NC man spent 23 years in prison. Did the lead detective fabricate or withhold evidence?
About 30 years ago, just after midnight firefighters found Doris Washington and her 13-year-old daughter naked, lying face down on a bed with signs they had been strangled in an apartment set ablaze.
Four years later, a Durham County jury convicted Darryl Howard of their murder and the arson after a few days of testimony.
Now, a jury is revisiting the case in a federal courtroom in Winston-Salem.
This time, jurors aren’t directly deciding whether someone is guilty of killing the pair. Instead, they are considering whether a detective deprived Howard of his constitutional right to a fair trial by fabricating and suppressing evidence and performing an inadequate investigation.
Howard contends former lead Detective Darrell Dowdy’s actions misled the 1995 jury and resulted in him spending 23 years and four months incarcerated for crimes he has always said he didn’t commit.
At stake could be an award of tens of millions of dollars for the now 59-year-old Howard, along with some accountability, after he missed years of birthdays, weddings and funerals sitting behind bars in state prisons.
Howard alleges gang killing
Howard’s attorney Nick Brustin’s started his opening statements saying Doris Washington, 29, and her daughter Nishonda were sexually assaulted and killed by members of the New York Boys. The gang recruited Few Garden residents to sell or store drugs and wanted to send a brutal message after drugs had gone missing from Washington’s apartment, he said.
Dowdy ignored a tip about a gang killing and the sexual assault evidence, Brustin said. He manipulated vulnerable Few Gardens residents to fabricate evidence against Howard in a case that offered a $10,000 reward, he said.
Dowdy fabricated a statement from a crucial witness, Angela Oliver, to make his case, Brustin said. He later fabricated other evidence to explain away the sexual assault evidence that didn’t link Howard to the crime, Brustin said.
Dowdy contended sperm found on the teen was from consensual sex with her boyfriend, with whom she had been staying until the murder, but there is no evidence Dowdy investigated that contention, Brustin said.
“A detective can’t decide who is worthy of constitutional protection and who is not,” Brustin told the jury Tuesday.
‘Seven witnesses’
While much has changed since the 1995 trial — a judge vacated Howard’s conviction in 2016 and Gov. Roy Cooper pardoned him in April — some of the detective’s arguments around the case remain the same.
Dowdy’s attorney Nick Ellis told jurors that Howard’s overturned conviction, the new DNA and other evidence revealed over time don’t prove him innocent.
Ellis told the jury that Howard’s trial was fair and supported by witness after witness whose testimony implicated Howard in the hours and days after the killing.
“Seven witnesses placed him at the scene,” he said.
Those witnesses said Howard fought and threatened Doris Washington and her daughter hours before the murders, that he was in and near the apartment during the killings, and that he later bragged about it at a liquor house, he said.
Oliver even described Howard entering the apartment, beating Washington — who died from blunt force injury to the abdomen — and later saying he had to burn the bodies to cover up evidence. Howard contends Dowdy manipulated Oliver’s 10-minute taped statement during a 45-minute interview, but Dowdy denies it.
Oliver has since recanted her statements made in court and on the tape, according to court documents.
Ellis also pointed to one of the prosecutors’ contentions in the 1995 trial that indicated sperm found on the teen was from consensual sex before the murder.
Howard didn’t attend the opening arguments. His attorneys said he has been hospitalized with a leg infection and plans to come as soon as he can.
Dowdy, 65, who retired from the police department in 2007, has been present in the courtroom.
Nine jurors were selected in the case, but one woman was dismissed Tuesday after she brought her 3-year-old to jury duty because her child care fell through. A minimum of six jurors are needed to deliberate the federal civil case.
Lawsuit narrowed
Howard’s May 2017 federal lawsuit initially sought damages against the city of Durham, former and current officers, and a fire department employee involved in the investigation.
But over time, the defendants were narrowed to Dowdy. Howard has to prove the former detective intentionally withheld evidence that was key to the 1995 jury’s decision.
The specific questions center on whether Dowdy:
▪ Fabricated evidence regarding Oliver’s statement and evidence that supported Nishonda Washington having consensual sex before the killing.
▪ Withheld evidence regarding another important witness’ connection to the New York Boys and role as criminal informant.
Background
Washington and her daughter were killed while living in Durham’s Few Gardens public housing complex, which was leveled years ago due to concerns about drugs and violent crime.
Washington died from her injury, and her daughter died of strangulation from a cord, according to court documents. Sperm was found on the teen, but DNA testing excluded Howard. Washington had a laceration in her vagina, but the autopsy found no sperm. They were killed before the fire started.
In March 1995, a jury convicted Howard of murder and arson and sentenced him to 80 years in prison.
At trial, Dowdy testified he never suspected the murders involved sexual assaults and that he never investigated them as such. The prosecutor, Mike Nifong, suggested the sperm on the teen was the result of consensual sex before the murder, The News & Observer reported. Nifong, then an assistant district attorney, was later disbarred for prosecutorial conduct in the Duke lacrosse case.
Judge Orlando Hudson vacated Howard’s convictions in 2016 after lawyers affiliated with the Innocence Project, a nonprofit that seeks to exonerate the wrongly convicted, argued police and prosecutorial misconduct tainted the case.
The 2016 hearing outlined new DNA evidence produced after the court approved in 2010 new tests on the sexual assault evidence using modern and more sensitive testing not available during the trial.
The tests revealed previously undetected semen found in Doris Washington that matched the DNA profile to Jermack Jones, who was affiliated with the New York Boys, according to court documents.
State officials later dismissed the charges against Howard.
North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper pardoned Howard in April.
This story was originally published November 10, 2021 at 10:34 AM.
