VOICE OF DETROIT: The city's independent newspaper, unbossed and unbought

By MATT O’BRIEN, AP Technology Writer  

June 24, 2020

A Black man who says he was unjustly arrested because facial recognition technology mistakenly identified him as a suspected shoplifter is calling for a public apology from Detroit police. And for the department to abandon its use of the controversial technology.

The complaint by Robert Williams is a rare challenge from someone who not only experienced an erroneous face recognition hit, but was able to discover that it was responsible for his subsequent legal troubles.

The Wednesday complaint filed on Williams’ behalf alleges that his Michigan driver license photo — kept in a statewide image repository — was incorrectly flagged as a likely match to a shoplifting suspect. Investigators had scanned grainy surveillance camera footage of an alleged 2018 theft inside a Shinola watch store in midtown Detroit, police records show.

Robert Williams Greenlight photo (l) and MI Drivers License photo (r)

That led to what Williams describes as a humiliating January arrest in front of his wife and young daughters on their front lawn in the Detroit suburb of Farmington Hills.

“I can’t really even put it into words,” Williams said in a video announcement (above( describing the daytime arrest that left his daughters weeping. “It was one of the most shocking things that I ever had happen to me.”

The 42-year-old automotive worker, backed by the American Civil Liberties Union, is demanding a public apology, final dismissal of his case and for Detroit police to scrap its use of facial recognition technology. Several studies have shown current face-recognition systems more likely to err when identifying people with darker skin.

The ACLU complaint said Detroit police “unthinkingly relied on flawed and racist facial recognition technology without taking reasonable measures to verify the information being provided.” It called the resulting investigation “shoddy and incomplete,” the officers involved “rude and threatening,” and said the department has dragged its feet responding to public-information requests for relevant records.

Detroit police and Wayne County prosecutors didn’t immediately return emailed requests for comment Wednesday.

DataWorks Plus, a South Carolina company that provides facial recognition technology to Detroit and the Michigan State Police, also couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.

Police records show the case began in October 2018 when five expensive watches went missing from the flagship store of Detroit-based luxury watchmaker Shinola. A loss-prevention worker later reviewed the video footage showing the suspect to be a Black man wearing a St. Louis Cardinals baseball cap.

Shinola Watch Store Woodward and Canfield, Detroit; the company is white-owned but was welcomed into Detroit by the City Council in the midst of ongoing gentrication; now they target a Black man.

“Video and stills were sent to Crime Intel for facial recognition,” says a brief police report. “Facial Recognition came back with a hit” — for Williams.

At the top of the facial recognition report, produced by Michigan State Police, was a warning in bold, capitalized letters that the computer’s finding should be treated as an investigative lead, not as probable cause for arrest.

But Detroit detectives then showed a 6-photo lineup that included Williams to the loss-prevention worker, who positively identified Williams, according to the report. It took months for police to issue an arrest warrant and several more before they called Williams at work and asked him to come to the police department. It’s not clear why.

Williams said he thought it was a prank call. But they showed up soon after at his house, took him away in handcuffs and detained him overnight. It was during his interrogation the next day that it became clear to him that he was improperly identified by facial recognition software.

“The investigating officer looked confused, told Mr. Williams that the computer said it was him but then acknowledged that ‘the computer must have gotten it wrong,’” the ACLU complaint says.

Prosecutors later dismissed the case, but without prejudice — meaning they could potentially pursue it again.

The case is likely to fuel a movement in Detroit and around the U.S. protesting police brutality, racial injustice and the death of George Floyd at the hands of police in Minneapolis. Detroit activists have presented reforms to the city’s mayor and police chief that include defunding the police department and ending its use of facial recognition.

Providers of police facial recognition systems often point to research showing they can be accurate when used properly under ideal conditions. A review of the industry’s leading facial recognition algorithms by the National Institute of Standards and Technology found they were more than 99% accurate when matching high-quality head shots to a database of other frontal poses.

But trying to identify a face from a video feed — especially using the ceiling-mounted cameras commonly found in stores — can cause accuracy rates to plunge. Studies have also shown that face recognition systems don’t perform equally across race, gender and age — working best on white men and with potentially harmful consequences for others.

Concerns about bias and growing scrutiny of policing practices following Floyd’s death led tech giants IBM, Amazonand Microsoft to announce earlier this month they would stop selling face recognition software to police, at least until Congress can establish guidelines for its use. Several cities, led by San Francisco last year, have banned use of facial recognition by municipal agencies.

Related:

https://www.opb.org/news/article/npr-the-computer-got-it-wrong-how-facial-recognition-led-to-a-false-arrest-in-michigan/

Tristan Taylor leads one of daily protests held over the last two weeks in downtown Detroit and elsewhere against George Floyd’s murder. (AP Photo/Paul Sancya).  He and other group leaders met with Mayor Mike Duggan June 11 to raise demands including “De-Fund the Police” but said afterwards no agreement was reached. He said any future meetings would have to be held in public.

 Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor

June 11, 2020

Having not yet won real power over the police, this is no time for a lull or a truce — it’s time to sharpen our political instruments and deepen the mass movement’s social penetration.

“The objective is to seize and exercise people’s power in our communities, and to defend the people’s rights and interests.”

Former NBA star Stephen Jackson grew up with George Floyd in Houston, TX. and maintained a close friendship with him throughout their lives. See BAR column “Stephen Jackson is Right–Justice 4 George Floyd Requires Power to the People” linked below.

The awesome power of massed, militant people in motion has been manifest since the Memorial Day murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Much of the world now knows Floyd’s name; majorities of Americans say they support  “Black Lives Matter”; New York City’s mayor pledged to slash his cops’ budget  in deference to the Black Lives Matter demand to defund the police; the Minneapolis city council has promised to move towards disbanding  their police force, in the spirit of outright abolition; and the grassroots demand  for community control of police  – previously rejected out of hand by most city councils – is now part of the “mainstream” political conversation.

So massive and swift has been the swing in popular sentiment against the police – the coercive organs of the State – that “A&E has decided not to run new episodes of ‘Live PD’ this Friday and Saturday, while Paramount Network has delayed the Season 33 launch of ‘Cops,’” according to Variety  magazine.

“Movement” politics is how the people flex their power, while electoral politics under a corporate duopoly system is the domain of the moneyed classes. This is a lesson learned in the Sixties — a period when some years saw as many as 5,000 separate demonstrations. The makeup of the U.S. House and Senate did not change dramatically during that tumultuous decade. Political contributions kept most incumbents in office, year after year, as is the case today. But, for a time, the lawmakers behaved differently — voting for civil rights and social justice measures they had not previously supported — when confronted with masses of determined people in motion, who sometimes burned cities, 

“Electoral politics under a corporate duopoly system is the domain of the moneyed classes.”

Graphic: Black Agenda Report

Movement politics was finally quashed in the latter part of the Sixties by a combination of lethal force and political seduction. A national policy of mass Black incarceration, supported by both corporate parties, criminalized Black people as a group, while federal and local police waged a murderous, dirty war to crush Black radicals. On the seduction front, the Democratic Party opened its doors to a hungry cohort of Black politicians and aspiring businessmen who preached that the movement must shift gears “from the streets to the suites” – the beginnings of today’s Black Misleadership Class. 

By 1979, after a decade of Black electoral victories in cities abandoned by whites, everyone was singing McFadden & Whitehead’s “Ain’t No Stoppin’ Us Now” – but the mass movement had long been snuffed out. The Black-white economic gap – which had briefly shrunken as a result of social justice victories in the Sixties — was beginning to widen, and mass Black incarceration ravaged the Black social fabric. But the Black political class and a small elite of entrepreneurs, professionals and entertainers were doing better than ever – and they were all-in with the Democratic Party, which soon succeeded in subverting virtually every civic organization in Black America. The spoils of a long-dead mass movement of the streets had ultimately accrued to a tiny sliver of Black folks in suites.

“A hungry cohort of Black politicians and aspiring businessmen preached that the movement must shift gears ‘from the streets to the suites.’”

Police in riot gear watch protesters in Ferguson, Mo. on Wednesday, Aug. 13, 2014. On Saturday, Aug. 9, 2014, a white police officer fatally shot Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, in the St. Louis suburb. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
Military gear came straight from the Pentagon under 1033 program.

For four decades, Black America was stalled in a political dead zone in which the only sustained politics was that which took place in the Democratic Party half of the corporate duopoly. As servants of forces hostile to Black people, Black politicians consistently acted against the interests of their constituents, collaborating in the destruction of public housing and the gentrification of Black neighborhoods. In the ultimate act of betrayal, the Black Misleadership Class lovingly embraced the Mass Black Incarceration Regime. In 2014, just two months before Michael Brown was gunned down by a cop in Ferguson, Missouri, 80 percent of the Congressional Black Caucus voted against a bill that would have halted the Pentagon’s infamous 1033 program that funnels billions of dollars in military weapons and gear to local police departments. The emergence of what came to be called the “Black Lives Matter movement” had no substantive effect on Black members of Congress. In 2018, 75 percent of them supported a bill that makes police a “protected class” and assault on police a “hate crime.”

“The emergence of what came to be called the ‘Black Lives Matter movement’ had no substantive effect on Black members of Congress.”

These are the same scoundrels that this week “took a knee” in the Capitol’s Emancipation Hall along with their boss, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi – the same Democratic leader that refused to hold hearings on the Katrina catastrophe in 2005 for fear that the Democrats would lose white votes in 2006 for being too closely associated with Black people. But, just as the U.S. Congress in the Sixties responded to mass movements in the street, so Pelosi’s Democrats offered legislation  that “forces federal police to use body and dashboard cameras, ban chokeholds, eliminates unannounced police raids known as ‘no-knock warrants,’ makes it easier to hold police liable for civil rights violations and calls for federal funds to be withheld from local police forces who do not make similar reforms.” 

Demonstrators march in New York, Saturday, Dec. 13, 2014, during the Justice for All rally and march. (AP Photo/John Minchillo)

These are palliatives that have only been offered because of the presence of masses of people in the streets. Don’t thank the Democrats – the credit goes to the activists that have been disrupting the racist social order that both parties, including the vast majority of Black lawmakers, have maintained for the four generations since we last had a mass political movement. Given the recent phenomenal rise in popularity  of “Black Lives Matter,” which is now supported by a majority of Americans and overwhelming numbers of Blacks, the police reforms are likely to pass the House — and possibly even the Republican-controlled Senate, in some form. But these measures do not empower the oppressed – they are only a response to the power that Blacks and our numerous non-Black allies have shown in the streets: the power to disrupt and shame the ruling order in the United States, and the threat of much more to come. 

“’Black Lives Matter’ is now supported by a majority of Americans”

Having not yet won real power over the police – the coercive organs of government that claim a monopoly on the use of force — this is no time for a lull or a truce. Rather, it is time to sharpen our political instruments and deepen the mass movement’s social penetration. The objective is to seize and exercise people’s power in our communities, and to defend the people’s rights and interests – the opposite of the role played by the police, who defend property rights and white supremacy, whatever the cops’ color or ethnicity. 

Protesters demanded community replacement of police forces in Black and poor neighborhoods during protest vs. Detroit police task force murder of Terrance Kellom, 19 in 2015.

Community control of police and outright abolition of police are wholly compatible demands, Both are predicated on the right of the people to shape, control or abolish the coercive organs of the state, at least in their own communities. Defunding of the police is about allocation of resources, not power, which is why New York Mayor Bill de Blasio, who has been repeatedly punked by his own cops, can claim to favor some level of defunding. However, a significant section of “Black Lives Matter” – those under the influence of Alicia Garza and her corporate philanthropic backers — is clearly resistant to community control of the police and only gives lip service to abolition as a goal for the far-off future. We can expect that the contradictions between that faction of “Black Lives Matter” and other activists will deepen – maybe rather quickly – since the conflict is rooted in who’s paying the bills.

“Defunding the police is about allocation of resources, not power.”

The lifeblood of social movements against white supremacism, capitalism and imperialism is solidarity among all the victims of these isms. Alicia Garza actively discourages Black solidarity with anybody outside the borders of the United States – doubtless as a condition of her funding. That’s why her Black Census project, which last year conducted the biggest survey of U.S. Blacks in history, chose not to ask a single question on foreign policy. Black Americans have historically been the most pro-peace, anti-militarism constituency in the nation and, besides Arab Americans, the most empathetic to the plight of Palestinians. The Black Census  is most useful as a domestic issues guide for Democratic politicians – which is how it is cleverly packaged. Garza has chosen to be an asset to the Party – a disturbing situation, given her status in the “movement.” 

Charles and Inez Barron, NYC City Council

The Democratic Party is the movement’s greatest institutional political foe, since it infests and dominates virtually all Black civic organizations. (The Republican Party is not a factor in Black America’s internal workings.) The Democrats are the Party of capital, of the bankers, the people displacers, the warmongers – and a Black Caucus that is allied overwhelming with the police. However, Black America is a one-party polity, due to a system that reserves half of the duopoly for the White Man’s Party, the GOP. Therefore, some genuine Black progressives, and even revolutionaries, have run for office, and won, as Democrats, for lack of any other viable platform. Essentially, this very small cohort of righteous officeholders are anti-Democrats who fight the corporate Party machine at every juncture. Among them are Charles and Inez Barron, the nominally Democratic husband-wife team representing a Brooklyn, New York, neighborhood in the city council and state legislature; and St. Louis alderman Jesse Todd, also a nominal Democrat. 

“This very small cohort of righteous officeholders are anti-Democrats who fight the corporate Party machine at every juncture.”

Todd and the Barrons are members of the Black Is Back Coalition for Social Justice, Peace and Reparations (as am I), which holds its annual Electoral School, via Zoom, June 13 and 14 . The Coalition, made up of 15 organizations plus many individual activists, has promulgated a 19-point National Black Agenda for Self-Determination that puts forward principled, self-determinationist positions on the broadest range of issue-areas, including community control of police. Black Is Back’s approach to electoral politics is simple: the Coalition will endorse no candidate for office who is not in accord with the National Black  Agenda for Self-Determination. 

The term “Black Power,” as we learned in the Sixties, can be misused in myriad ways. Black Democratic Party loyalists claim that Blacks were empowered by voting for Joe Biden in huge numbers in the primaries, thus saving his presidential candidacy. “Hands that once picked cotton, now pick presidents,” the Black Democrats exult, as if power flows from abject servitude to the corporate dictatorship. In reality, Black voters gave the presidential nomination to a politician who claims he “wrote” the crime bill that resulted in the imprisonment of hundreds of thousands of Black people; whose opposition to single payer health care guarantees that Black people will continue to die disproportionately from damn near all causes; and who opposes defunding the police, a minimal demand of the current mass movement.

The oligarchs that rule the country and control both of its corporate parties and all of its major media want the people to believe that politics is limited to the electoral process, and that street activism, labor militancy and community organizing are outside the realm of “real” politics.  The events of the past ten days have proven the opposite: that massive street actions and unrelenting people-pressure can yield far better results than decades of pulling levers for corporate duopoly candidates.

Minneapolis protesters swmp police station.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.

COMMENTS?

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Or, you can comment by emailing us at comments@blackagendareport.com.

Related:

https://blackagendareport.com/stephen-jackson-right-justice-george-floyd-requires-power-people

ANTHONY CLARK-REED: ‘I CAN’T BREATHE:’–DETROIT’S GEORGE FLOYD, SUFFOCATED BY COPS IN 2015

David Shelton (center) with son David Stinson (l) and daughter (r) Mariah Shelton

1994 MSP forensic lab report shows “[no] Negroid hairs . . . that could have originated from David Shelton;” complete report withheld from defense

Rape victim said attacker “could have been a white man,” did not identify him in live line-up that included only Black men

Prosecutor told jury they had no “scientific evidence” related to case

Shelton in letter to State AG: “My skin seems to be my only sin.”

By Diane Bukowski, VOD Editor, and Ricardo Ferrell, Field Editor

DETROIT –Where is the justice in Oakland County?  David Shelton, serving 40-60 years for rape since 1994, is hoping that Michigan State Attorney General Dana Nessel, with the Western Michigan University/Cooley Law Innocence Clinic, will be able to win justice for him using over $1 million in federal grants meant to re-examine forensic evidence.

In 1994, David Shelton, who is Black, was sent to Jackson State Prison to serve lengthy jail terms after being convicted in separate cases of raping two white women who lived in the apartment complex where he stayed with his girlfriend. Oddly, the cases were heard in one trial with two juries in front of the late Oakland County Judge Francis X. O’Brien.

Shelton was convicted by an all-white jury in the first case of three counts of first-degree criminal sexual conduct and sentenced to 40-60 years in prison, and of rape and assault in the second case, for which he was sentenced to 1 to 4 years and 2 years. The second offense allegedly took place two weeks after the first, both in February, 1993.

But in 2017, Shelton obtained Michigan State Police forensic reports, withheld from the defense in 1994. One said that a microscopic examination of hairs found in the bed of the first victim, and on a mask allegedly worn by the assailant, “did not detect any Negroid hairs that could have originated from David Shelton.”

Police had reported the victim originally said that her rapist “could have been a white man” she met earlier in the day at the apartment complex pool. She was not able to identify her rapist in a live line-up, which included only Black men, but did so in court.

“I have been trying for almost three decades to get people to see that I was framed for this crime,” Shelton told VOD reporter Ricardo Ferrell. “The police involved knew I didn’t do it. The prosecutor definitely knew I was innocent, but that didn’t matter. In their eyes, I was an expendable Black man, who they could use to close a case. I hope and pray that the wheels of justice finally begin to roll and that the truth comes out and I’m exonerated and set free.”

Shelton is now 54. His only son David Stinson was just four years old when his father was convicted, but for the past seven years has been fighting to free him.

“Racism, politics and corruption, those are the reasons he got sent to prison and why he’s still in prison,” Stinson told VOD. “Oakland County is a powerful county and that’s likely the reason no one will give the relief to him that he deserves. This justice system is supposed to be fair to all defendants regardless of their skin color. My father was singled out, arrested, investigated, and convicted of a crime he didn’t commit, and has spent the last 27 years in prison. Waking up each day knowing that he is innocent is really hard for him.”

According to trial transcripts, the Assistant Prosecutor told the jury in his opening statement on the first day of Shelton’s trial July 11, 1994, “So we don’t have any scientific evidence and you’re not going to hear anything about scientific evidence — or DNA testing, or anything like that.”

The reports, initiated by the Michigan State Police Forensic Lab on Feb. 2, 1993, were not completed until final results were obtained Sept. 16, 1993. The prosecution did not turn over the full report with the final results, according to a letter from Shelton’s first attorney Jerome Fenton dated Sept. 30, 1993, sent to his trial attorney Ben Gonek.

Judge O’Brien and the all-white jury never saw or heard testimony about the following report, dated 9-16-93, which should have raised serious doubts about Shelton’s guilt.
______________________________________________________________

______________________________________________________________
The forensic reports also state that no fingerprints were found on a mask prosecutors alleged at trial was worn by the rapist despite the prosecution’s allegations that Shelton’s fingerprint was found.

Royal Oak Twp. Sgt. Cecil Dawson

If true, that would show the Oakland County Prosecutors violated the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in Brady v. Maryland (373 US 83 – 1963), which says ALL exculpatory evidence (favorable to the defendant) from prosecutors or police must be turned over to the defense.

In a pro se application for leave to appeal to the Michigan Supreme Court, Shelton says his trial attorney was guilty of ineffective assistance of counsel on several grounds. Gonek agreed  to stipulate to the partial report at trial, knowing it was not complete, without having the MSP forensic lab technician testify to its contents, among other alleged misdeeds.

Shelton was arrested by two Royal Oak Township police officers, Cecil Dawson and Christine Bursey, the same two corrupt cops who would go to prison for ten and 15 years for their roles in selling drugs and protecting drug houses in Royal Oak Township, in conspiracy with Mexican cartels. (See article below, with written version attached in PDF at http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/SUPPLIER-TURNED-INFORMANT-BOOSTS-CASE-4-METRO-DETROIT-COPS-GET-PRISON-FOR-DRUG-ROLES.pdf.

RELATED EXCERPT: “Rodriguez [informant] certainly changed the lives of four metro Detroit officers. Former Royal Oak Township Deputy Chief Cecil Dawson, 49, of Southfield was sentenced Dec. 8 to 10 years in prison; former Highland Park officer Albert Bursey, 47, was sentenced to the same term Dec. 17. Erwin Heard, a former Highland Park officer, was sentenced in May to 15 months in federal prison. Albert Bursey’s wife, Christine Bursey, a former Royal Oak Township police officer, stood trial, was convicted and was sentenced Dec. 17 to 15 years and eight months in prison.”

Dawson was cited by U.S. District Judge Anna Diggs Taylor in Solomon v. Royal Oak Township (656 F. Supp. 1254-1986) for running his own security agency on the side while he was the township’s Chief of Police, and getting CCW charges against a security employee dropped.

Judge Diggs Taylor noted that Dawson was one of several Royal Oak Township police employees who likely conspired to frame the plaintiff, Odis Solomon on rape charges, which led to his discharge.

Solomon served as Chief of Police under a 1978 order for superintending control over the Royal Oak Township Police Department imposed by Oakland County Circuit Court Judge Hilda Gage because of rampant corruption in the department.

The Judge upheld Solomon’s allegation that he was fired as a whistleblower, and restored his job as Chief of Police with back pay. (See ruling below story.)

The record of the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office in charging sex crimes with likely insufficient evidence, continuing past Shelton’s conviction, was examined in a Detroit Free Press article, “Oakland Fumbles Sex Charges,” on April 27, 2008.

The Free Press found that Oakland County had won only 50 percent of cases involving sex charges between 2005 and 2008, compared to a conviction rate of 80 percent in Wayne County. Oakland County’s acquittal rate was 35 percent.

“Experts say a 35 percent acquittal rate is a sign prosecutors are bringing cases that don’t hold up under a jury’s scrutiny,” the Free Press said. “‘That’s high and that should give them concern,’ said Abbe Smith, the former deputy director of the Criminal Justice Institute at Harvard University. ‘The charging decision is a critical decision. You should not prosecute every case.” (See text version of complete article below story.)

VOD spoke with Mariah Shelton (shown in photo at top), who was only two years old when her father was imprisoned.

She said, “It took me quite a while to understand that my father wasn’t going to be there for my first day of school, my prom and my graduating high school, and first day of college. I know in my heart of hearts my father is innocent. I just hope the scales of justice will balance out and that the victim steps up and tell the truth, that it wasn’t my father who assaulted her, because the evidence clearly shows it wasn’t him.”

Leslee Moore, who is Shelton’s fiancé, has stood by his side from the beginning, as a dedicated and supportive life partner.

“There’s no way my David raped that woman,” she said. “ I know him better than anyone. Believe me, if he had done this, I would not have been with him for over 13 years,” says Moore.

Shelton’s girl friend at the time of his arrest, Jacqueline White, was not called to testify at his trial, although she had testified in his favor at his preliminary exam. She denied police  reports that a Halloween mask fished out of the apartment complex’s trash was involved in the rapes. She said she threw it out because it frightened her child. The police and prosecution produced several masks of different types before settling on the one found in the trash.

The family of David Shelton has told VOD that they are extremely concerned about him because of the uncertainty surrounding the coronavirus, which has hit the Michigan prisons hard. Shelton is being held at the Kinross Correctional Facility in the Upper Peninsula.

The facility is one of the temporary prisons that were constructed in the mid to late eighties intended to temporarily house inmates due to overcrowding issues. Kinross is a pole barn setting where approximately 1,280 inmates are confined in close quarters making the spread of COVID-19 inevitable.

Shelton submitted his case to the U-M Law School Innocence Clinic in 2012 , but was referred to the Cooley Law School Innocence Clinic instead, since it dealt with DNA evidence.

See text of complete article above at: http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Clock-ticks-on-inmates-chance-to-clear-names-Detroit-Free-Press.pdf

Shelton said his hopes rose in 2004 when he became involved, along with 140 other prisoners and a Lansing-based Innocence Project, in a successful fight to permanently extend a 2001 state statute that required law enforcement agencies to preserve evidence from cases decided prior to 2001, as long as the defendant is behind bars.  Prior to the statute, there was no requirement governing evidence preservation among Michigan’s law enforcement departments, meaning material that could be tested for DNA was lost or destroyed in numerous cases.

Exoneree Kenneth Wyniemko and Prof. Marla Mitchell-Cichon, head of WMU-Cooley Innocence Project

One of the Michigan prisoners involved was Kenneth Wyniemko, whose exoneration was featured recently in “The Innocence Files,” a Netflix series authored by the Equal Justice Initiative. But Wyniemko was the only prisoner of those 140 to win exoneration.

At the time, Shelton’s attorneys were trying to get the forensic evidence in his case re-tested for DNA, to strengthen the earlier biological tests on hair evidence excluding him, and to see if the actual perpetrator could be identified. That was not done. Since that time, Shelton says, Innocence Clinics have considered his case three more times, with no resolution.

But Shelton’s son David said he and his family were contacted last year by Atty. Lori Montgomery, of  State Attorney General Nessel’s Conviction Integrity Unit. The AG’s CIU and the Western Michigan University/Cooley Law Innocence Clinic received federal grants of over $1 million in 2019 which require the two agencies to assess if unreliable forensic practices led to a conviction in cases of plausible innocence.

VOD contacted the AG’s office through its spokesperson Courtney Covington, who said the AG’s office is not allowing public discussion of individual cases. But Covington did provide VOD with the following update on the project in an email.

“As of today we have received letter requests for assistance from 945 people. We sent applications out and have received 342 applications back thus far. We have sent 75 cases to the Cooley Innocence Project – our partner agency under the federal grant – for further evaluation of forensic evidence.”

Lori Montgomery (l) of AG’s office with Marla Mitchell-Cichon (center) and Daniela Mendez (r) of WMU/Cooley Law Innocence Project, a member of the national Innocence Network. 

Covington said 122 claims have been rejected because they did not meet the projects prerequisites. These include exclusion of cases from Wayne County, (which has its own CIU), or cases in federal court or outside the state.

“Most important, we cannot review legal errors or cases where the claimant has not raised an allegation of new evidence (not offered to the trial court) illustrating innocence,” Covington noted. Shelton’s case does in fact involve such an allegation.

Covington said that the AG’s CIU was announced in April 2019, but did not receive actual funding until January 2020.  She said the true impact of COVID-19 in Michigan was not felt until March 9, which has delayed DNA work. Robyn Frankel, the head of the AG’s CIU, worked up until Jan. 2020 reviewing previous Wrongful Imprisonment Compensation Act claims, which resulted in the AG’s authorization of payment to many claimants.

Frankel provided VOD with an overview of the CIU’s policies and procedures, and an application, at http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Michigan-AG-CIU-Overview-and-Application-4.7.20-1.pdf.

Ricardo Ferrell, VOD Field Editor

Commentary by Ricardo Ferrell: The statewide Conviction Integrity Unit should be all over the Shelton case. This conviction against David Shelton should be the linchpin in revealing the level of corruption out in Oakland County. They’ve gotten away for a long time with targeting Black folks, putting them in jail and sending them off to prison for crimes they didn’t commit. What kind of system of justice sends innocent people to prison and doesn’t think twice about how that impacts families.  

VOD has extensively gone over court documents in the Shelton case and doesn’t see how the Oakland County Prosecutor’s Office in their right conscience could argue for a conviction to stand that isn’t supported by any physical evidence. The DNA itself excludes David Shelton, the fingerprints on the mask, a key piece of the prosecution’s so-called evidence, didn’t match Shelton’s prints and the most shocking piece of evidence found was that of DNA (hair) in the victim’s bed that did not have any Negroid traits. So, how can an African American, namely David Shelton, stand convicted of such a crime? 

VOD reports, but when you have corrupt cops, an overzealous prosecutor’s office and a victim willing to give perjured, coached and false testimony against a Black man, you simply don’t stand a chance in the racist Oakland County. It has been this way out in Oakland for decades. Black defendants are treated as if they are automatically guilty. Never mind the notion of ‘innocent until proven guilty;’ that premise just don’t count, if your skin is Black.

Shelton’s case is also featured on a national website at  https://wronglyconvictedgroup.wordpress.com/2016/09/23/david-sheldon/.

And in son David Stinson’s Change.Org petition https://www.change.org/p/all-evidence-presented-looking-for-representation-in-wrongful-conviction-case-dna-evidence-that-we-provide-exonerates-all-black-men-from-this-crime

Related documents: 

MSP LAB REPORTS IN DAVID SHELTON CASE:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/DShelton-MSP-lab-reports-pages-1-3-compressed.pdf

http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/DShelton-MSP-lab-reports-pages-4-6-compressed.pdf

http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/DShelton-MSP-lab-reports-pages-7-9-compressed.pdf

SOLOMON V. ROYAL OAK TOWNSHIP:

http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/SOLOMON-V-ROYAL-OAK-TOWNSHIP.pdf

OAKLAND FUMBLES SEX CASE CHARGES (full article) http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/OAKLAND-FUMBLES-SEX-CASE-CHARGES.pdf

OTHER RELATED STORIES:

RUSH TO JUDGMENT? JUDICIAL BIAS RE: RACE, MENTAL ILLNESS EVIDENT IN MICHIGAN LIFER’S CONVICTIONS

STORIES BELOW RELATE TO JUVENILE LIFERS IN MICHIGAN, 200 OF WHOM HAVE NOT BEEN RE-SENTENCED DESPITE U.S. SUPREME COURT RULINGS; Oakland County’s Pros. Jessica Cooper recommended renewed LWOP sentences for 100% of that County’s juvenile lifers.

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2019/01/24/in-michigan-county-prosecutors-slow-to-give-rehabilitated-juveniles-a-chance/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2019/10/08/mich-juvenile-lifers-63-not-re-sentenced-fed-class-action-lawsuit-cites-violation-of-due-process/

 http://voiceofdetroit.net/2016/07/26/worthy-others-want-large-portion-of-juvenile-lifers-to-die-in-prison-despite-ussc-rulings/

© Provided by Associated Press FILE – In this April 16, 2020, file photo, President Donald Trump speaks about the coronavirus in the James Brady Press Briefing Room of the White House in Washington, as Dr. Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response coordinator, listens. The Trump administration has shelved a set of detailed documents created by the nation’s top disease investigators meant to give step-by-step advice to local leaders deciding when and how to reopen mass transit, day care centers, restaurants, bars and other public places during the still-raging pandemic. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File) The AP obtained a copy from a second federal official who was not authorized to release it. The guidance was described in AP stories last week, prior to the White House decision to shelve it.

By JASON DEAREN and MIKE STOBBE, Associated Press

May 7, 2020 11 a.m.

GAINESVILLE, Fla. (AP) — The Trump administration has shelved a document created by the nation’s top disease investigators with step-by-step advice to local authorities on how and when to reopen restaurants and other public places during the still-raging coronavirus outbreak.

The 17-page report by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention team, titled “Guidance for Implementing the Opening Up America Again Framework,” was researched and written to help faith leaders, business owners, educators and state and local officials as they begin to reopen.

DENVER, CO – MAY 6: Brandon Wilson, owner of AvidJet, disinfects a Frontier airplane with a fogger at Denver International Airport on Tuesday, May 6, 2020. ProShield, the microbiostatic agent used to disinfect the plane, will keep the aircraft clean for up to 90 days after application. Beginning this week, Frontier will require the use of masks by passengers and will implement temperature checks in the coming weeks.

It was supposed to be published last Friday, but agency scientists were told the guidance “would never see the light of day,” according to a CDC official. The official was not authorized to talk to reporters and spoke to The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity.

The Trump administration has been closely controlling the release of guidance and information during the pandemic spurred by a new coronavirus that scientists are still trying to understand, with the president himself leading freewheeling daily briefings until last week.

Traditionally, it’s been the CDC’s role to give the public and local officials guidance and science-based information during public health crises. During this one, however, the CDC has not had a regular, pandemic-related news briefing in nearly two months. CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield has been a member of the White House coronavirus task force, but largely absent from public appearances.

The dearth of real-time, public information from the nation’s experts has struck many current and former government health officials as dangerous.

“CDC has always been the public health agency Americans turn to in a time of crisis,” said Dr. Howard Koh, a Harvard professor and former health official in the Obama administration during the H1N1 swine flu pandemic in 2009. “The standard in a crisis is to turn to them for the latest data and latest guidance and the latest press briefing. That has not occurred, and everyone sees that.”

https://www.businessinsider.com/psychiatrists-submit-warning-trumps-mental-health-deteriorating-2019-12

‘JUST MERCY’, starring Michael B. Jordan and Jamie Foxx in a wrenching account of a wrongfully convicted man freed by Atty. Bryan Stevenson and the Equal Justice Initiative. Many more, like Carl Hubbard, languish in Michigan and U.S. prisons.

AP JAMES GONZALES DROVE ONLY KEY PROS. WITNESS OFF STAND, ORDERING ARREST FOR PERJURY AFTER RECANTATION  AT TRIAL

Hubbard’s 3-day bench trial in front of Judge Richard Hathaway in 1992: no gun or other forensics evidence, no eyewitness testimony presented

Police, prosecutors never investigated eyewitness statement naming a different perpetrator

Trial lawyer Ronald Giles, now a judge, swore in affidavit that recanted testimony of  pros. witness Curtiss Collins was key to  conviction

Hubbard’s latest appeal currently being reviewed for acceptance by Michigan Supreme Court

By Diane Bukowski

May 3, 2020

Carl Hubbard (MDOC photo)

DETROIT – Detroiter Carl Hubbard, now 55, has been serving a life without parole  sentence (death by incarceration) in Michigan for 28 years, convicted of the first-degree murder of Rodnell Penn on Jan. 17, 1992. His case is currently awaiting the Michigan Supreme Court’s approval of his most recent application for leave to appeal.

Hubbard’s case closely resembles that of George Clark and Kevin Harrington, co-defendants whose 2003 Inkster murder case was dismissed April 23 at the request of the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, citing egregious police misconduct. (See box below.)

Attorney Wolfgang Mueller told the Detroit News about the Inkster case, “Threatening witnesses to make up a story and hiding evidence to grease the skids for a conviction cannot be tolerated by our society.”

Recorders Court Judge Richard P. Hathaway convicted Hubbard after a three-day bench trial in 1992. Assistant Wayne Co. Prosecutor James Gonzales presented no physical or forensic evidence, including the gun that killed Penn, fingerprints or gunshot residue. He presented no eyewitnesses.

His key witness, Curtiss Collins, a boyhood friend of Hubbard’s, claimed he saw Hubbard in the vicinity of the killing with the victim, then later recanted that testimony on the first day of Hubbard’s trial.

James Gonzales (r), currently Kym Worthy’s Chief of Special Operations.

In a glaring action ignored by courts through 28 years of Hubbard’s pro se appeals, Gonzales effectively drove his own key witness off the stand, ordering him immediately arrested by Detroit police on charges of perjury after his sworn recantation. A police report by Sgt. Ronald Gale attests that Gonzales ordered him to carry out the arrest.

Collins said that police and prosecutors threatened to charge him with Penn’s murder and other consequences to obtain his testimony, after holding him on the infamous 9th floor of DPD headquarters at 1300 Beaubien, home to the alleged “Ring of Snitches,” for two days until he reverted to Gonzales version of events.

Gonzales currently serves as Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy’s Chief of Special Operations, while Judge Hathaway went on to become a Chief Assistant to Worthy in 2005, before briefly stepping down to run for Wayne County Treasurer. He won that position, but stepped down as Treasurer after three months.

The players instrumental in convicting Hubbard in 1992 thus remain in powerful positions in the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, giving that office reason to ignore any “dirty deeds” they committed in the past when responding to Hubbard’s appeals. Their prominence may have influenced the recent opinion rendered by Third Judicial Circuit Court Judge Lawrence Talon on Hubbard’s third motion for relief from judgment, rendered Oct. 2, 2019. (See http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Hubbard-Talon-answer-10-2-19.pdf]

(L to R): AP Richard Hathaway, Pros. Kym Worthy, retiring AP Augustus Huttings and Judge Timothy Kenny, currently chief judge of the Third Judicial Circuit Court.

Hubbard had filed that motion after numerous earlier appeals were rejected without any statement of fact by state appeals courts, only  declarations that he did not meet the standards for appeal.

Regarding the arrest of Curtiss Collins after he recanted his testimony during Hubbard’s trial in 1992,  Talon claimed, “…. neither the police nor the prosecutor intimidated the witness after his actual recanting . . .because the witness was forced to face perjury charges or testify against a man accused of murder. There was no intimidation, only a tough choice that Collins had brought about by his own actions.”

Collins, however, insists to this day that prosecutors and police  forced him to testify falsely. On October 31, 2017, he filed a sworn affidavit to that effect. In the affidavit, he says that he spent two days after his arrest for perjury in lock-up at DPD’s former headquarters at 1300 Beaubien.

That affidavit is backed up by numerous others from individuals who swore they did not see Collins at the scene of the murder, including two proprietors who swore he was not in their store with Penn on that day.  Collins had said he was in the store when he saw Hubbard with the victim. (See Collins’ affidavit at http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Curtiss-Collins-affidavit.pdf).

“I returned on the third day of Carl Hubbard’s trial after spending two days at the 1300 Precinct where I was threatened by Homicide officers Sergeant [Joann] Kinney and Sergeant [Ronald] Gale with being charged with the murder of Mr. Penn if I didn’t say that I saw Carl Hubbard at the murder scene of Mr. Penn. This is why I testified in the manner I did on the third day of Carl Hubbard’s trial, because of the fear I had of Sergeant Kinney and Gale’s threats of charging and prosecuting me for a crime that I had no knowledge of.”

He said he spent 10 months in prison from 2014-15, afterwards realizing how hard it was for Hubbard. He also learned that Gonzales, Kinney and Gale were no longer in their respective positions and could not directly retaliate against him.

He swore that “my statements that I provided on Jan. 23, 1992 to Sgt. Kinney and Sgt. Gale, on Feb. 4, 1992 at Carl Hubbard’s preliminary examination, and on Sept. 2, 1992 at Carl Hubbard’s trial were false. Whereas today I recant those statements which were coerced from me by threats from AP Gonzales, Sgt. Kinney and Sgt. Gale.”

Below is VOD’s interview with Curtiss Collins last year.

Hubbard’s attorney at trial, Ronald Giles, who is now a 36th District Court Judge, signed an affidavit stating firmly as below (excerpt–see full document at http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Atty-Ronald-Giles-letter-and-aff-Hubbard-habeas.pdf)

Judge Ronald Giles

Over the years, Hubbard has submitted dozens of affidavits attesting to his innocence including a key affidavit from Askia Hill, an eyewitness to the murder.

Hill’s full affidavit is at http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Askia-Hill-affidavit-from-CH-habeas-

Hill swore that he saw the killing of Rodnell Penn and named the perpetrator as Mark Goings. Affidavits from others in the community stated that it was known that Goings wanted to retaliate against Penn for killing his brother.

Hill’s affidavit clearly goes to the issue of Hubbard’s actual innocence. In part, it read:

Last year, the Michigan Supreme Court approved additional language regarding “actual innocence” to be added to Michigan Court Rules, at MCR 6.502. That language states that the court may waive newly discovered evidence provisions of the rule “if it concludes that there is a significant possibility that the defendant is innocence of the crime.”

Additionally, MCR 770.1 has always stated  as follows, “770.1 Granting new trial to defendant. The judge of a court in which the trial of an offense is held may grant a new trial to the defendant, for any cause for which by law a new trial may be granted, or when it appears to the court that justice has not been done, and on the terms or conditions as the court directs.”

Judge Talon says in his ruling that he did not find affidavits from Hill and others “believable,” but legal experts say that a judge does not have the right to decide what is believable, that such evidence must go to the jury, if they are the finders of fact.

In his extremely well executed pro se 2013 habeas petition, Hubbard cited key cases from the U.S. and Michigan Supreme Courts, and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals that speak definitively to the issue of “actual innocence.” They include Schlup v. Delo 513 U.S. 298 (1995), and Souter v. Jones 395 F 3rd 577 (6th Circ. 2005).  (See part I of Hubbard’s petition at http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/Carl-Hubbard-habeas-petition-2013-pages-deleted-compressed.pdf.)

Hubbard’s case closely resembles that of George Clark and Kevin Harrington, co-defendants whose 2003 Inkster murder case was dismissed April 23 at the request of the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office.

That office’s Conviction Integrity Unit said egregious police misconduct, including coercion of the only original eyewitness by Inkster police, was involved. That witness later recanted and was replaced by a witness who identified the real killer. Although the CIU would not identify the officer responsible, the Sixth Circuit Court did so in their ruling on Clark’s appeal, as Officer Anthony Abdallah.

According to that ruling, Abdallah threatened to take away the children of the purported eyewitness if she didn’t testify falsely against Harrington and Clark.

Sgt. JoAnn Kinney surfaced after her retirement from the DPD as a Wayne County Prosecutor’s investigator. She gained fame for claims that former Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick assaulted her and another officer when they went to his sister’s house to serve a subpoena on him for the prosecutor.

Ironically, DPD Sgt. Kinney used the same tactic herself in the 1995 case of Thoanchelle Taylor.

Judge Kathleen MacDonald

In an article titled, “Detroit Police Inquiry Expands,” which cites Kinney, Detroit Free Press reporters Norman Sinclair and Ronald Hansen wrote, “In another murder case in which the city ultimately paid a five-figure settlement in 1995, a Wayne County Circuit Court judge harshly criticized Detroit police for locking up a mother of two children as a witness and illegally holding her until her 12-year-old daughter and 6-year-old son implicated her in the death.

“Judge Kathleen McDonald said she was outraged that police charged Thoanchelle Taylor with murder without ‘scintilla of evidence,’ as the judge put it. “If I have ever seen a case where the police have manufactured the facts, this is one. I have never had facts as egregious as this case.

“Veteran Homicide Sgt. Joann Kinney testified that she had Taylor locked up as a witness for days without charges against her and said there was no standard procedure as to how long witnesses could be held without being arrested. Kinney also admitted threatening to take Taylor’s children away if she did not cooperate. . .”

Kinney was also involved in eliciting a confession from a 12-year-old girl to a charge of murder of a child she was babysitting, by promising she could go home if she confessed. The confession was thrown out by the juvenile court judge in 1992. (See article below.)

JoAnn Kinney testified later in a federal civil lawsuit, Moore v. City of Detroit, 07-11787,  that the City of Detroit had a policy and practice of detaining witnesses. (Docket No. 20, Exh. D, Dep. of Joann Kinney, pp. 40-50). See http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/People-v-Moore-.pdf. Of course, that policy had been thoroughly exposed when the U.S. Department of Justice put the DPD under a consent agreement, with regard to its use of force and practice of witness round-ups in 2003.

For his part, DPD Sgt. Ronald Gale was cited by the Michigan Supreme Court in a case very similar to Hubbard’s, People v. Jenkins, 450 Mich. 249 (1995). In Jenkins, Justices James H. Brickley, Charles L. Levin and Michael F. Cavanagh reversed the 1995 conviction of Steven Jenkins for the murder of Demowens Harris in 1989 and remanded it for a new trial. The full opinion is at http://voiceofdetroit.net/wp-content/uploads/People-v-Jenkins.pdf.

Sgt. Ronald D. Gale passed in 2014; family photo from obituary.

In that case, Gale elicited a written statement from witness Reginald Pennington indicating that he had seen defendant Steven Jenkins riding toward the murder victim and that gunfire took place immediately after Jenkins left Pennington’s line of sight. At trial, however, Pennington denied the content of the statement, despite having signed it. The prosecutor then had Gale read the statement into the record word for word.

The State Supreme Court said, “Shortly after the shooting, Reginald Pennington gave police a signed statement that immediately before the incident he had seen Jenkins riding in a gold Sunbird toward the crime scene, and that gunfire erupted immediately after the vehicle left Pennington’s line of sight.[6] Called as a prosecution witness, Pennington offered little useful information. He testified rather that he was sitting on his porch a block away from the crime scene when he heard shots and saw a crowd gather.”

The court continued, “Over defense objections, the prosecutor questioned Sergeant Gale, the police officer who took Pennington’s statement. The prosecutor had Gale read much of Pennington’s statement. Gale quoted Pennington as saying:

102 Leicester Ct. Google photo

“At about 6 P.M., I’m sitting on the porch of 102 Leicester. A gold Sunbird rode past the house, and as soon as it got out of my eyesight, I heard the shooting. One of my friends came around there where I was at and told me that Steve [Jenkins] had shot [the victim] Demowens in the head. Steve [Jenkins] is the one that drives the gold Sunbird.” [Emphasis added.]

The Court added that Gale was also permitted to read word for word from an attached  memorandum, “I saw the driver of the car and the passenger. I didn’t see who was in the back seat of the car.” He recognized in the car “Steven Jenkins and this guy named Spanky.” Jenkins was “[i]n the front passenger side.” Spanky “was the driver of the car.” He heard “[a]bout 11” shots fired. Gale also asked Pennington whether he had ever seen Jenkins with a gun before, and Pennington responded, “Yes, a .45 automatic, nickelplated.” “Every time [Jenkins] gets out of the car to go in that building, he has the gun in his hand.”

Carl Hubbard, convicted in 1992, is one of many prisoners from Detroit who were caught up in the rabid practices of the Detroit Police Department during the 1990’s, which included unbridled witness round-ups and detention, killings by police (Detroit had the highest number of any city in 1999), and unchecked tens of thousands of frame-ups. 

Those practices began many decades ago when the “Big Four” DPD cars roamed the city, singling out young Blacks for arrest, to the 1967 rebellion, when dozens of poor, largely Black people were murdered by police and the National Guard, to STRESS (Stop the Robberies, Enjoy Safe Streets), whose undercover cops slaughtered Black men at random, and continuing to the present day.

Many believed Mayor Coleman Young’s election put an end to such practices, but they continued unabated through the decades following to the present day. In this system, police are the descendants of the slave-catchers of previous centuries, and agents of mass incarceration in the present. They do not serve the people, but the wealthy white supremacist class.

Related stories:

JUDGE TO REVIEW CASE OF CARL HUBBARD, IN PRISON SINCE 1992; INNOCENCE BACKED BY DOZENS

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2020/02/28/ramon-ward-family-celebrate-release-after-27-yrs-on-false-conviction-when-will-100s-more-be-freed/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2020/04/05/mi-supreme-ct-grants-rehearing-to-thelonious-searcy-hitman-confessed-judge-ap-lied-to-jury/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2020/04/05/mi-supreme-ct-grants-rehearing-to-thelonious-searcy-hitman-confessed-judge-ap-lied-to-jury/

http://voiceofdetroit.net/2020/02/11/rush-to-judgment-judicial-bias-re-race-mental-illness-evident-in-michigan-lifers-convictions/

NINETY INGHAM COUNTY, MI LIFERS MAY GET SECOND CHANCE; PROS. CAROL SIEMON OPPOSES LWOP