More than two years after a federal jury awarded Darryl Howard $6 million for nearly 24 years in prison following a flawed police investigation, Howard was finally able to collect a settlement check from the city.
The city of Durham sent a $7.75 million check to Howard earlier this month, his attorney Bradley Bannon confirmed Thursday.
The settlement is not a cause for celebration, Bannon wrote in an email.
“It should be a day of reflection for everyone about how easy it is for our system to get it wrong, and how difficult it is for our system to get it right, if that ever happens,” Bannon wrote.
History of Howard’s conviction
The 29-year injustice dates back to Howard’s 1995 double murder convictions, which were overturned, appealed and overturned again before Howard was released in 2016 after his Innocence Project lawyers presented evidence of police and criminal misconduct. prosecutor.
In 2017, Howard sought damages by suing multiple city officials, including the lead detective on the case, Darrell Dowdy, who retired as a police captain in 2007.
In 2021, a federal jury awarded Howard $6 million after finding that Dowdy fabricated evidence and conducted an inadequate investigation that led to Howard’s wrongful conviction of two counts of second-degree murder. The charges stemmed from the 1991 murders of Doris Washington and her 13-year-old daughter Nishonda at a now-demolished public housing complex in Durham.
Dowdy still claims he conducted adequate investigations, his attorney said in a recent interview.
Howard and his legal team expressed disappointment at the end of the federal trial, saying Durham’s lawyers had successfully attacked Howard’s character. They claimed this resulted in a jury award that was lower than other wrongful convictions.
Then it got even worse.
Howard and his team were later shocked to learn that the city, which paid Dowdy’s attorneys, refused to pay Dowdy’s judgment, meaning they would not cover the $6 million jury award or Howard’s $4 million in legal fees .
A ruling by the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals gave Howard another chance to seek damages in 2023. It said the judge wrongfully fired two other Durham police officers, Scott Pennica and Michelle Soucie, before his civil case went to trial in 2021. Howard claims she failed to share vital evidence in his post-trial that could have allowed him to be released from prison sooner.
The appeal ruling allowed Howard to seek damages from those officers.
Dowdy also filed his own federal lawsuit against the city in 2023, alleging that Durham officials abandoned him after using him as a “pawn” in the lawsuit, despite having worked for the city for 28 years .
In the settlement talks that followed, the city agreed to pay Howard nearly $8 million, including attorney fees, to close the case. In addition, the city paid Dowdy $350,000 in a related settlement, his said attorney Tom Comerford.
Bannon said this shouldn’t have gone on for years.
“But now that he has, Darryl Howard is ready to move on and try to rebuild a life that was taken from him by the state 30 years ago,” Bannon wrote.
Senior Assistant City Attorney John Roseboro did not immediately respond to questions about the settlements.
Howard always said he was innocent
Howard maintained his innocence from the start, saying gang members raped and murdered the women because of the mother’s drug debts.
Over time, evidence supported his claims. Testing in the 1990s excluded Howard from the DNA found in Nishonda’s rape kit.
Tests in 2010 revealed that Doris Washington’s rape kit contained undetected semen. That DNA was not linked to Howard or the previously identified DNA.
Using a federal DNA database, investigators found a match to a man who was 16 years old at the time of the murder and a member of the gang that Howard claims killed the mother and daughter.
In 2011, Pennica and Soucie took steps to obtain a DNA sample from the man. In an interview with police, the man said he did not know Doris Washington but claimed he was dating her daughter.
Police left the man alone in an interrogation room, where telephone conversations were recorded in which he made incriminating statements showing that he knew Doris and that he “didn’t want to betray anyone.”
Afterward, agents did not send the report to the Durham County District Attorney’s Office despite a 2011 court order requiring the information to be shared with Howard, court documents show.
Howard was aware of the DNA results but did not learn about the interview or the man’s incriminating statements until 2016, 21 years after he was convicted.
Virginia Bridges covers criminal justice in the Triangle and across North Carolina for The News & Observer. Her work is produced with financial support from the non-profit organization The Just Trust. The N&O retains full editorial control over its journalism.
