asked, did you have anything to do with the murder and rape of Doris and Nishonda Washington? Black Friday Sale Unlimited digital access - “No sir,” Howard said.
Howard later explained he wasn’t a good father before he went to prison for nearly two decades, but he’s trying to be one now.
He has a grown daughter and son he is trying to reconnect with and a 16-month-old son he sees every day, he said.
And then, there is Darryl Junior, who overdosed on drugs while Howard was behind bars. “I was in prison for something I didn’t do, and he died,” Howard said, and he started to sob. “Sorry, I have a difficult time talking about him,” he said.
This is the complicated life of Darryl Howard whose 1995 double-murder conviction was vacated in 2016 after he spent 23 years behind bars for a double murder and arson, which he has denied doing from the beginning. Gov. Roy Cooper pardoned Howard in April.
MADE UP, WITHHELD EVIDENCE? Howard was convicted of arson and two counts of second-degree murder in the deaths of Doris Washington, 29, and her 13-year-old daughter, Nishonda, who were found naked, dead and strangled on a bed in an apartment set ablaze in November 1991.
He was sentenced to 80 years in prison.
Howard contends a drug gang called the New York Boys raped and killed the mother and daughter to send a message to people who took their drugs.
Over the last three weeks, Howard and his team of attorneys have been trying to convince a jury that Durham police detective Darrell Dowdy made up and withheld evidence resulting in Howard’s wrongful conviction.
The federal case is being heard in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of North Carolina.
Dowdy’s investigation, Howard contends, led to Howard’s decades-long imprisonment tortured by the injustice and witnessing and experiencing unspeakable violent and sexual crimes.
Dowdy’s attorneys are fighting a case in which a defense expert agrees Dowdy didn’t follow procedure in documenting parts of his investigation.
Dowdy’s attorneys have fought to present evidence about Howard selling drugs around the 1990s, being high during the 1995 trial and being found with drugs in 2020.
Howard’s attorneys contend the defense is attempting to introducing evidence that suggests he is a bad person who doesn’t deserve to be awarded a lot of money.
They have argued through questioning that no matter how someone has lived, everyone deserves justice.
Jurors will weigh his testimony in deciding how much compensation Howard should receive if they find Dowdy fabricated and withheld evidence.
Other federal wrongful conviction cases have resulted in jury awards in the tens of millions of dollars, including a recent case in which two brothers cleared of a 1983 murder and rape won $1 million for every year of wrongful incarceration.
ABOUT DARRYL HOWARD Howard was the second-youngest of about 10 children.
He dropped out of school in ninth grade. His mother made him attend cooking classes, but he made money selling marijuana for about four years, he testified.
He started selling cocaine and heroin around 1986. Howard’s supplier was a man from Panama, Howard said, and he sold at the now leveled Fayetteville Street public housing complex in Durham.
Howard became addicted to cocaine and heroin himself, he said.
After Howard’s supplier was arrested, Howard said he downgraded his selling operation to fund his personal habit, spending lots of time in Few Gardens, a crime-ridden public housing complex that gangs and drug dealers had carved up.
In his testimony, Howard recounted a life filled with brutality: domestic violence when he was young, losing his father at 12, being stabbed in the neck while sleeping in a juvenile detention facility, getting shot about 10 times in five incidents in so many years.
On the night Washington and her daughter were killed, just after midnight on Nov. 27, 1991, Howard and his girlfriend were getting high at Sharon Bass’s apartment in Few Gardens, he said.
Bass sold drugs out of her apartment, Howard said.
Howard said he knew Doris Washington, who lived near Bass. “I would call it associates,” said Howard, who said he hung out with other drug addicts. “We had the same problem.”
Around midnight, he and his girlfriend went to pick up drugs from a man for Bass, he said.
The man lived near Washington’s apartment.
As they walked back, they saw smoke coming out Washington’s window, Howard testified.
Howard went straight to Bass’s apartment when he heard sirens because he didn’t want to be arrested for trespassing again, he testified.
He had been banned from all public housing properties and arrested for trespassing about 70 times, according to court documents.
Back at Bass’s he got high and went to sleep, he said.
The next morning, Howard was pulled over as he left Few Gardens for his other girlfriend’s home to change.
He was arrested for trespassing by Officer Robbie Davis.
Davis arrested Howard a lot, he said. “He didn’t like me at all,” he said.
After Howard was arrested, he was taken to the magistrate. Davis testified that Howard brought up the Washingtons’ deaths and said he knew Washington had been mad at her daughter for dating an older man.
Howard also said he didn’t know why Doris killed her daughter and then herself, Davis testified.
Howard denies making those statements.
Howard was charged with murder a year later, after multiple people in Dowdy’s investigation placed him inside and outside the Washingtons’ apartment around the time of the killings.
Howard’s legal team, however, has noted key witnesses who changed their stories and/or gave more specific incriminating information after a $10,000 reward was offered in the case.
Others, in more recent statements, said Dowdy planted the information in their statements."
The entire story can be read at:
https://www.charlotteobserver.com/news/state/north-carolina/article256072347.html
