SUB-HEADING: "Now Free, Man Who Alleges Wrongful Conviction Wants Justice from WA Police."
SUB-HEADING: "Gregory Sharkey spent 15 years in prison for a crime he says he didn’t commit. He was finally freed last month—but will those responsible for caging him be held accountable?"
GIST: "In December 2009, Gregory Sharkey and his friends walked past a house in Spokane, Washington. Someone from a nearby home pointed a laser at them. Annoyed, one of Sharkey’s friends, Dominic Shaver, walked over to confront the people responsible. Sharkey unsuccessfully tried to defuse the escalating situation—but another member of his group, Tony Dawson, pulled out a gun, shot, and wounded a man named Charles Everett—sparking a chain of events that robbed Sharkey of 15 years of his life.
Sharkey was ultimately convicted of the shooting. After maintaining his innocence for a decade and a half, he was released last month—and now is fighting to see that the people who threw him behind bars are held accountable.
“Going home after 15 years in prison doesn’t feel real,” Sharkey told The Appeal. “Being given life in prison for something I didn’t do damaged me psychologically. I literally watched my dreams and goals erode into darkness with no light at the end of the tunnel. This experience made it nearly impossible to maintain my humanity.”
The Spokane Police Department did not respond to a request for comment. But Preston McCollam, the Spokane County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office’s chief criminal deputy, confirmed his office petitioned the courts to grant Sharkey a resentencing hearing.
“The status of his conviction in this matter has not changed, however he has been resentenced,” McCollam told The Appeal via email. “The facts of the case are publicly available on the Spokane County Superior Court Clerk’s website.”
Reports indicate that Shaver contacted the police, said that Dawson had shot someone, and added that Sharkey was present during the shooting. Later on, while investigating a separate shooting, police found two of Dawson’s guns in a hot tub and began assuming there was a second shooter in the Everett case. Law enforcement began investigating Shaver as the second gunman. Shaver then pointed the finger at Sharkey.
According to a statement given by a witness named Margaret Shults, police insinuated that they believed Sharkey was the shooter. At the time, Shults was facing 10 years in prison as an alleged accomplice in a vehicle theft. Prosecutors offered to reduce her prison sentence significantly if she testified that Sharkey committed the shooting.
A police report says Shults took officers to West Kiernan Street—about 10 blocks away from where the shooting occurred—and pulled a piece of metal from a telephone pole. Law enforcement indicated that the metal was a bullet fragment from a .38 caliber gun that Sharkey allegedly used to shoot Everett.
Despite findings from a private investigator hired by the state, Rod Staudinger, who reported that there was no evidence of a .38 caliber gun used at the scene of the crime, no one questioned how the police used a fragment found blocks away from the incident to link Sharkey to the incident.
In an interview with The Appeal, Dawson, who admitted to committing the shooting, indicated that he had written to the Spokane prosecutor’s office and said Sharkey was innocent. Although Dawson tried to explain what happened, the prosecutor’s office refused to listen.
Eventually, Dawson pleaded guilty to first-degree assault on a police officer, first-degree attempted robbery, and eight counts of second-degree assault, leaving him with a 12-year prison sentence.
However, Gregory Sharkey rejected a plea deal and went to trial to prove his innocence. But the move backfired. He was convicted of 10 counts of first-degree assault with gun enhancements, leaving him with more than 180 years in prison.
After Sharkey had spent nearly 15 years in prison, multiple victims of the shooting came forth. They said they believed Sharkey to be innocent and a victim of police and prosecutors’ racial bias.
“Every witness present told Spokane Police that Gregory Sharkey was not involved and did not shoot a gun,” Daniel Bolen, a U.S. National Guard member and a victim of the shooting, told The Appeal.
On the day of Sharkey’s trial, Bolen communicated that a woman, who he believed was a detective, coached and coerced him and the other victims to testify that Sharkey was shooting at them—despite their attempts to convey otherwise. Another shooting victim named Zachory Davis made similar claims.
Bolen believes that law enforcement treated Sharkey differently because he is Black.
“The way the detectives badgered us and repeated ‘It’s him!’ over and over, in reference to the only black person involved, it was clearly communicated that the police did not care about the truth—they needed Sharkey to be guilty,” Bolen said.
Bolen said he didn’t feel that justice had been done in the case and that he felt victimized by the police, whom he says tried to change his testimony.
“I was raised to believe these institutions are righteous, but as an adult with much more life experience, I know the truth,” Bolen said. “These institutions were designed to serve some, but not all, which creates inequality.”
Tony Dawson has since been released from prison after serving 12 years. In an interview with The Appeal, he said he also tried to defend Sharkey.
“I kept trying to explain that Sharkey was innocent,” Dawson said. “It’s a burden on me that he sat in prison over something I did for so long.”
Eventually, the courts granted Sharkey a resentencing hearing, so long as he dropped the appeal over his conviction. His case would finally be heard. After a long-awaited moment in court, Sharkey was finally released back to his family and community on November 13, 2024—15 years after his arrest. The police and prosecutors who stripped decades from his life did not issue an apology.
Sharkey’s family and supporters are not simply happy that their loved one is home—they want to see those responsible for the miscarriage of justice face consequences.
“We want fairness and accountability within the system so that these types of injustices don’t happen to other people,” Dawson’s mother, Annette McKinley, said. “If there are consequences for people who commit crime, people in positions of power should be held responsible for their unjust actions also.”
The entire story can be read at:https://theappeal.org/wrongfully-convicted-gregory-sharkey-spokane-washington/
PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog.
- SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
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FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
