More than two years after a federal jury awarded Darryl Howard $6 million for spending nearly 24 years incarcerated after a faulty police investigation, Howard was finally able to cash 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 cause for celebration, Bannon wrote in an email.
“It should be a day of reflection for everyone on how easy it is for our system to get it wrong, and how hard it is for our system to make it right, if ever,” Bannon wrote.
History of Howard’s conviction
The 29-year-injustice goes back to Howard’s 1995 double murder convictions, which were overturned, appealed, and overturned again before Howard was set free in 2016 after his Innocence Project attorneys brought evidence of police and prosecutor misconduct.
In 2017, Howard sought compensation by suing multiple city officials, including the lead detective in the case, Darrell Dowdy, who retired as a police captain in 2007.
In 2021 a federal jury awarded Howard $6 million after finding Dowdy fabricated evidence and performed an inadequate investigation that led to Howard’s wrongful conviction of two counts of the second-degree murders. The charges stemmed from the 1991 killing of Doris Washington and her 13-year-old daughter Nishonda in a now demolished Durham public housing complex.
Dowdy still maintains he did an adequate investigation, his attorney said in a recent interview.
Howard and his legal team were disappointed at the end of the federal trial, saying Durham’s attorneys successfully attacked Howard’s character. They alleged that resulted in a jury award that was lower than other wrongful conviction awards.
Then things got worse.
Howard and his team were later shocked to learn that the city, which paid for Dowdy’s attorneys, refused to pay Dowdy’s judgment, meaning they wouldn’t cover the $6 million jury award or Howard’s $4 million in legal fees.
A U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals ruling gave Howard another chance to seek damages In 2023. It said the trial judge improperly dismissed two other Durham police officers, Scott Pennica and Michelle Soucie, before his civil case went to trial in 2021. Howard contends they failed to share vital evidence in his post-trial process that would have allowed him to be released from prison sooner.
The appeals ruling allowed Howard to seek damages from those officers.
Also, in 2023, Dowdy filed his own federal lawsuit against the city, contending Durham officials abandoned him after using him as “pawn” in the litigation, despite his 28 years of working for the city.
In settlement discussions that followed, the city agreed to pay Howard nearly $8 million, which includes attorney fees, to close the case. In addition, the city paid Dowdy $350,000 in a related settlement, his attorney Tom Comerford said.
Bannon said that this shouldn’t have taken years.
“But now that it has, Darryl Howard is ready to move on and try to rebuild a life that was stolen from him by the state three decades ago,” Bannon wrote.
Senior Assistant City Attorney John Roseboro didn’t immediately respond to questions about the settlements.
Howard always said he was innocent
From the beginning, Howard insisted he was innocent, saying members of a gang raped and killed the women due to the mother’s drug debts.
Over time, evidence supported his claims. Testing in the 1990s excluded Howard from DNA found in Nishonda’s rape kit.
Testing in 2010 revealed undetected sperm in Doris Washington’s rape kit. That DNA wasn’t linked to Howard or the previous identified DNA.
Using a federal DNA database, investigators found a match to a man who was 16-year-old at the time of the killing and a member of the gang that Howard contends killed the mother and daughter.
In 2011, Pennica and Soucie took steps to get a DNA sample from the man. In an interview with police, the man said he didn’t know Doris Washington, but claimed he was dating her daughter.
Police left the man alone in an interview room, which recorded phone calls where he made incriminating statements indicating he did know Doris and that he didn’t want to “rat on anybody.”
Afterwards, officers didn’t send the report to the Durham County District Attorney’s Office, despite a 2011 court order requiring the information to be shared with Howard, according to court documents.
Howard knew about the DNA results, but he didn’t 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 nonprofit The Just Trust. The N&O maintains full editorial control of its journalism.
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