The Durham County district attorney, Tracey Cline, won't say why she isn't renewing the appointment of Mitchell Garrell, one of her top assistants. But it hardly goes unnoticed that Garrell embarrassed Cline by attempting to do the right thing.
The controversy - by no means the first involving the Durham D.A.'s office - stems from the case of a man who pleaded guilty to killing and sexually assaulting the 2-year-old daughter of his girlfriend. Derrick Allen spent a dozen years behind bars. But a Superior Court judge recently threw out all the charges against him, agreeing that his rights had been violated when prosecutors withheld information from his defense counsel.
More than that: This was a prime example of how the SBI's misleading report of blood evidence, with prosecutors trumpeting those findings, stacked the courtroom deck against a defendant.
Garrell was the prosecutor assigned last fall to continue pressing the case against Allen after Judge Orlando Hudson vacated the terms of Allen's original plea bargain. Garrell turned over pertinent material, including documents showing that information had been withheld the first time around.
During a hearing this month before Hudson, Cline testified about her role in the case. First she said that another prosecutor, Freda Black, had handled it alone. It was Black who presented Allen's plea bargain (he has claimed innocence throughout, saying he entered the plea to avoid a possible death sentence). Black also had asserted that the most important evidence was the little girl's blood-stained underwear - even though the SBI's testing of the clothes failed to confirm the presence of blood.
But Cline then was queried about documents showing that she had been involved and had been aware of requirements to share the prosecution's information with Allen. She struggled to explain why that had not been done.
Beyond a botched prosecution, the case presents the possibility that Allen spent years in prison for crimes he didn't commit, or that at the least he was unable properly to defend himself against the charges.
Nothing made public so far suggests that Mitchell Garrell did anything out of line, yet Cline told him that as of next month he will be out of a job. Meanwhile, she'll begin serving the four-year term she won in the fall elections. She has her work cut out for her in reassuring the public that under her leadership, the Durham D.A.'s office will operate with integrity.
