Detroit police said they are “fully willing to cooperate” with prosecutors to review the cases of a former police detective who terrorized young black men for nearly two decades.
Former detective Barbara Simon appeared in a two-part series in Metro times It was revealed that she had locked young suspects and witnesses in small rooms at police headquarters for hours without an arrest warrant. She extracted false confessions and witness statements from them, which they later retracted.
So far, four men have been acquitted of murders they did not commit, and a fifth was released from prison after DNA analysis showed he was not the killer.
Lawyers for the Michigan Innocence Clinic, which handled the cases, say that because of Simon’s investigative misconduct, far more people are likely incarcerated for murders they did not commit.
“If the allegations against retired Detective Simon are true, they are concerning,” said Detroit Police spokeswoman Dayna Clark. Metro times in a statement. “The department is fully prepared to cooperate with the Wayne County District Attorney’s Office’s Conviction Integrity Unit, which has the authority to review the legality of convictions.”
But Wayne County Attorney Kym Worthy, who is running unopposed for re-election this year, was not so enthusiastic.
“It would be irresponsible of me to respond now without obtaining further information,” Worthy said in a statement.
In the series, Metro times Several people still incarcerated have been found who say Simon either coerced them into false confessions or they were convicted based on testimony from threatened witnesses. Defense attorneys, activists and private investigators say there is compelling evidence that more black men are behind bars after being interrogated by Simon.
Only a prosecutor or judge has the authority to re-examine cases involving potentially innocent people. In each of the exoneration cases involving Simon, Worthy’s office tried to prevent the men from being released, despite overwhelming evidence of their innocence.
Worthy created the Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) in 2018 to review old cases and determine whether people were wrongfully convicted. Since then, 38 inmates have either been exonerated or had their cases dismissed because of the CIU. A disproportionate number of those cases — 13 — occurred in 2020, the year Worthy ran against a reform-minded opponent.
But this year Worthy is running unopposed, and the CIU has so far only been involved in the rescheduling of two trials. Valerie Newman, head of the CIU, acknowledged that the unit is understaffed but said there are plans to hire more lawyers.
None of the cases in which the CIU intervened involved Simon, who worked closely with Worthy’s office in the 1990s and early 2000s.
Simon, known as “the Closer” for her talent for coercing confessions and testimony, was an investigator in the 1990s and early 2000s when the U.S. Department of Justice found that homicide detectives had been trampling on the constitutional rights of suspects and witnesses for decades to coerce confessions. According to the Justice Department, the department had a history of wrongfully arresting, illegally detaining and abusively interrogating suspects and witnesses. Despite the high risk, investigators were not properly trained and bad cops were rarely disciplined, the Justice Department concluded.
To avoid a massive civil rights lawsuit alleging that suspects and witnesses were wrongfully arrested, illegally detained, subjected to fabricated confessions, used excessive force, and detained under unconstitutional conditions, the Detroit Police Department submitted itself to Justice Department oversight in 2003. Because of the harsh interrogation techniques used, the Detroit Police Department agreed in 2006 to videotape the interrogations of all suspects in crimes that carry a maximum penalty of life in prison.
After 13 years of federal control, the Justice Department finally ended its control, but only after the DPD agreed to sweeping changes in a settlement to overhaul its arrest, interrogation and detention policies. Detectives could no longer arrest witnesses and compel them to answer questions in police stations and headquarters.
Since these findings, prosecutors and police have never attempted to re-investigate the cases from this difficult period.
And it’s unclear why Worthy isn’t pursuing these cases. Other cities, including New York and Chicago, have conducted extensive investigations into corrupt law enforcement officials, resulting in numerous exonerations.
In response to the Metro times In the series, the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners called on the police department to thoroughly investigate all of Simon’s cases. Detroit Police Deputy Chief Tiffany Stewart responded that it was ultimately the CIU’s responsibility to review the cases.
Worthily told Metro times on Monday: “With all due respect, DC Stewart is not in a position to delegate work to the CIU.”
Mark Craighead, who was acquitted in 2022 after spending more than seven years in prison for a murder he did not commit, says Worthy has a moral responsibility to review Simon’s cases.
“I think it is important that both the police and the prosecutor work together to achieve this,” says Craighead Metro times“These bodies have the opportunity to right the wrongs, and the police cannot do that alone. They have to involve the prosecutors.”
In June 2000, Simon locked Craighead in a small room at police headquarters for hours without a warrant and denied him access to an attorney, phone calls, food and water, he said in a lawsuit against the city. When he refused to talk, he was forced to spend the night in a vermin-infested jail cell.
The next morning, Simon claimed she had evidence linking Craighead to the murder, which turned out to be false, and she coerced him into making a false confession that he accidentally shot his friend during an argument, his lawsuit says. The false confession was refuted by forensic evidence that showed his friend was shot four times in the back from a distance of at least two feet, as in an execution.
Phone records later showed that Craighead was not near his friend at the time of the murder.
Craighead says he is disappointed in Worthy.
“She won’t back down, and that’s a problem,” he says. “The young men in prison need that. The evidence that they are innocent is irrefutable. Why can’t the prosecutor see that? She doesn’t want to.”
Craighead and the Metro times The series was featured this week in a nearly 90-minute episode of ML Soul of Detroit, a podcast by Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter ML Elrick.
Detroit police say they reorganized their homicide unit in the early 2000s through an agreement with the Department of Justice.
“Many of the issues underlying the questionable practices were addressed by the city in its two settlement proceedings,” Clark says.
