They say that you are innocent until proven otherwise. Unfortunately, that’s not how the law works. It seems as if it’s the other way around. You are guilty until proven innocent. As is the case with Darryl Howard. He was an innocent man who was a victim of foul play.
What happens when you spend 20 years in prison for a crime you didn’t commit? Those are wasted years that you can never get back no matter how hard you try. It’s an unfair circumstance that no one should ever find themselves in.
In an ideal world, cops implement the law and abide by it. However, that world doesn’t exist. There are bad seeds out there, and their actions affect those who least deserve it. This is exactly what happened to a man from North Carolina. He spent decades in prison for a crime he didn’t commit. He knew he was innocent and didn’t quit fighting for it. When his day of reckoning came, he was awarded $6 million in damages by a federal jury. They discovered that he was actually wrongfully convicted based on the evidence that was fabricated by a shady detective.
The said man is named Darryl Howard. He had languished in prison and spent over 20 years behind bars because he was convicted on double murder and arson charges in 1995. They claimed that he had killed a woman and her teen daughter in 1991. Last Wednesday, a jury in Winston-Salem found that former Durham police detective Darryl Dowdy had faked the evidence. Hence, Howard was convicted for something he was completely innocent of.
In 2016, Howard’s 80-year sentence was stricken down. Thanks to Durham County judge, he cited the misconduct of police and prosecutors during the trial. Because of the cop’s wrongful actions, he was awarded $6 million. That federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Howard was a mistake, as detailed in the News & Observer.
Dowdy, who is 65 years old, denied the accusations stated in the lawsuit. The former detective was a 36-year veteran of the Durham Police Department and he had retired in 2007. He said that the claims against him were far from the truth. However, Howard and his legal team were more than happy with the outcome because the jury had recognized the grave injustice that he had faced. Unfortunately, the award money is but a mere fraction of the $48 million in damages they had wanted at the very beginning.
Attorney Nick Brustin, the man who had represented Howard, said that Dowdy’s defense attacked Howard for his past gunshot wounds. He also was attacked for his history of selling and using drugs. “I think to some extent the racist defense that they have been implementing since the beginning of the ligation has in some ways succeeded,” Brustin shared. He also added, “I think the verdict doesn’t value the suffering that Darryl went through.”
Howard also was aware of the heavy damage his had faced and that his long incarceration has completely changed his life. “I am happy about the verdict, but I am kind of upset about the damages,” Howard told the News & Reporter.
“Just imagine, 23 years I stayed in prison,” he added. Brustin made it a point to highlight the systemic nature of the injustice. His client had suffered years and wasted much of his life simply because of Dowdy’s shoddy police work.
“The kinds of misconduct are pattern misconduct,” he said. Brustin also made it a point to stress how Durham police need to review other cases that had been handled by the dishonest cop that once worked under them.
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