DPD’s Ernest Wils0n, Edward Williams beat, coerced false statements from brothers which implicated each other in 2004 Canton St. drug house murders
Hubbard brothers gave vivid testimony at ‘Walker’ hearing, denied making any statements against each other
Wilson engineered multiple wrongful convictions including that of Mubarez Ahmed, who won $9.9M in federal lawsuit
Williams beat, murdered DPD officer wife Patricia and himself in 2009
Chief prosecution witness Tony Johnson arrested as he fled crime scene, tested positive for GSR on hands, face, shirt; DPD’s Moises Jimenez, (Ansari, Littleton convictions) concocted statement
Pros. witness Constance Davenport, only woman survivor at crime scene. said she got there during gunfire, but neighbor saw a woman with 2 men fleeing at the same time
DPD’s Olie McMillion Jr., (arrested Idolthus Hubbard, saw Alton Hubbard beating, took witness statements); in 2017, locker of 2003-09 homicide files and physical evidence found at his home during eviction.)
DPD’s JoAnn Kinney (framed Carl Hubbard and others using threats, coercion) assisted CIO Ernest Wilson throughout case
DPD Crime Lab techs Kevin Reed (triggered 2008 Lab closure), David Pauch (falsified ballistics evidence in Searcy. Desmond Ricks cases), wrongly ID’d bullets in victims
By Diane Bukowski
December 1, 2025 (updated Dec. 6)
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Alton Hubbard (l) with Adolphus Hubbard (r)
DETROIT — Alton and Idolthus Hubbard have been incarcerated for 20 years for a triple homicide in a drug house at 4139 Canton in Detroit on Aug. 18, 2004. The victims were Annie Rivers, Jerome Edmonds, and Frank Olson. But there is substantial evidence that the Hubbard brothers were wrongly convicted.
A roster of Detroit cops who triggered other wrongful convictions handled their case. Sgt. Ernest Wilson, involved in at least 10 other cases of wrongful conviction and/or police misconduct, including that of Mubarez Ahmed, who won $9.95 million in an arbitrated settlement, was the Officer in Charge (OIC) of the Canton St. case.
The brothers say he tag-teamed with Sgt. Edward Williams, brutally beating and tricking them to get false confessions implicating each other in the crimes.
“Officer [Edward] Williams began telling me my brother had made a statement on me, telling me that everything was being blamed on me, and that I had killed the people,” Alton Hubbard testified during a March, 2005 Walker evidentiary hearing held on a motion to suppress their statements.
Alton Hubbard said Williams beat him to his knees with his fist and choked him in a room outside the DPD 7th precinct garage with no surveillance cameras. (Williams killed his wife, DPD officer Patricia Williams, then himself, five years later in 2009, as she was going to the Canton Police station to report he had assaulted her.)
Hubbard said Ernest Wilson then wrote out a confession saying he and Idolthus Hubbard committed the murders, and ordered him to sign it.
ALTON HUBBARD
“I got upset because he kept trying to tell me my brother was telling on me and telling them that I had killed the people,” Hubbard testified. “I was just mad, saying some harsh words to him and he got frustrated. That’s when he hit me. . . . I kind of just leaned on the wall because he had hit me in my chest area. And then I bounced back, and that’s when he hit me again in my chest area. I can’t tell you how many times I was hit.”
Idolthus Hubbard testified that he asked for a lawyer four times as Williams interrogated him. He said Williams wrote a statement and told him to sign it. He testified that he could read only at a 4th grade level, and that no one let him see his alleged statements or read them to him..
IDOLTHUS HUBBARD, SISTER ACACIA HOWARD.
“I never said Alton Hubbard did anything,” he testified. “That’s why I signed the statement because I thought he [Williams] wrote it down word for word . . . I was never asked any of them questions because I would have said no because when they arrested me, he choked me, and I was pushed on the back of the car.”
He said he did not find out what the statement said until Williams read it on the stand during the preliminary examination in 36th District Court.
Williams asked him if his nickname was “Gage,” a term used by a confidential informant and then inserted into written statements and testimony from key prosecution witnesses. Hubbard said he was known as “Flay,” and had never heard the name Gage. His sister Acacia Howard confirmed that in her DPD witness statement and testimony. None of the statements from defendants and witnesses taken by DPD officers were videotaped or audiotaped, a required practice now.
(For Excerpts of the Hubbard brothers’ Walker hearing testimony, go to http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Alton-and-Idolthus-Hubbard-evid-hearing-re-coerced-statements.pdf. See statements Wilson and Williams claimed they made at: http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Alton-and-Idolthus-Hubbard-statements-per-DPD-Wilson-Williams.pdf
DPD Crime Scene photo August 18, 2004
Alton was not arrested for the murders until five days later, on August 23, 2004, when he went to the Ninth Precinct to ask why his brother Idolthus and sister Acacia [Arkasha] had been arrested. Wilson and Williams arrested him when he returned home.
In a Memorandum submitted to the Wayne Co. Conviction Integrity Unit, Alton Hubbard’s current attorney Parisa Sadrnia reviewed all pre-trial and trial transcripts and said he has a case of actual innocence, along with newly-discovered evidence about DPD’s Ernest Wilson’s history of misconduct in at least 10 civil cases, including those of exonerees Mubarez Ahmed, Marvin Cotton and Anthony Legion.
Atty. Parisa Sadrnia
“Mr. Alton Hubbard presents a claim of actual innocence and maintains he was never present at the house on Canton on August 18, 2004,” Atty. Sadrnia wrote. She cited the testimony at trial of Genevia Powell, a friend of the brothers’ mother Delores, who was celebrating her birthday that weekend.
“On August 18, 2004, from 6:00 pm through the evening until the next day, she was in the company of Alton,” said Atty. Sadrnia. “She saw Alton on August 18, 2004, when she arrived at his mother’s house between 6 and 7 PM. She heard there was going to be a gathering for Alton’s mother’s birthday. Alton was there when she got there.
“
She stayed there until 10, 10:30, and Alton was still there at that time. When she left, she went to Alton’s sister’s house. She and Alton drove together to her house on Iroquois. They went over there to watch her children.”
Five days before Alton’s arrest, on Aug. 18, police arrested the first suspect, Tony Johnson, when they saw him fleeing the house after the killings. Gunshot residue tests on the webs of his hands, face and shirt were positive.
Officers were skeptical of Johnson’s statement to them that he hid in the basement of the drug house during the murders. They said they found the basement door locked and nailed shut from the outside on their arrival.
In a Preliminary Complaint Report (PCR) approved by Ernest Wilson, officers reported Johnson’s arrest as a “possible suspect.”
Johnson and Constance Davenport. also a witness for the prosecution, could not identify the brothers in line-ups shortly after the murders, but Wilson and Williams lied to the the brothers that they had been identified.
Ernest Wilson interviewed Davenport after the line-up and had her sign a statement reversing her first identification. identifying photo #4 (Idolthus Hubbard).
Wilson’s coercion of a witness in the Mubarez Ahmed case, during which he showed her a photo of Ahmed and told her he was the killer, cost the City of Detroit $9.9 Million in an arbitrated settlement.
Davenport was the only surviving female seen in the house. She said in a DPD witness statement that she entered the house during the gunfire, and hid lying down behind a front room loveseat. She said she saw the shooters from there, clearly enough to describe and identify them as they went from the room to room.
Chloe Colts, who lived next door to 4139 Hubbard, said in a DPD statement that she saw two men and a woman exit the house and walk over the body of a victim on the sidewalk, directly after she heard gunshots. She told police she could identify them in line-ups. But the homicide file has no indication Colts ever participated in photo or in-person line-ups, and is not listed on the prosecution witness list.
Davenport and another woman went to the police station the next day to report that they knew the identity and address of “Gage” who they said was one of the killers.
But DPD officer Sgt. Griggs reported that a woman called the station with a tip about another likely suspect, heard bragging about the killings the day afterwards, named Kenny Palmore.
Police did investigate Palmore’s extensive criminal record according to the file. But there the trail goes cold. There is no record of an arrest or interrogation of Palmore.
Attorneys for the two brothers have asked the Wayne County Conviction Integrity Unit to review the convictions, and submitted lengthy overviews of the cases to them.
Atty. Sadrnia reviewed the Homicide File as well. She noted, “The DPD file does not demonstrate there were any attempts to obtain DNA evidence from Mr. Hubbard, his brother, or Mr. Jones. Fingerprints are not located in the home or on any of the evidence in the home. The purported shotgun or 38 revolvers were not recovered . . .The 9 mm that was recovered did not match with the bullets retrieved from Rivers or Olson.”
She concluded, “In sum, there are more than sufficient questions raised regarding the available evidence, identification of inconsistent testimony, identification of material witnesses/law enforcement agents with known records of police misconduct, and Brady violations from law enforcement, to warrant this matter being accepted by the Conviction Integrity Unit. Mr. Alton Hubbard presents a claim of actual innocence and maintains he was never present at the house on Canton on August 18, 2004.”
See entire 22-page memorandum at: http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Hubbard-Alton-Final-CIU-Memorandum-2.pdf
(Note: Idolthus Hubbard did testify to contents of false statement at trial, under defense attorney strategy of blaming co-defendant. The brothers had separate juries. A third co-defendant, Johnnie Jones (brother-in-law of the Hubbards) was charged with assault with intent to commit great bodily harm, served 7 years, killed in car crash.)
Acacia Howard
The Hubbard brothers’ older sister Acacia Howard (referred to as ‘Arkasha’ in DPD files) and VOD editor Diane Bukowski spoke about the Hubbards’ case at the Survivors’ Speak Wrongful Conviction Summit November 18, 2024, preceded by Gloria Jackson, the mother of two other br0thers, Dennis and Dameko Vesey, and from Washtenaw County who have been wrongfully convicted. The auditorium at U of M in Ann Arbor was packed with hundreds of U of M students dedicated to obtaining justice for the unjustly incarcerated.
Delores Hubbard
Howard said her mother, Delores Hubbard, who was celebrating her birthday the week-end of the murders, never to see her sons outside of prison again, died in 2021. Since then, she said, she has felt almost overwhelmed taking on her mother’s role and advocating for her brothers. She told the audience that she was so happy to connect with them and get their support for her brothers. Among others, she met with Demetris Knuckles-El of Michigan Liberation, a former prisoner who grew up with the entire family.
Presentations from Howard and Bukowski begin at 21:22 in the video below. For other coverage of the forum, The Survivors Speak Facebook Page is at:
https://www.facebook.com/groups/SurvivorsSpeak/?checkpoint_src=any
________________________________________________________
From Atty. Parisa Sadrnia Memorandum:
Misconduct of OIC Sgt. Wilson – Failure to disclose Brady impeachment evidence about himself being named as a defendant in multiple civil cases for police misconduct to prosecution and/or the defense at the time of trial for police misconduct. Cases before and after Alton’s trial:
Edna Anderson v City of Detroit, et al Case No. 2:91-cv-75329-LPZ .
James R. Powe v City of Detroit, et al Case No. 2:92-cv-76976-AC,
Michael Varner and Carey Right v City of Detroit, et al Case No. 2:99-cv-73704-DPH
Ronald Richardson, et al v City of Detroit, et al .Case No. 01-71428
Nathaneal Taylor v City of Detroit, et al Case No. 2:03-cv-73595-PDB
Desmond Robinson v City of Detroit, et al Case No. 2:04-cv-73203
Sidney Rhone v City of Detroit, et al Case No. 4:13-cv-13400-TGB-DRG
Mubarez Ahmed v City of Detroit, et al Case No. 2:18-cv-13849-GCS-EAS
In People v Mubarez Ahmed, Wayne County Circuit Court Case No. 2001-003529-01-FC, Ahmed was recently exonerated after serving18 years in prison when it was discovered Sgt. Wilson lied on the witness stand and fabricated evidence
Tiani Dodson v City of Detroit, et al Case No. 2:20-cv-12056-GAD-APP
Cotton and Legion v Hughes, Bats, Wilson, and Adams 1.Case No.22-cv-1003 _______________________________________________________
RELATED STORIES:
CRIMINAL DEEDS BY COPS, PROSECUTORS, JUDGES, NOT ‘DOCUMENT PURGE’ CAUSED WRONGFUL CONVICTIONS | VOICE OF DETROIT: The city’s independent newspaper, unbossed and unbought (Case of Carl Hubbard involving JoAnn Kinney)
‘RING OF SNITCHES’ VICTIMS: LACINO HAMILTON CLEARED, FREED AFTER 26 YRS; CONVICTIONS TOSSED ON 2 MORE | VOICE OF DETROIT: The city’s independent newspaper, unbossed and unbought (includes report on Marvin Cotton case involving Ernest Wilson)
Ex-Detroit cop coerced witness into saying a murderer was Black, not White, filing says DETROIT NEWS Nov. 29, 2024 (DPD Moises Jimenez in case of Dennis Littleton
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