When I first put a story up here just over a month ago, I planned to use the Asheville Blade exactly once. But on April 16, I was fired from my job at Mountain Xpress after pushing to organize a union and reveal unethical behavior.
In announcing this unfortunate news, I promised that I would continue to serve and inform the community in any way I could. So I’ve set up the Asheville Blade as one space to do that. More coming soon, hopefully, and I look forward to jumping back into the local news fray.
In this case, I think it’s worth digging down into a particular document that’s become part of the most hard-fought District Attorney’s election the Asheville area has seen in years. A number of controversies over District Attorney Ron Moore’s conduct during his long tenure have come to the fore during the course of this race, and they’re part of a larger debate about the past and future of the justice system in the Asheville area. The story this document alleges, and the larger questions of how the justice system operates — or fails — are important issues.
— David Forbes
“Motion for Appropriate Relief,” reads the front page of a document filed by local attorney Brad Searson on April 1.
It’s fairly tame legalese for something that claims to tell the twisting and sometimes bizarre story of a teenager, Larry Williams, intimidated into pleading guilty to a 2000 murder he didn’t commit, and of a prosecutor’s office that supposedly withheld evidence that could have exonerated him and several other defendants. Two other local attorneys filed similar claims at the same time for two other men convicted alongside Williams, and in 2011 judges had already overturned convictions of two other suspects in the case.
While their campaigns don’t usually attract the electoral fervor of a congressional election or even a local Council race, the district attorney is possibly the single most powerful local elected official in the county, with wide-ranging control over the functioning of a major part of the justice system: who gets charged and doesn’t, if deals are offered or not.
The allegations contained in the document have also become a major point of contention in the most hard-fought campaign for the job the area’s seen in over a decade, between longtime District Attorney Ron Moore and local defense attorney Todd Williams.
Voters will decide the victor in tomorrow’s Democratic primary, but the contest has already seen local attorneys, politicians, retired judges and law enforcement officials divided, lining up behind different candidates. For weeks now, local social media and news outlets have seen volleys of dueling endorsements as both campaigns rev up their efforts.
Todd Williams’ campaign has put the document alleging Larry Williams’ innocence up on its website, and made the North Carolina Innocence Inquiry Commission findings that helped clear two men accused alongside him a centerpiece of its argument that Moore’s long reign should come to an end. Indeed, the challenger led with the issue as part of his campaign announcement back in February, asserting that “the Office of District Attorney should be renowned for its fairness and integrity in pursuit of justice” and that Moore’s conduct in the case had “tarnished” it.
Moore, who’s occupied the office for 24 years, is notoriously tight-lipped when it comes to public comments, but felt compelled to issue his own response May 1 as the controversy continued. “The District Attorney’s Office has not lost its integrity,” he declared, dismissing the criticisms as “rumors and innuendo.”
Last month, after Searson and the other attorneys filed their motions, The Asheville Citizen-Times did a piece on the issue headlined “Murder investigation called ‘comically slapdash.’”
Indeed, that’s part of what the motion alleges, but there’s more here. It’s worth delving into what the document says, the allegations it contains and what this fight might mean for larger issues facing the local justice system.
The crime
It’s important to keep in mind that the story that follows, and the version of events it claims took place, are from a document written by an attorney seeking to overturn a conviction. These are allegations.
By September 2000 Larry Jerome Williams, a youth who had drifted through the foster care system, was living on the streets of Asheville after running away from a group home in Greensboro. The 16-year-old occasionally stayed with a friend, Robert Wilcoxson, and on the night of Sept. 18-19 he fell asleep in Wilcoxson’s van, watching a movie.
Around midnight, three intruders — Lacy Pickens, Robert Rutherford and Bradford Summey — burst into a Fairview home. They were there, the motion asserts, because they believed there was “a large quantity of cash, marijuana and cocaine in the house.” They wore bandanas over their faces and were armed, Summey brandishing a shotgun.
The home was rented by Alma Bowman. Her son, Shaun Bowman, had a reputation for dealing drugs, and “was widely suspected of being an informant for District Attorney Ron Moore.” He regularly stayed at the house.
At the time of home invasion Walter Bowman, Shaun’s father, was lying down in a nearby bedroom. The intruders woke him up, and as he moved to lock the bedroom door, Summey fired the shotgun through it, fatally wounding him. The invaders fled, as did Shaun Bowman.
The next day, Sept. 20, the sheriff’s office received a Crimestoppers tip alleging that Summey, Pickens and Rutherford were the culprits, but “from the outset, Buncombe County authorities seemed resistant to the idea” that they were guilty. One detective asserted that Pickens was in jail on the night of the murder (he wasn’t). A security camera had captured the three at a nearby gas station before the crime, but “despite those tantalizing connections, no one ever questioned Summey, Pickens or Rutherford.”
The confessions
So according to the lawyer trying to clear his record, how did Williams, purportedly halfway across the county at the time, end up confessing to Bowman’s murder? On Sept. 23 a second Crimestoppers tip flagged him and two other men — Kenneth Kagonyera and Aaron Brewton, as the murderers. In the days after the tip, all three were questioned, and denied involvement. No notes remain of Williams’ interrogation.
But on Sept. 25, Matthew Bacoate, the director of the drug treatment program Life on Life’s Terms, entered the picture.
“Many of those enrolled in Life on Life’s Terms were simultaneously facing criminal charges related to their drug use,” the motion asserts. “Bacoate had a close relationship with [Moore]” and “strongly encouraged program participants to ‘cooperate’ in pending criminal investigations” while Moore usually reduced the charges of defendants who signed up for Bacoate’s program.
Bacoate brought forward Teddy Isbell, a resident of the program’s facility, asserting that he had information about the Bowman murder. Isbell requested that Moore and Bacoate interview him, and Isbell was interrogated four times between Sept. 25 and Oct. 10.
“According to Bacoate, Isbell was high on drugs at the time of the second, and most extensive, interview,” which the motion asserts ended with him relaying a tangled mess of a narrative. However, “detectives were able to extract the names” of himself, Kagonyera, Wilcoxson and Williams from Isbell’s story.
By Sept. 26, Williams was already in jail on an unrelated charge. Moore and then-Sheriff Bobby Medford handled the interrogation personally, with the assistance of two detectives.
Medford’s name has receded from the news in recent years, but during his 12-year tenure as the county’s top law enforcement officer, he was a controversial figure, to put it mildly. Medford brandished a riot gun at protesters, faced assertions that he covered up the activities of abusive relatives and ran a protection racket. That last was borne out by a 2008 federal trial that saw him convicted on multiple corruption charges for taking payoffs from illegal gambling operators, and he’s currently doing a 15-year stint in prison.
On his campaign page, in a “Moore Answers” section responding to controversies, the district attorney asserts that he deferred to federal authorities in their eventual investigation of Medford’s corruption.
In this case, Medford asked to be alone with Williams, and emerged to announce that the teenager had confessed to Bowman’s murder, and had implicated Kagonyera, Wilcoxson and Brewton. But within minutes, Williams asked to speak to another detective alone, and recanted. But on Oct. 11, another detective interviewed him and recorded him admitting involvement and that the details were “just as Sheriff Medford” said. On Oct. 24 Williams again said he was innocent and denied his earlier confessions, but was presented with a warrant for first-degree murder and allegedly implicated all of the other defendants. On Oct. 28 he once again retracted his confession.
According to the motion, Williams and the other suspects gave contradictory accounts of their involvement in the murder, confessing to using different vehicles for the crime. The security footage from a nearby gas station that allegedly connected Summey, Pickens and Rutherford to the murder was partly taped over by a soap opera while it was in the hands of the sheriff’s office.
Further, during the investigation of Bowman’s murder, deputies retrieved bandanas and gloves from nearby the crime scene and sent them to the State Bureau of Investigation. None of the DNA matched the defendants who later pleaded guilty to the murder. According to the motion, the SBI lab reported this to Moore in March 2001, but he didn’t inform the defendants or their attorneys.
In February 2002, Williams “was persuaded by his appointed attorneys and his family that the risk of a capital murder trial was too great.” He pleaded guilty. So did Kagonyera, Isbell, Wilcoxson and another man, Damian Mills. The charges against Brewton were dropped.
In 2003, during a trial in Charlotte, Rutherford agreed to cooperate with Drug Enforcement Administration officials. He disclosed to a special agent that he, Summey and Pickens had invaded Bowman’s home. The DEA sent the statement to Moore, but Williams and the other defendants weren’t made aware. The motion asserts that Rutherford’s confession “is corroborated by early tips, DNA evidence, surveillance video and eyewitness testimony.”
Furthermore, in 2007 the SBI was notified that the national CODIS database matched DNA from one of the bandanas to Summey, while further testing in 2010 and 2013 connected other DNA from the crime to Pickens and Rutherford.
Larry Williams spent nine years in prison.
The motions
A “motion for appropriate relief” basically asserts that the justice system screwed up and that the violation requires some action to fix. According to Christine Mumma, director of the N.C. Center on Actual Innocence and an attorney expert in such cases, they’re incredibly frequent; a way to deal with multiple issues in the state’s overwhelmed courts. The motions for relief cover a huge array of issues, from calls for re-sentencing to claims of ineffective legal counsel.
“These are very typical,” she says, and the Innocence Inquiry Commission process was established in 2006 to handle the increasing number of requests for another look at old cases.
“The volume is so great and the court systems so underfunded that claims of innocence get buried,” she notes.
The commission process is an attempt to pull some of the most credible cases “out of an overloaded system” for further scrutiny, Mumma says. If the commission reaches a unanimous conclusion that a case merits judicial review, it can send it to a special three-judge panel that can overturn a conviction.
While such motions are common, cases like Williams’, involving DNA evidence are, Mumma says, a bit unusual, as “DNA is a bit new, the CODIS system is new.”
Wilcoxson and Kagonyera were both released in 2011 after the commission unanimously referred their case to a judicial panel that then cleared them of Bowman’s murder.
But the commission couldn’t reach the required unanimous recommendation on Williams and the other two defendants.
As for the other group, the one the motions allege was actually involved in the murder, Rutherford became a DEA informant and Pickens was shot dead by an Asheville Police Department officer in 2006 after, the APD claimed, trying to run police over with his car while fleeing arrest.
In the years since the Fairview home invasion Summey racked up a lengthy rap sheet, with charges for domestic violence, drug dealing and robbery. Some charges were dismissed, though he was convicted for others, eventually going to prison in 2008 for a series of holdups. He was released in 2011, but earlier this year was arrested for breaking and entering. His trial is May 15. He was never charged with Bowman’s murder.
The response
Moore didn’t respond to a request for comment on this story, and refused to comment for the Citizen-Times story as well, saying he couldn’t talk about a pending case.
However, late last week, the usually publicly reticent district attorney circulated the following statement via Facebook and email:
Dear Fellow Democrats,
Throughout my years as District Attorney I have refused to respond to rumor or innuendo, regarding it as “coming with the territory.” However, the recent circulation of false and derogatory reports published in an email and a mailing about my office, intentionally and in reckless disregard of the truth, demands a defense on behalf of my staff, the men and women who provide dedicated service to the office of the District Attorney.
If you want the real facts about the APD Evidence Room or the Innocence Commission go to http://www.ronmooreforda.com/faq.html. To be clear, there is no judicial decision or determination ANYWHERE that determines that I or any other person in the District Attorney’s Office withheld DNA evidence or any other evidence in any case. This is because it did not happen.
You hear allegations by our political opponents, but no judicial official has ever agreed with them nor issued any order nor made any findings indicating any wrongdoing on the part of the District Attorney’s Office. The majority of the defendants in these cases later acknowledged in interviews or sworn testimony as part of the Innocence Commission proceedings, that they had either seen the DNA results or been told about them by their attorneys prior to the day they pled guilty.
Todd Williams is running on a platform of restoring integrity to the District Attorney’s Office. The District Attorney’s Office has not lost its integrity. Rumor, innuendo and untrue allegations by Williams and others who support him, in an attempt to gain political position in our community, are not evidence of integrity. Integrity by definition means honesty, truthfulness and honor.
If you have not seen the letters of endorsement from Sheriff Van Duncan, Superior Court Trial Judges Dennis Winner, Ron Payne and others, law enforcement officers and professionals we have worked with for over 20 years, I urge you to visit our Facebook page at Ron Moore for District Attorney. These are the people who know the quality of the people and the work of my office and who speak honestly about my office based on his or her own personal experiences. Each individual also speaks to the fact that the Buncombe County District Attorney’s Office is a model in our State in terms of innovation, efficiency and professionalism.
On our Facebook page you will also find the endorsement from Chairman David Gantt which appeared in the Mountain Xpress, as well as letters from crime victims, citizens who know our work, and even from an individual we prosecuted, all endorsing our Office. These individuals speak to the real work I have accomplished as District Attorney and I am proud to have their support.
I encourage you to watch the debate sponsored by the Buncombe County Bar Association online and judge for yourself. My opponent has never tried a murder case nor even a serious felony. He has no administrative nor managerial experience. These necessary qualifications are important when you consider that the DA’s office has over 30 employees and is responsible for running 3-6 courts every day and prosecuting tens of thousands of cases each year.
The highest aim of every political race should be the ascertainment of the truth. I am proud of the integrity and professionalism of my office and the employees who help me maintain our state wide reputation as being one of the most effective District Attorney offices in our state.
I am asking for your continued support and for your vote.
The section of his campaign website Moore directs the public to is the lengthiest defense of his actions yet. It asserts that the defendants’ attorneys “at a minimum” had documents showing the requests for DNA results and that they were provided with all the necessary evidence. It also tries to cast doubt on Rutherford’s confession to DEA agents, asserting that he was aware of the Bowman murder case through his cellmate and had incentive to confess to reduce his sentence for the federal charges he was already facing.
As for Todd Williams’ campaign directing potential supporters towards the Innocence Commission website, Moore claims they won’t find any evidence of wrongdoing on his part there.
“Nowhere on it will you find a commission decision, nor will you find a judicial decision ANYWHERE that determines that the District Attorney’s Office withheld DNA evidence. You will find allegations of that, but no determination that such a thing actually happened.”
His statement asserts that “there’s more to the story. And there are transcripts of testimony, thousands of pages of transcripts, available and describing what happened. And ultimately, two separate results. Neither of which concluded any wrongdoing by the District Attorney.”
“The system is not perfect, but it is not an unjust system overcome by evil,” Moore’s statement concludes. “The Innocence Commission is one thing currently being used in addition to many layers of appeals including post-conviction Motions for Appropriate Relief to address the imperfections. This case involved multiple defendants, who pled guilty and who were fairly represented by competent counsel when they did so. The truth often prevails in spite of human error. With the highest aims of our laws in mind, the Innocence Commission can certainly facilitate that.”
The rules
The American Bar Association has a set of rules, models for state laws governing the conduct of prosecutors. Notably, it includes the following:
(g) When a prosecutor knows of new, credible and material evidence creating a reasonable likelihood that a convicted defendant did not commit an offense of which the defendant was convicted, the prosecutor shall:
(1) promptly disclose that evidence to an appropriate court or authority, and
(2) if the conviction was obtained in the prosecutor’s jurisdiction,
(i) promptly disclose that evidence to the defendant unless a court authorizes delay, and
(ii) undertake further investigation, or make reasonable efforts to cause an investigation, to determine whether the defendant was convicted of an offense that the defendant did not commit.
But this particular rule was never passed in North Carolina.
Mumma isn’t affiliated with either candidate for Buncombe County District Attorney. She notes that she hasn’t read Searson’s motion and can’t comment on the specifics of it. However, she’s aware of the case and emphasizes that there are larger issues at play.
“There’s no duty for a prosecutor to turn over evidence after a trial,” Mumma says. “One thing that we really need, and that would have really helped in the Williams, Isbell and Kagonyera cases would have been the disclosure of the post-conviction CODIS hits [in 2007, 2010 and 2013].”
“When the lab gets a [DNA] hit, they send a notice to prosecution and law enforcement,” Mumma continues. “Right now, prosecution and law enforcement can look at that and say ‘oh we already closed that case, don’t worry about it.’ There’s no affirmative duty on their part to investigate a ‘hit’ on somebody who was not associated with a case.”
So, for example, if Moore did withhold evidence after Larry Williams pled guilty to Bowman’s murder, it wouldn’t have officially constituted wrongdoing under current state rules. Mumma emphasizes that North Carolina’s rules only govern a prosecutor’s conduct before a conviction.
For a number of years some organizations, including Mumma’s, have pressed to change this, pushing for the state’s rules to include the ABA’s recommended requirement to turn over new evidence after a conviction, but they’ve faced opposition from some prosecutors. In 2011, the state Conference of District Attorneys also pushed a change to the law that would have barred defendants who pleaded guilty, like Williams, from using the innocence commission process.
In other areas, reforms in the years since Williams and the other defendants pleaded guilty have changed the landscape considerably. Today, Medford — or any other officer — interrogating a suspect alone and without notes would be illegal; the law now requires law enforcement to record interrogations in violent felony cases.
“But that’s new in the last five years,” Mumma says. “It’s only in the last few years that recording was expanded to violent cases beyond homicides.” Indeed, the whole justice system in the state is facing pressure to overturn old practices and assumptions.
“The acknowledgement that wrongful convictions can happen is new,” she adds. “You can’t really say ‘how long has this been going on?’ There are all kind of new things we’re trying to adapt to.”
But the fact that North Carolina has no rule compelling district attorneys to turn over new evidence that arises after a conviction is she says, a major issue “that must be tackled,” and it’s central to cases like that of Larry Williams.
“Prosecutors are ministers of justice,” she says. “That applies at the trial, and it applies after a conviction.”
—
In the interest of full disclosure, it’s worth noting that I was involved, along with many other local reporters, in pressing a 2012 lawsuit against Moore’s office for refusing to release an audit of missing guns, drugs and money from the Asheville Police Department evidence room.
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