Darryl Howard and the rampaging prosecutor: Durham learns little from Duke lacrosse debacle

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Last edited Thu Mar 27, 2014, 11:18 AM - Edit history (1)

I started this thread in the General Discussion forum. Thinking it belonged here instead, I deleted it there. So if you're wondering what happened to it there, that's the story.

This is a sad display of prosecutorial misconduct. Maybe malevolence is a better word than misconduct.

Darryl Howard and the rampaging prosecutor: Durham learns little from Duke lacrosse debacle

The Watch
A reported opinion blog on civil liberties and the criminal justice system

By Radley Balko March 20 at 12:11 pm

When Darryl Howard was convicted of murder in 1995, he cried out ”I didn’t do it!” then sobbed in open court. He has maintained his innocence ever since.
....

Now, newly discovered evidence further argues for Howard’s innocence. In court papers filed this week, the Innocence Project reveals that DNA testing of a rape kit taken from Doris Washington found some sperm that went undetected during the initial investigation. That sperm is a match to a career criminal, not to Howard. Attorneys for Howard have also uncovered evidence that prosecutors in the case may have withheld important exculpatory evidence, including a credible statement from an informant days after the murder who attributed the crimes to a local gang, not to Darryl Howard.

Discovery of the memo, which was known to police and should have been known to prosecutors, shows that the state failed to turn over relevant evidence pointing to Howard’s innocence. But the contents of the memo also suggest that Howard’s prosecutor not only put on perjurious testimony from a police investigator, he then used that evidence to give false statements in court himself.

Perhaps most interesting of all is just who that prosecutor was: Michael Nifong, then an assistant district attorney for Durham County. Nifong of course would later be appointed, then elected district attorney, and then make national headlines in 2006 when he falsely charged three Duke University lacrosse players with sexually assaulting a stripper. In 2007 Nifong was disbarred for his handling of evidence in that case. He was also found in contempt for making false statements about the case in court.