DETROIT (WWJ) — Dozens of protesters gathered Wednesday afternoon outside Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy’s office, raising concerns about a number of cases that were investigated by a former Detroit police detective.
WWJ Newsradio 950’s Jon Hewett reports there were about two dozen protesters on Russell Street outside the new Wayne County Criminal Justice Center. At the center of their issue is former detective Barbara Simon.
Multiple men who were convicted in murder cases investigated by Simon have since been exonerated. Last month the Detroit City Council approved a settlement of $8.5 million in a federal lawsuit filed in 2018 on behalf of Lamarr Monson, who claimed the detective tricked him into a false confession for the murder of a 12-year-old girl in 1996, according to a report from The Detroit News.
He spent more than two decades behind bars before being released in 2017, when he was granted a new trial. Worthy subsequently dropped the charges and said Simon’s actions in the case “cannot be condoned,” according to the report.
Monson’s case was one of three cases involving Simon to be settled in the last two years, according to The Detroit News report.
On Wednesday, protesters outside Worthy’s office wanted to shine a light on Simon’s alleged actions. They’re calling for the prosecutor to not only reexamine all cases investigated by Simon, but for a criminal investigation to be launched.
Mark Craighead was among the leaders of Wednesday’s protests. He spent more than seven years behind bars for a murder he didn’t commit after Simon allegedly coerced him into falsely confessing.
Craighead founded Freedom Ain’t Free, an advocacy group for those who have been wrongly convicted. He believes Worthy is stalling, telling Hewett he reached out to her earlier this year and asked her to meet with himself and several family members of others.
“She emailed me back and said she would love to. Two, three weeks went by, I emailed her and I asked her what’s going on. She said she’s out of state and when she gets back she’ll put me on the schedule. I haven’t heard from her since,” he said.
Marlon Taylor, whose brother Damon Smith is serving a life sentence for a murder investigated by Simon, called on Worthy to “step to the plate” and do what’s right.
“She [needs to] own it and deal with it and not run from it. It won’t go under the rug, because as you see, the people are not gonna let it go. It’s not gonna go quiet. She needs to get ahead of it. If she has anything like justice in her heart, she needs to do something,” Taylor said.
Hewett asked Taylor what he’d say to Simon, given the chance.
“I don’t know how you sleep good at night. But you know you’ve done a whole lot of wrong,” he said. “You know it’s a lot of families that you broke apart for lying. And you need to step forward and go ahead and atone yourself for those lies that you done told. Because they are losing their families based upon something that you did just, what, to get a good record? To get a bonus, a promotion? Whatever your motivation was, you can’t still have it. You need to come now and come clean and admit what you did.”
WWJ has reached out to Worthy’s office, who says they are in the process of creating a database of potential cases to assist with such a review.
“Prosecutor Worthy has requisitioned for new assistant prosecutors to be hired since she made the statement. At least one will be assigned to the CIU to review the cases in question. CIU is currently in the process of creating a database of potential cases to assist with the review,” Worthy’s office said in a written statement to WWJ.