North Carolina Attorneys Might Be Forced To Go After A Retired Detective’s Personal Assets To Pay $6M Jury Award The City Is Refusing To Pay A Wrongfully Imprisoned Man

By Nyamekye Daniel

After being framed by a North Carolina police detec­tive, spend­ing more than two decades in prison and fight­ing to be free, Darryl Howard must now take on a new legal bat­tle to get $6 mil­lion grant­ed to him in a wrong­ful con­vic­tion law­suit by a fed­er­al jury in December.
The jury found that retired Durham Detective Darrell Dowdy vio­lat­ed Howard’s civ­il rights by fab­ri­cat­ing evi­dence and inten­tion­al­ly con­duct­ing a shod­dy inves­ti­ga­tion. However, Durham’s city attor­ney says the city is legal­ly pro­hib­it­ed from pay­ing the mon­e­tary judg­ment on behalf of the rogue detec­tive. Howard’s attor­ney accused the city of “lying” and using legal lan­guage as an excuse.

One of Howard’s lawyers, Nick Brustin, said they plan to do “every­thing con­ceiv­able” to col­lect the mon­ey, includ­ing appeal­ing the case.

“We’re going to make sure that we get our client who’s been through absolute hell every­thing we pos­si­bly can for him,” Brustin told the Atlanta Black Star.

Howard was con­vict­ed and sen­tenced to 80 years in prison for the mur­ders of a moth­er and daugh­ter in 1995. He was exon­er­at­ed in 2016 after the state appealed a judge’s 2014 deci­sion to vacate his conviction.

The Durham District Attorney’s Office dis­missed his dou­ble-mur­der and arson charges after Howard’s lawyers pre­sent­ed DNA evi­dence exclud­ing him and con­nect­ing two oth­er peo­ple to the slay­ings of Doris Washington and her 13-year-old daugh­ter Nishonda in 1991. Gov. Roy Cooper also par­doned Howard in 2021.

Dowdy alleged­ly obtained false state­ments from wit­ness­es, includ­ing a 17-year-old, to fin­ger Howard for the crime even though he got a tip that a drug gang from New York was respon­si­ble for the mur­ders and sex­u­al assaults. He report­ed­ly added details to their state­ments to make them more believable.

The Durham City Council decid­ed dur­ing a series of closed meet­ings between December and February to deny fund­ing for the judgment.

Durham City Attorney Kimberly Rehberg said the for­mer detec­tive did not per­form his “duties in good faith,” and state law and a city res­o­lu­tion for­bid Durham from using pub­lic funds to cov­er the verdict.

“The city’s hands were tied,” she said.

The city’s res­o­lu­tion cre­ates a uni­form stan­dard for how law­suits are han­dled. According to University of North Carolina pro­fes­sor Rick Su, res­o­lu­tions have no legal effect and are “essen­tial­ly a for­mal state­ment like a for­mal pub­lic press release.”

Durham’s res­o­lu­tion dou­bles down on state law, which states that “noth­ing in this sec­tion shall autho­rize” North Carolina coun­ties and munic­i­pal­i­ties “to appro­pri­ate funds for the pur­pose of pay­ing any claim” “if the city coun­cil or board of coun­ty com­mis­sion­ers finds” that “employ­ee or offi­cer act­ed or failed to act because of actu­al fraud, cor­rup­tion or actu­al mal­ice on his part.”

It is the sec­ond time to Su’s knowl­edge that the legal statute has been used to deny an award in the state. It was debat­ed in the 2004 case of Gibbs v. Mayo when a Hyde County com­mis­sion­er fought for the coun­ty to pay his judg­ment after he ille­gal­ly prof­it­ed from a con­tract to repair the coun­ty cour­t­house and health center.

“The court held, and the coun­ty argued that what he did here was actu­al­ly beyond his capac­i­ty as a com­mis­sion­er that essen­tial­ly his wrong­do­ing was tak­ing the con­tract and essen­tial­ly being a con­trac­tor,” Su said, who teach­es state and local gov­ern­ment law.

Brustin said it is the first time in Durham’s his­to­ry that it has refused to pay a judg­ment. He argues that since the city spent mon­ey to defend the Dowdy, they must also pay the judgment.

“It cer­tain­ly per­mits them to do it,” Brustin said. He has vowed to ensure that they fol­low suit.

Howard’s attor­neys must now seek the judg­ment from the detec­tive who receives a pen­sion from the state after a 36-year career. Brustin said the pen­sion is not near­ly enough to cov­er the $6 mil­lion ver­dict and the $4 mil­lion for the city’s legal fees to defend him that the city is now ask­ing Howard to pay. The team also spent about $5 mil­lion to defend the wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed man.

“Because we’re forced to, are going to be going after the assets of Detective Dowdy,” Brustin said. “So if that includes Detective Dowdy’s home and those things, that’s what we’re going to do.”

Howard’s legal team also plans to appeal the court’s deci­sion to dis­miss the claims against the city and three oth­er employ­ees and ask for anoth­er trial.

Su said Howard’s attor­neys might bet­ter redeem the mon­ey if they prove Durham had fault­ed on train­ing, over­sight, or negligence.

To hold a city liable for a civ­il rights vio­la­tion, a plain­tiff must show that an offi­cer vio­lat­ed a clear­ly estab­lished con­sti­tu­tion­al right and that the vio­la­tion result­ed from the city’s offi­cial pol­i­cy, an unof­fi­cial cus­tom, or because the city was “delib­er­ate­ly indif­fer­ent” in fail­ing to train or super­vise the offi­cer, Rehberg said.

“In this case, there was no evi­dence that the City of Durham’s ordi­nances, reg­u­la­tions, cus­toms, or poli­cies caused Darryl Howard to be wrong­ly con­vict­ed,” she said.

California, Ohio, Utah and Idaho have sim­i­lar laws that lim­it gov­ern­ments from pay­ing judg­ments to “bad-faith employ­ees.” However, unlike North Carolina’s law, the California statute allows gov­ern­ments to opt out of pay­ing the judg­ment, Su said.

An appel­late court upheld Los Angeles County’s refusal to pay for a judg­ment against cor­rec­tion­al offi­cer Chang v. County of Los Angeles in 2016 because his actions “were based on cor­rup­tion, fraud, or malice.”

Brustin said the legal move by the city is part of a series of racial injus­tices against Howard. He point­ed out that dur­ing the tri­al, the city argued that Howard was “not wor­thy” of the $48 mil­lion they were seek­ing because of his crim­i­nal record and drug addic­tion. The city also made set­tle­ment offers “nowhere near” the $6 mil­lion judgment.

“Morally, they have not only an oblig­a­tion to pay Darryl Howard, they had an oblig­a­tion not to defend the case the way they did,” Brustin said. “They had an oblig­a­tion to go back and look at the mis­con­duct and see if it affects oth­er people.”

“They had an oblig­a­tion now to go and make sure that noth­ing like this is hap­pen­ing in their police depart­ment. Instead, all they’ve done is they’ve come up with lies about why they don’t have to pay this.”
This sto­ry orig­i­nat­ed @ the Atlantablackstar​.com