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Erick Daniels case
Topic Started: Sep 19 2008, 08:05 AM (4,570 Views)
Quasimodo

(I thought this deserved a thread of its own)

http://www.newsobserver.com/news/durham/story/1224246.html

Young man seeks a second trial

DURHAM - Karen Daniel pushed up against the low courtroom wall separating her from her 21-year-old son Erick Daniels -- the young man who screamed "Mommy" nearly seven years ago as deputies led him away, convicted of a burglary and robbery he insists he did not commit.
The two, who spell their last names differently, spent the day in a Durham County courtroom Thursday as lawyer Carlos Mahoney put witness after witness on the stand, trying to show that Daniels had ineffective counsel at his trial in December 2001 and was wrongfully convicted.

Judge Orlando Hudson could decide today whether Daniels will win a new chance at freedom.

Mahoney filed a motion this year for a new trial, citing the emergence of new evidence.

The case hinged on identification of Daniels by a key witness in a photo-lineup that was flawed by not including enough photos.

Ruth Brown, the witness, told police that two armed men with bandannas burst into her home on Sept. 21, 2000, and stole her pocketbook with $6,232 in cash.

Brown later identified Daniels from a middle school yearbook photo
after 30 minutes of study, according to court documents.

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Quasimodo

http://www.iape.org/Headlines/Headlines2004_12.html
Dec. 16, 2004

(snip)

In the past three years, 79 percent of the Durham auction proceeds have gone
to expenses,
mostly overtime. "The percentages that other cities are able to afford to the school system are certainly a lot more than we do, and it does give you reason to be concerned about it," Durham Police Chief Steve Chalmers said in an interview.

Wake County schools get about 70 percent of auction money from the Wake sheriff and Raleigh police. The Durham Sheriff's Office reports that nearly all of its proceeds go to the schools, though it hasn't had an auction in years. Chapel Hill police spend a lot on advertising, so they send only 37 percent of the take to the schools.

In the Durham Police Department, the lion's share of the overtime pay has gone to one property room technician, Ruth A. Brown, who got $26,169.62 in salary and benefits from the past five auctions. That's 51 percent of the $51,237 that the auctions grossed.

Brown declined to answer questions about the auctions. But several years ago, she testified about overtime pay at the trial of Erick Daniels, a teenager charged with breaking into her home and robbing her at gunpoint of $6,000.

[Who keeps $6,000 in cash in their house? ]

Brown said she earned that money from working police auctions. She could work unlimited hours, she said, because she was paid out of the auction proceeds, not the department's budget.

(snip)

At one Durham police auction, on Oct. 27, 2001, Brown and her colleagues put in so many hours that the Durham police actually lost money, city records show.

The auction pulled in $9,961.50, and the department spent $9,618.56 on overtime, with $8,217.01 going to Brown. After the cost of an auctioneer and legal notices to advertise the auction, the department lost $957.51.

Brown was in the news after she filed a criminal complaint in October against News & Observer reporter Demorris Lee, charging him with harassment. Lee had been trying to contact Brown while reporting on Daniels' contention that he did not rob Brown.

Before he was arrested, Lee tried to interview Brown and requested records of her overtime pay from the Durham police. District Attorney Jim Hardin has dismissed the charges against Lee.

Chalmers said the overtime was necessary to conduct the auctions. The workload in the Durham property room leaves the staff with no time to prepare for auctions during regular work hours, he said. "People down there are doing overtime just to do their 8 to 4:30 work, because they are overwhelmed," Chalmers said.

[Does this include a Police Chief that is absent for months during the biggest case in Durham's history?

And btw, did any Durham police get paid overtime for working on the lax case--maybe for some of those 'hundreds of hours' spent researching the players? How about an audit to see just how much the lax case cost the DPD?]


Chalmers suggested that his department probably was understaffed
in the property room compared with other big departments in the Triangle, but the numbers don't bear out his hunch.

Durham has one property room employee for every 160 officers on the streets making arrests and confiscating property. Raleigh police have one property room employee for every 179 officers, and the Wake County sheriff has one property room clerk for its 345 officers, although at times a uniformed officer helps out.

(snip)


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Quasimodo

http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A121382

Stolen youth

How Durham's criminal justice system sent Erick Daniels to prison for 10 years based on the shape of his eyebrows

23 MAY 2007 • by Mosi Secret

(snip)

The judge, W. Osmond Smith III, sentenced Daniels to 10 to 14 years in prison.

(snip)

Photo by Derek Anderson

(snip)

Fingerprints from the front door of the house did not match Daniels, so the case hinged on the victim's identification. Ruth Brown described the first gunman to walk into her home—the gunman who she swore was Daniels—as a short, light-skinned black male who wore his hair in cornrow braids. Only 14 at the time of the robbery, Daniels was indeed short. But Daniels is dark-skinned and has never had even enough hair to braid.

(snip)

In separate interviews, the other suspects identified in police reports—all former denizens of Few Gardens—say they know who robbed police property room technician Brown—and that it wasn't Daniels. "I didn't do it, but I know who did," says Khalid Abdallah, whom the state charged with being the second gunman but was acquitted in a jury trial. "I'm not a snitch, so I won't say who did it. But Erick Daniels didn't do it."

(snip)


Court records indicate that it may have been Brown who was doing the deceiving
. She maintained at trial that she was sitting on her couch and braiding her daughter's hair when the two gunmen intruded. But Shannon Tucker, the public defender who represented Khalid Abdallah in his trial two years after Daniels' conviction, wrote in a motion, "Investigation by the defense has revealed that the complaining witness in this matter was running an illegal gambling house on the date in question, and that the money was taken from the 'table' that night."

(snip)

Daniels' case has disturbing similarities to the infamous Duke lacrosse case, in which charges of sexual assault and kidnapping were dropped against three students after police and prosecutors were found to have run roughshod over proper practices and procedures in a rush to convict.

As in the lacrosse case, Daniels was identified using a questionable lineup procedure, investigators' notes changed over time, the victim changed her story, and prosecutors did not act on evidence that would tend to exonerate Daniels. Unlike the lacrosse case, however, Daniels did not have a high-priced defense team to uncover the problems—Daniels' family hired Robert Harris, who Mahoney argues mishandled the case and even impeached his own client on the stand. The biggest difference is that the three Duke students are free, and Erick Daniels is serving time at the Foothills Correctional Institution in Morganton.

(snip)

Photo by Derek Anderson

(snip)

Ruth Brown called 911 at 8:25 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 21, 2000, about half an hour after sunset. "Gloria, send the police to 628 N. Hoover Road," Brown said, according to the transcript. "Somebody just came in my house and robbed me."

[She knew the dispatcher.]

"They just came in your house?" the dispatcher asked.

"Yes," Brown said. "This is Ruth Brown. I work down there. They came in my house, put a gun to my head. There was two of them."

Brown had been a police property room technician for two years when she made the call. In her time at the department, she had become acquainted with many of the officers who would work her case, including lead investigator Delois West. The dispatcher sent three cars to the scene.

(snip)

The morning after the robbery, Macaluso submitted his completed report to Delois West, an investigator in the violent crimes division. Judging from the court and police records, the crime scene technician submitted the only other report, despite department procedures that say "any officer, regardless of rank, entering the perimeter of a crime scene, is required to submit a supplementary investigation report recording their observations." Three other officers responded that night. There is no explanation for the three missing reports. Those problems reflect other weaknesses in the investigation.

[Are there reports from ALL the officers who entered 610 N. Buchanan?]

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But wait! But wait! I thought the Potted Plant (Oz Smith) ran an honest gig?
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Quasimodo

West maintained in her trial testimony that she interviewed Ruth Brown the day after the robbery and began her investigation with one suspect—Kam Russell. Her typed "supplementary investigation report" outlines an easy but delayed jump from suspicions about Russell to the identification of Erick Daniels as one of the gunmen.

West wrote that two weeks after the robbery, she got a tip from an "unidentified source" that a possible suspect was an "Eric" who hung out in Few Gardens. She wrote that later that day, housing officer Darryl Brown identified the suspect as Erick Daniels, a friend of Kam Russell's, and that she immediately assembled a photo lineup.

But West's original, handwritten log of the investigation established an entirely different chain of events.

(snip)

The handwritten notes make no mention of the "unidentified source."

[Is this standard procedure with the DPD? If so, how much easier did this make it for Gottlieb?]

The contradictions between the two reports—especially the two different dates "E" was noted as a suspect—call into question the legitimacy of Brown's photo lineup identification.

West and Brown testified at trial that Brown did not know Erick Daniels' name when she picked him out of a lineup. And West's typed notes would lead one to that conclusion. But the handwritten log indicates that there was a two-week window for Brown to learn about the suspect. And interviews suggest that may not have been hard to do.

(snip)

Photo by Derek Anderson

On Oct. 9, 2000, Ruth Brown met with West and viewed copies of three pages from the Chewning Middle School yearbook. West used the yearbook because she could find no other pictures of the young Daniels. The lineup introduced into trial evidence had the names of the students redacted.

While permissible then, the yearbook lineup violates the state's current practices. It is now accepted that the investigator who administers the lineup should show one photograph at a time so the witness cannot choose by comparison. And the lineup administrator should not know who is a suspect, eliminating the possibility of offering clues to the witness.

[How is the April 4 lineup--or any of the lineups conducted for Crystal--any different than a yearbook lineup, since it had only school photos of the lax team?]

(snip)

Brown would testify at Daniels' juvenile hearing that she was only 80 to 90 percent confident when she signed the affidavit that day because she remembered her assailant having lighter skin. By the trial, she said she was 100 percent certain Erick Daniels had robbed her.

West, now a homicide detective, won't answer questions about the discrepancies in her reports or her administration of the lineup. Her supervisor referred calls to Kammie Michael, the Durham Police Department's public information officer. Michael responded to phone messages with an e-mail: "The case has been adjudicated and the Police Department has no further comment." But West's and Michael's silence stands in contrast to the willingness of Darrell Brown to share his view of the investigation.

[And Kammie Michaels was also insisting that police didn't know the identity of the 911 caller as late as April 4. Either she should explain why she was being asked to say that, or else give up all pretense that she has any credibility.]

(snip)

Daniel [Erick Daniel's mother] insists she did her best to provide for her children. "I wasn't ready to be broke," she says. "I reached back into my past and found the man with the most drug money. That was the only way I could live like I was living. My kids were used to having lots of things."

For several years, Karen Daniel and Ettson wrangled over custody of Erick and his brother and sister, and Erick moved back and forth between his mother's and grandmother's homes. The family feud reached a terrible climax on Easter 1996: A stranger walked into the condo Daniel shared with her partner, a neighborhood drug dealer, and shot and murdered the man in the living room. The children were not home at the time, but the Department of Social Services explored removing them from Daniel's custody. That did not happen.

(snip)

Brandon Green, four-and-a-half years Daniels' senior, had already found trouble, and Daniels was not far behind him. "I was caught up in the streets," Daniels says. "I was rebelling. My mother was not really that strict ...

"Marijuana smoking, music—I wanted to live that lifestyle," he says. "I wanted to sell drugs. It was mostly what the kids my age went through. [Rap] music came first, though. It gave me the concept of the life I wanted to live."

(snip)

Photo by Derek Anderson

(snip)

To a certain extent, the suspects, witnesses and players involved in Erick Daniels' case are bending the rules of the streets. They have come forward with information to show that Daniels did not rob Ruth Brown, and that Brown was not as removed from this underworld as jurors likely believed.

Brown's family used to live in Few Gardens. Her siblings—Chris, David and Rosetta Lynch—have criminal records that date back well before she was robbed. Brown does not have a criminal record herself, but the suspects in the robbery corroborate court records that say she was playing on the wrong side of the law.

(snip)

Russell remembers it differently. "I met her through her brother," Russell says. "They had card games." He says there were usually five or six people around the table and the house won a cut of every hand. He lost as much as $1,500 in a night, he says. "They have games Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays ... I played at her house a couple times and at her mother's house." He says most of the other gamblers were "working folks," including city and police department employees.

[This is also a woman who takes home most of what the city makes at police auctions...Overtime? (JMOO)]


Russell says he was gambling in the home of Brown's mother the night he saw the cash. "We were just playing cards. People lose money. They go in their pocketbook and count out more money. I think [Brown] counted out $10,000 and put it on the table. She was showing it to me and her brother...

"She was telling us that's why she plays cards," Russell says. "That's why she doesn't have to go to the bank. That's how much money she keeps in her purse."

Other suspects in the robbery corroborate Russell's account. "Kam and her brother helped her count the money," says Khalid Abdallah. "She has card games. It could have been anybody that was playing that robbed her."

Russell and Abdallah say that Brown was robbed of $10,000, not the $6,000 she reported. Brandon Green, Daniels' best friend and a one-time suspect who was quickly cleared, says the same. "I heard it was more than $6,000. I heard it was like 10 or 11 Gs or something like that," he says.

Doreal Henderson, once the suspected getaway driver, says that many people knew about the robbery plans. "The advance was put out to any and everybody who knew about what was going on," he says.

(snip)


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Roy Cooper has until next Tuesday to decide whether or not to appeal the Frankie Washington decision.
http://www.newsobserver.com/news/story/1204256.html
I think Cooper doesn't pull the trigger - this was another Frame.

Cha-ching - Durham pays again.
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Quasimodo

http://209.85.141.104/search?q=cache:vOrT1Puxk_AJ:www.durhampolice.com/news/pdf/080326_1.pdf+ruth+brown+durham+police&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=us&client=firefox-a

Durham Police Chief Announces Promotions

Senior Evidence Technician--Ruth Brown

CITY OF DURHAM
Office of Public Affairs
101 CITY HALL PLAZA
DURHAM, NC 27701
News Release
For Details, Contact:
Kammie Michael
Public Information Officer
(919) 560-4322 x259
Kammie.Michael@durhamnc.gov
Durham Police Department
For Immediate Release: March 26, 2008

Durham Police Chief Announces Promotions

(snip)

Major B.J. Council has been promoted to the position of deputy chief. Council, a 27-year veteran of the
department, will oversee Operations Command, which includes the North Operations Bureau, the South Operations Bureau and the Investigations Bureau. Council has served in the Patrol, Criminal Investigations, and Special Investigations divisions. She has also worked as a crime prevention officer and served as captain of District 4 for 3½ years. She is currently the major in charge of the Patrol Bureau.

(snip)

Senior Evidence Technician – Ruth Brown

As part of an overall departmental reorganization, there will be two deputy chiefs. In addition to Chief
Council, Chief Ron Hodge will be in charge of the Operations Support Command, which oversees the
Administrative Services Bureau. This bureau includes Records, Training, Recruiting, Crime Analysis,
Information Technology and Fiscal Services.

The Department’s majors will now have the rank of assistant chief. Assistant Chief Steve Mihaich will be
in charge of the Investigative Services Bureau, Assistant Chief Jim Bjurstrom will be in charge of the
North Operations Bureau (Districts 1, 2 and 5) and Assistant Chief Lee Russ will be in charge of South
Operations Bureau (Districts 3 and 4).

[Lopez is, at best, a captain trying to sail a ship with a potentially mutinous crew, IMHO.]
Edited by Quasimodo, Sep 19 2008, 09:39 AM.
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http://www.newsobserver.com/news/crime_safety/story/1224781.html


Published: Sep 19, 2008 11:53 AM
Modified: Sep 19, 2008 11:55 AM
Man wins freedom after 7 years in prison
By Anne Blythe, Staff Writer Comment on this story
DURHAM - A Superior Court judge today ordered freedom for Erick Daniels, declaring him innocent of a robbery that sent him to prison for the past seven years.

Daniels, 21, put his head on a courtroom table and cried as Judge Orlando Hudson announced his decision. The courtroom erupted with wild sobbing and clapping by members of Daniels' family. His mother, Karen, wept at the end of her long fight to win her son's release.

Hudson said Daniels had an ineffective lawyer at his trial, when he was convicted of being one of two armed robbers who burst into the home of Ruth Brown on Sept. 21, 2000, and stole her pocketbook with $6,23 in cash. Daniels was 14 at the time of the crime but was tried as an adult.

At the trial, a prosecutor relied on Brown's identification of Daniels as one of the robbers. She identified him from a middle school yearbook after 30 minutes of study — a process later declared flawed.

The state offered no physical evidence or corroborating testimony linking Daniels to the robbery.

Daniels has been in the Durham County jail for the past two days for the hearing before Hudson. He was expected to be released later today. Family members said they planned to take him to Disney World.

The lawyer who represented him this week, Carlos Mahoney, said he had not discussed with Daniels whether to seek compensation for the years he spent behind bars.

anne.blythe@newsobserver.com or (919) 932-8471
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"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time it's enemy action."
Auric Goldfinger
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auric_Goldfinger
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Quasimodo

Quote:
 
DURHAM - A Superior Court judge today ordered freedom for Erick Daniels, declaring him innocent of a robbery that sent him to prison for the past seven years.
:party: :party: :party:

I hope this kid sues Durham for everything it's worth.

And Ruth Brown has some explaining to do, IMHO. (I'd like to know about her differing accounts of where the money came from and how it happened to be in her house, and how much there was, etc. Did she give false info to the police? Did that lead to a false conviction? JMOO.)

Quote:
 
At the trial, a prosecutor relied on Brown's identification of Daniels as one of the robbers. She identified him from a middle school yearbook after 30 minutes of study — a process later declared flawed.

The state offered no physical evidence or corroborating testimony linking Daniels to the robbery
.

And so does the state have some explaining to do.

If this kind of thing wasn't a pattern, then the Duke frame-up couldn't have happened.

And all those who are thinking that these suits are only about the greedy Yankees,
have totally missed the mark. All of Durham and NC need some reforms, and some
investigations.
Edited by Quasimodo, Sep 19 2008, 01:17 PM.
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Bill Anderson
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Quasimodo
Sep 19 2008, 01:15 PM
Quote:
 
DURHAM - A Superior Court judge today ordered freedom for Erick Daniels, declaring him innocent of a robbery that sent him to prison for the past seven years.
:party: :party: :party:

I hope this kid sues Durham for everything it's worth.

And Ruth Brown has some explaining to do, IMHO. (I'd like to know about her differing accounts of where the money came from and how it happened to be in her house, and how much there was, etc. Did she give false info to the police? Did that lead to a false conviction? JMOO.)

Quote:
 
At the trial, a prosecutor relied on Brown's identification of Daniels as one of the robbers. She identified him from a middle school yearbook after 30 minutes of study — a process later declared flawed.

The state offered no physical evidence or corroborating testimony linking Daniels to the robbery
.

And so does the state have some explaining to do.

If this kind of thing wasn't a pattern, then the Duke frame-up couldn't have happened.

And all those who are thinking that these suits are only about the greedy Yankees,
have totally missed the mark. All of Durham and NC need some reforms, and some
investigations.
Quas hits the issue squarely, and I mean squarely. Durham has been getting away with official lies for years, and we can be thankful that the police and court system is being exposed for what it is: a brood of vipers.

:bill:
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http://www.aoc.state.nc.us/www/public/sc/dsheets/074-07-1.htm
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http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A265108


Erick Daniels freed
19 SEP 2008

Durham Superior Court Judge Orlando Hudson dismissed all charges against Erick Daniels, who has served seven years in prison for a robbery that he did not commit.

Hudson ruled on three points: Daniels, who was 15 at the time of his conviction, had ineffective assistance of counsel during his trial; Durham County Prosecutor Freda Black failed to turn over exculpatory evidence; and there is new evidence that points to his innocence.

In 2001, a jury convicted Daniels of robbing and burglarizing the home of Ruth Brown, a police department employee; a judge sentenced Daniels to 10 to 14 years in prison.

Black won the case without incriminating physical evidence, relying instead on the victim's eyewitness testimony, which evidence suggests was flawed. Daniels, who was 14 at the time of the robbery and 15 at trial, has always maintained his innocence. A 2007 investigation by Mosi Secret in the Independent, "Stolen youth," supported Daniels' claims.

Look for additional, in-depth coverage in next week's Indy.
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http://rev-elution.blogspot.com/2007/10/erick-daniels-story-injustice-in-durham.html
Monday, October 1, 2007
The Erick Daniels Story: Injustice in Durham, NC
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http://www.indyweek.com/gyrobase/Content?oid=oid%3A121382


Stolen youth
How Durham's criminal justice system sent Erick Daniels to prison for 10 years based on the shape of his eyebrows
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