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Travis Long - tlong@newsobserver.com
Durham District Attorney Tracey Cline is accused of incompetence and negligence "at best."
Durham District Attorney Tracey Cline is accused of incompetence and negligence "at best."
A man imprisoned for the rape of a 12-year-old girl in Durham more than a decade ago alleges in court documents that prosecutor Tracey Cline hid evidence and violated his rights so severely that the conviction should now be overturned.
The appeal by a lawyer for David Yearwood, in prison since 2000, has ignited a courthouse feud that has led to calls for Cline and Orlando Hudson, the senior Superior Court judge in Durham, to be removed from the case.
Cline has not responded to requests for comment made last month and this week.
Yearwood's attorney, Heather Rattelade of Durham, wrote in a series of court filings over the past month that she has uncovered new information. She says that Cline, who prosecuted the case and is now Durham's district attorney, withheld evidence from Yearwood's lawyers that would have been favorable to his defense at the time his case was tried, and that Cline allowed false statements to be made in the courts about important information.
"At worst, District Attorney Cline's conduct was deliberate and intentional," one filing says. "At best, District Attorney Cline's conduct was negligent and incompetent. Either way, it is her misconduct that brings us to the situation we face today."
A hearing on the allegations has not been set. But they have touched off other sparring:
Cline is concerned that records filed by Rattelade earlier this year in a sealed envelope were also provided to The News & Observer. Cline said in a court document that either Hudson or Rattelade released them to the newspaper "with malicious intent." Cline wrote in one filing that Hudson sealed the documents by court order. There is no record of that, however. Rattelade said in a court document that she filed the documents in a sealed envelope to prohibit Cline from understanding her full strategy at that stage of the case.
Cline wrote in a court document that the case will be part of complaints to either the State Bar, which oversees lawyers, or the Judicial Standards Commission, which investigates judges. Cline wrote to court officials requesting an "impartial" judge to oversee the case. Rattelade replied in a filing that Cline was "attacking the professionalism and integrity of ... Hudson" in violation of ethics rules for lawyers.
Rattelade has asked that Cline step away from handling the case, citing the likelihood that Cline will be a witness in future hearings because her conduct is in question. In an email message sent Wednesday to Rattelade, Cline wrote that she didn't see any reason to do that. Rattelade responded with a court filing asking a judge to disqualify Cline. It says Cline must step aside because she "has a clear personal interest to protect her professional reputation and perhaps her license to practice law" in defending the allegations Rattelade has made.
New claims from defense
A hearing has not been scheduled on any of the fresh issues in the Yearwood case, which is one of several that was the subject of a three-part series in September in The N&O. The series, "Twisted Truth: A Prosecutor Under Fire," described at least six court cases in which Cline's conduct has been under scrutiny. Two murder charges have been dismissed in the past year and are being appealed by Cline. In a third case, the state Court of Appeals tossed out a break-in, robbery and attempted sexual assault conviction, citing neglect in the prosecution by Cline. That case, involving Frankie Washington of Durham, has led to a lawsuit against Cline and the city of Durham.
Cline has said she has acted properly in all cases. She has not answered in court any of the specific allegations made about her handling of the Yearwood case.
The N&O's focus on the Yearwood case had been on misstatements Cline made in court as she pursued the charges and on questions about whether evidence had been provided to Yearwood's defense. Cline had announced in a hearing early in the prosecution that she would seek the maximum sentence and not offer any plea deals after describing her view of the case, which did not match court records or later testimony. Defense lawyers at the time had urged caution.
The new filings by Rattelade in the case go much farther than those concerns.
Several months ago, Hudson granted Rattelade access to review all the files in Yearwood's case. Rattelade wrote that her access has exposed new information, and she alleges that Cline had "abused her authority" and "engaged in deliberate and deceitful tactics to obtain a conviction at all costs."
The new filings allege that Cline told judges she had provided all of the evidence in the case to Yearwood's attorney at the time of his trial in 2000, when she had not done so. Among the new items recently obtained, according to the court filings, were notes from police investigators; statements from the victim that Rattelade says contain inconsistencies; medical records from the hospital where the alleged victim was treated; notes of other agents who worked on the case; and Child Protective Service records related to the girl in the case.
An affidavit from Durham public defender Lawrence Campbell, who was Yearwood's trial lawyer, says that he had not received the entire forensic file on the case after comparing his files to a version obtained from the State Bureau of Investigation.
The lack of information affected how the trial unfolded, Rattelade said.
Rattelade also wrote that Cline allowed a police investigator to testify falsely at a post-conviction hearing. The officer had said that Yearwood did not request forensic testing at the time of his arrest. A police transcript of the interview with Yearwood shows otherwise. Hudson had ruled against Yearwood in that hearing, denying a request for a new trial on claims by Yearwood that he had an ineffective lawyer.
'That's garbage'
But most striking is an allegation by Rattelade that one of the lead police officers on the case, Scott Tanner, could not have attended an interview with the girl about the crime that was conducted at the hospital, as he testified in court. Rattelade wrote that records obtained this year include notes that another officer was at the hospital and that, at the time hospital records indicate the child was talking with law enforcement, Tanner was at Yearwood's house helping to arrest him.
Tanner, who now works at the Durham County Sheriff's Department, testified at the trial from notes on the case that he acknowledged were written more than six months after the crime. According to court transcripts, his notes were made at the same time that Cline expressed concerns in court about the circumstantial nature of the case and the need to corroborate the allegations through witnesses other than the girl and her mother.
Tanner said in an interview Friday that he was not aware of the recent court filings. When first asked about the case, he recalled some details of it and, unprompted, said that he recalled being at the hospital with the child. He recalled that he listened to the girl tell what happened at least three different times that day. Some of his recollections on Friday did not match testimony from 2000, however. For example, Tanner said on Friday that he recalled driving the child and her mother to the hospital that day. But testimony from him and the mother at the trial was that the mother and the girl went to the hospital in an ambulance.
Tanner said any allegation he wasn't at the hospital to hear an interview with the child was not true. "That's garbage," he said. "I do recall being there."