C.O.A. UPHOLDS DISMISSAL OF CHARGES v. EWING & SEARCY; CROWD OF SUPPORTERS PACKED HEARING

MCOA You Tube video of the Ewing/Searcy hearing March 10, 2026 (below).

Panel rules that Judge Kiefer Cox did not “abuse his discretion” as a judge in dismissing murder charges in 2024 as Pros. Kym Worthy sought a re-trial

Blase Kearney, attorney for Searcy, and Raven Lockridge, attorney for Ewing presented compelling oral arguments to a receptive COA panel

Daniel Hebel, Wayne Co. Asst. Prosecutor, presented jumble of statements, ignoring core issues in trial judge’s dismissal of charges without prejudice

Courtroom packed with Searcy/Ewing supporters, including others wrongly convicted; dozens more in overflow room with video

St. Regis Hotel hosted participants in high spirits for meals and follow-up  discussion, filling ballroom, lobby 

By Diane Bukowski 

March 27, 2026

DETROIT — Only two weeks after hundreds turned out to support Darrell Ewing and Derrico Searcy at a Michigan Court of Appeals hearing March 10, the Court ruled resoundingly in their favor March 25. Their convictions for the  2009 drive-by murder of J.B. Watson and assault on his passenger on Detroit’s east side now remain vacated, as ordered by WCCC Judge Kiefer Cox in 2024.

“In these consolidated cases, the trial court dismissed the cases against defendants, Derrico Devon Searcy and Darrell Rashard Ewing, without prejudice as a result of the prosecutor’s discovery violations,” the panel said. “The prosecutor now appeals the dismissals, arguing that the trial court erred in dismissing the cases by failing to find that the missing evidence was exculpatory or the prosecutor acted in bad faith. Because the trial court’s remedy for the prosecutor’s discovery violations was not an abuse of its discretion, we affirm.” See full ruling at http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/COA-370807-PEOPLE-OF-MI-V-DERRICO-DEVON-SEARCY-Opinion-Per-Curiam-Unpublished-3_25_2026.pdf

The panel shot down Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy’s appeal of Third Circuit Court Judge Kiefer Cox’s 2024 dismissal of 2009 murder and related charges due to repeated discovery and due process violations by the prosecution.  Worthy can either appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court or proceed with a second trial after providing the 

Family and friends of Ewing and Searcy flooded into the Michigan Court of Appeals (COA) Detroit offices March 10, to support the two men and oppose Worthy’s appeal, wearing T-shirts declaring “STOP KYM WORTHY.” The large turn-out of young people who condemned Kym Worthy’s ongoing “Innocence Denials” since she took office in 2oo4 was highly significant.

 “Y’all keeping wasting the Court’s resources and the people’s time, hurting the victims and prolonging cases that you know are clear cases of innocence,” Ewing said as he exited the courtroom with his supporters, including other wrongfully convicted men like Larry Smith, Jr. “It’s time to get it right.”

Cox cited multiple discovery violations on the part of the Wayne County prosecutor.

They included the failure  to produce videotaped police interviews of the defendants after their arrests in 2009, during which DPD Officer in Charge (OIC) Theophilus Williams told Ewing he knew they hadn’t committed the crimes, but wanted them to tell him who did, or else he would proceed with charges. A second missing videotaped interview featuring Ewing’s mother Sonya Dodson and William Beal, who identified Tyree Washington as the killer and said he was there with during the murder of J.B. Watson.

Ewing represented himself during nine months of pre-trial hearings in 2024 after Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Michael Hathaway granted the two a new trial Oct. 24, 2019 due to jury misconduct and the lack of substantive evidence.

Hathaway and U.S. District Court Judge Denise Page Hood were two one of eight federal and state judges who have ruled in the defendants’ favor since their convictions.

Worthy appealed Hathaway’s ruling unsuccessfully to the COA and to the Michigan Supreme Court, and has now been unsuccessful again with her appeal of Judge Cox’s ruling. (Details of Cox’s order in box at right.)

Ewing was represented by Atty. Bradley Hall of the MSU Public Defender Clinic, and two student attorneys, including Raven Lockridge, who presented Ewing’s case. Searcy was represented by Atty. Blase Kearney.

Ewing said the MSU Clinic represented him pro bono. The Clinic specializes in representing defendants during pre-trial hearings. on the prosecutor’s appeal of Judge Cox’s order dismissing the charges in the midst of a re-trial, prior to  (Complete oral arguments are in the COA YouTube video at top of story.)

Lockridge’s father Rahim Lockridge attended the hearing as well. Ewing told VOD that Raven went to law school in part to assist her father, who was serving time for involuntary manslaughter. He argued the sentencing guidelines were invalid because they placed an unconstitutional restraint on judicial discretion in sentencing. He was released after the Michigan Supreme Court agreed in 2015. He works now as Authority Health’s Project Manager for Healthy and Resistant Communities, according to his LinkedIn account. 

“This case has been ongoing for 15 years without a resolution,” student attorney Raven Lockridge said. “Through it all Ewing has maintained his innocence. He filed over 40 motions, including motions for evidence but was still met with months and months of lack of preparation and due diligence by the prosecution. 

“As Mr. Ewing was filing motions, he was also in jail at this time. During that time, the appropriate remedy was dismissal without prejudice. The [prosecution] took adjournment off the table.” Judge Kiefer Cox also ruled that jury instructions as proposed by the prosecution would not guarantee a trial with “fundamental fairness.”

Lockridge cited the case of People V [Isiah David] Evans, Michigan COA 371196. That ruling said, “After a series of adjournments, the prosecution’s essential witness failed to appear on the date scheduled for defendant Isiah David Evans’ trial. The trial court dismissed the case without prejudice and the prosecution now appeals as of right. We affirm [the ruling of the trial court].” 

Attorney Blase Kearney, representing Derrico Searcy, said, “A decade after Mr. Searcy and Mr. Ewing were imprisoned, and only after a new trial was ordered, it was discovered that the prosecution had concealed a Mirandized confession from the actual perpetrator of the murder.” Kearney went on, “As a matter of course in trial court, the number and intensity of discovery violations can become a due process violation.””

Kearney said Judge Cox was angered by the late discovery, on the Friday before the Monday trial date, after 15 years, that the prosecution had finally talked to the Officer in Charge (OIC) of the case, Theophilus Williams.  Williams verified the existence of videotaped interviews with Ewing and William Beal, who said he was present when Tyree Washington shot the victim.

Kearney said the defense had discovered a sticky note in the files that “Theo has the recordings” which finally forced the prosecution to admit to its possession of the interview videotapes. However, the prosecution to this day has yet to provide them to the defense.

AP Daniel Hebel claimed that Judge Cox framed his order to dismiss charges around “due process” not discovery issues, but also that “discovery” violations should not have led to that order. Hebel appeared poorly prepared, frequently referring to evidence and issues in the case as “stuff” without explaining the details. He cited no case law during his presentation.

The judges repeatedly interrupted Hebel with questions countering those claims. They noted that Judge Cox made his ruling after prosecutors withdrew a motion for adjournment just one day before the re-trial date. They said that Judge Cox found that a fair trial could not be held without the missing discovery items, and that addressing the matter with jury instructions would not suffice.

They repeatedly asked Hebel why the prosecution didn’t just re-file the charges, rather than appealing to a higher court. Pros. Kym Worthy has a long-standing practice of routinely appealing rulings favoring defendants to the COA and the Michigan Supreme Court, even where the defendants are actually innocent.

DERRICO SEARCY STILL IN PRISON DESPITE COX RULING, ON A 2011 CONVICTION OF FELONY MURDER AS A ‘HABITUAL OFFENDER.’

Blase Kearney said during a defense attorneys’ panel at the St. Regis Hotel after the hearing that he only regretted that Derrico Searcy was not present. Searcy is currently serving a 375 mo. to 80 yr. sentence on a 2011 conviction involving felony murder.

The sentence was enhanced by a designation of “habitual offender” based largely on his 2010 convictions which are currently vacated. His record shows that he was acquitted by a jury of murder charges, on all counts, in a 2005 case. There are no other capital cases.

His co-defendant on that case, Delmerey Morris, was sentenced to ‘time served’ by Judge Miriam Bazzi in January 2025 after an evidentiary hearing exposed lies told by a chief prosecution witness, Attorney Michael Dezsi told VOD in 2024. Morris had been serving a sentence of 35-50 years in that case and is now no longer in the MDOC.

“Regardless of what happened with Morris,” Searcy’s defense attorney Blase Kearney told VOD then, “We believe Mr. Searcy is entitled to a re-sentencing on that case, because we believe the J.B. Watson murder in this case was factored into that original sentence.” 

Searcy is currently incarcerated at the Earnest C. Brooks Correctional Facility in Muskeg0n, Michigan. 

Wayne CC Judge Thomas Hathaway dismissed his brother Thelonious “Shawn” Searcy’s murder and related convictions in a separate case in on Oct. 23, 2022 WITH PREJUDICE.

He said “The Court concludes that the damage caused by the suppression and withholding of exculpatory evidence cannot be cured. Therefore it holds that dismissal of the charges is appropriate given the severe and deliberate violations of defendant’s due process rights that denied him the opportunity for a fair and impartial trial.” See complete ruling at: http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Thelonious-Searcy-Order-Gg-Defs-Mtn-to-Dismiss-10.3.20223311-2.pdf.

A Court of Appeals panel later struck down Hathaway’s ruling, claiming Judge Thomas Hathaway abused his discretion by dismissing the charges.

Searcy is now again in pre-trial status on the capital charges, in front of WCCC Judge Margaret Van Houten. He won a Michigan Supreme Court ruling upholding his right to have a Daubert hearing regarding forensic evidence in the case, utilizing defense experts. It is is scheduled for five days beginning May 11, 2026. WCCC Judge Van Houten previously denied the defense motion for the Daubert hearing as well as other motions.

Van Houten is also the trial judge in the case of Michael Bolanos Jackson, who was acquitted by a jury of charges of first and second degree murder and home invasion for the October 2024 stabbing death of Samantha Woll, a prominent Jewish synagogue leader in Detroit. He was convicted only of “Lying to Police,” after his  attorneys exposed the fact that Woll’s white and well-to-do ex-boyfriend confessed to the crime before Jackson-Bolanos’ arrest, and that the prosecution had no grounds for the other charges. 

Despite the Department of Corrections recommending an 18-month probation for the conviction, Judge van Houten sentenced Jackson-Bolanos to eight months to 15 years on “lying to police.” The case became a cause celebre among many in the Black community who viewed it as an example of an impoverished Black man railroaded for the death of a well-to-do white woman. Judge Van Houtens’ stunningly biased remarks at Bolanos-Jackson’s sentencing can be heard below. Jackson-Bolanos is still in prison. 

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VOD EARLIER EXPOSED AP DANIEL HEBEL AS CHRISTIAN RIGHT-WING NATIONALIST IN THE CASE OF RICKY RIMMER; WORTHY’S OFFICE HAS NOT RESPONDED YET TO A QUESTION ON OTHER AP’S AFFILIATIONS

The Wayne Co. Prosecutor’s Office has not yet responded to VOD’s inquiry regarding whether other Wayne County AP’s are affiliated with the Student Statesmanship Institute (SSI), the Christian Right organization from which Hebel graduated before college and law school. The SSI has trained conservative and home-schooled youth to obtain jobs in the judicial and other government systems. 

Hebel is also assigned to the cases of Ricky Rimmer and other lifers who cases have been the subjects of VOD stories.

In Rimmer’s case, Hebel submitted a highly flawed response to Rimmer’s motions for a new trial/relief from judgment, in which he cited a 2015 COA opinion in the case of Lorinda Swain without noting that the Michigan Supreme Court overturned that ruling in 2016. It sent the case back to the Court of Appeals for a finding “not inconsistent” which that of the trial court, which had acquitted Swain under MCL 770.1 because “justice had not been done.” Lorinda Swain was released and won over $2 million in a civil lawsuit for her unjust incarceration.

An amicus brief by six prominent state and federal prosecutors denouncing the exclusive use of MCR 6.500 et al in post-conviction appeals was submitted to the Supreme Court before its ruling. It is a stunning expose of Michigan’s criminal injustice system. It can be read at http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Amicus-Brief-for-Michigan-Supreme-Court-re-Lorinda-Swain-Smietanka-et-al.pdf. 

 

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