4-year wait for trial nullifies convictions

A man sentenced to more than 60 years on charges of burglary, robbery, kidnapping and attempted sexual assault could be freed from prison after the state Court of Appeals ruled the Durham District Attorney's Office violated his right to a speedy trial.

The three-judge panel unanimously tossed out convictions Tuesday against Frankie Delano Washington, 47, an auto mechanic who waited four years and nine months to go to trial in Durham County Superior Court in February 2007.

The delay "could have been avoided if the state had exercised even the slightest care during the course of this prosecution," Judge Douglas McCullough wrote in the court's decision.

The state Attorney General's Office has 20 days to challenge Tuesday's ruling.

Efforts to reach Tracey Cline, the assistant district attorney who prosecuted the case, and James R. Parish, the Fayetteville lawyer who handled the appeal for Washington, failed Tuesday.

Police arrested Washington in May 2002 and accused him of a home invasion in Trinity Park, just east of Duke University's East Campus. Court records show an intruder entered an unlocked glass door at a Gregson Street home about 3 a.m. May 30, 2002, and traumatized two adults and two children inside.

The intruder, who wore a bandanna over his nose and mouth and had a dark head covering, wielded a sawed-off shotgun and attempted a sexual assault

The News & Observer is not identifying the family, in keeping with its policy of generally not identifying people who have reported sex crimes.

The intruder fled after taking a purse containing $150, according to court documents. On his way out of the neighborhood, the documents show, the intruder struck a relative who had gone for help.

Washington was in jail, awaiting trial for 366 days, before his bail was reduced to $37,500 and he was able to post it.

During that time, the Durham District Attorney's Office sought to postpone scheduling a trial, according to the ruling, saying it was waiting for State Bureau of Investigation lab tests on evidence.

From May 2002 to October 2004, according to the appeals court ruling, Washington asked the court twice to compel SBI analysis of the evidence.

The trial court granted that motion March 18, 2004, according to the court documents, but the SBI was not immediately notified.

The SBI analysis was not completed until Jan. 30, 2006, according to court documents, nearly six months after Washington asked the court to dismiss all charges against him because he had been denied a speedy trial.

The wrong man?

In the court's written decision, McCullough suggested police might have gotten the wrong man.

The accusers originally described their assailant as younger and taller than Washington, the documents show. They identified Washington from about 20 feet away in the dark, as police held him outside a police car.

McCullough pointed out that another man was arrested in similar home invasions in and near Trinity Park after Washington's arrest. Durham police never sought a comparison of the man's fingerprints with unidentified prints taken in Washington's case.

Prosecutors in court filings blamed the delay in Washington's trial in part on the length of time required for the SBI to analyze evidence in the case.

As it turned out, the ruling shows, fingerprints and DNA evidence did not match Washington. The delay made it harder to challenge the identification, caused the loss of circumstantial evidence and made it more likely that witnesses could have been mistaken when they identified him in court five years after the crime, McCullough wrote.