More convictions vacated, more expected in cases of fired Raleigh detective, informant
David Weaver finished a three-and-half year sentence on two Wake County drug-trafficking convictions and was released from prison Sunday.
Those convictions were vacated Monday.
The change, after Weaver spent 1,298 days incarcerated, marks the latest court correction to cases handled by fired Raleigh police detective Omar Abdullah and confidential informant Dennis Williams.
Similar steps are expected in about a half-dozen more cases involving Abdullah and Williams, Wake District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said Tuesday.
The cases the pair worked on are facing scrutiny after trafficking charges were dismissed against more than a dozen Black men when the drugs Williams claimed the defendants had sold them turned out to be fake.
Abdullah has since been fired. Williams faces five counts of obstruction of justice, and some are calling for Abdullah to be criminally charged. Freeman said she is still investigating.
The city of Raleigh agreed in September to pay $2 million to some of the men who were incarcerated and their families who had filed a federal civil rights lawsuit. A second related federal lawsuit was filed in February.
Abraham Rubert-Schewel, Weaver’s attorney who also represents others in the federal lawsuits, said Weaver may also sue.
“We’re going to review everything and decide once David has gotten settled,” after being released from prison, Rubert-Schewel wrote in an email.
2018 cases
Freeman is moving forward with vacating another six or more convictions based on information from Williams, she said. The cases go back to 2018, she said, and all of the individuals have finished serving their sentences.
Those vacated convictions would be on top of the pre-conviction and one post-conviction drug charges dismissed against the roughly dozen Black men in 2020, after defense attorneys and others linked a pattern of fake drugs to Abdullah and Williams in 2019 and 2020 arrests.
Those cases constituted the majority of cases in which Williams was a confidential informant, Freeman said.
Once the investigation into Williams’ cases wraps, Freeman said she will decide whether to review additional cases involving Abdullah.
“We want to thank the Wake County District Attorney’s office for looking into David’s case and agreeing to vacate his conviction,” Rubert-Schewel wrote in an email to The News & Observer.
Rubert-Schewel said Freeman should review all of Abdullah’s cases, not just those involving Williams.
Weaver’s 2018 arrest
Weaver was arrested on the drug charges Aug. 23, 2018, after Abdullah claimed Weaver had sold Williams drugs during a controlled drug buy.
He was taken to a secure location and strip searched, according to police documents provided by his attorney. About 36 grams of crack cocaine and 16 grams of marijuana were found inside his underwear and back pants pocket, the documents state.
“Like many of the other individuals arrested by Officer Abdullah using this confidential informant, Mr. Weaver alleges, specifically, that Officer Abdullah planted drugs on him,” Rubert-Schewel said at the February hearing.
Weaver pleaded guilty to two drug trafficking charges in January of 2020 and was sentenced to 35 to 51 months in prison.
Weaver’s motion for appropriate relief
On Monday, Freeman consented to a motion for appropriate relief that vacated Weaver’s 2020 drug-trafficking convictions.
Motions for appropriate relief are typically made to correct errors in the judicial process such as proof that a key witness lied, a defendant had ineffective counsel or new information has been discovered. The law appears to let a judge grant such motions without a hearing if the prosecutor and defendant agree.
The Monday motion follows a February hearing in which Weaver, 43, successfully sought the release of videos to his attorney purportedly showing the confidential informant drug buy.
The video of the sale “does not independently corroborate the information the confidential informant provided law enforcement,” the motion for appropriate relief states.
If it wasn’t for the arrest, the other charges wouldn’t have followed, the motion states.
“Given the State’s determination following the entry of a guilty plea in this case that the confidential informant cannot be relied upon and without additional corroborating evidence that a sale took place on Aug. 22, 2018, the state believes it is in the interest of justice to vacate the judgment against Mr. Weaver,” the motion states.
This story was originally published March 15, 2022 at 4:22 PM.
