Detroit Families are still looking for answers for the misconduct of the police deficit behavior

Almost a year after a U -Bahn times The investigation revealed the widespread misconduct of the former Detroit police detective Barbara Simon. Families of men who are still imprisoned due to their spoiled cases are becoming more and more frustrating.

Despite public promises, protests and increasing evidence of misconduct, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy has not yet made the victims' families or initiated a transparent examination of the convictions of their relatives.

Simon, who was once known as the “closer” in the murder department, the city who received the city's confession and cost closing cases after several judges had found that they had forced false confessions, lied to under oath and arrested suspects without arrest warrants. At least four men have already been relieved because of their behavior, and a fifth who mistakenly confessed according to his murder procedure after he had been illegally locked up, showed that he was not the murderer.

But others who say that they were victims by Simon stay behind bars, wait and wonder if they are ever heard.

Now they fear that they will die in prison as innocent men.

“We just ask that people look at the obvious,” says Ochga Smith, whose uncle Damon Smith has been locked up for 25 years U -Bahn times. “Barbara Simon Falls have repeatedly been proven that there were misconduct. If you have a judge or even the Supreme Court of the state, someone says how she has done things wrong, someone has to step back and say:” Let's take a look at it. ”

Since last summer, two protests outside the Wayne County public prosecutor have been taking place U -Bahn times Series in which it was found in how Simon used forced and illegal tactics in the 1990s and early 2000s to close murder cases. They routinely limited suspects and witnesses – usually young black men – into small rooms without an arrest warrant for hours, they threatened, made false promises and invented confessions. Some of these forced statements were later evidenced by the only evidence that were used for the convict.

One of the most muddy assessments came from the judge of the Wayne County Circuit, Shannon Walker, who in 2021 Mark Craighead, an innocent man who was imprisoned for more than seven years, who had been imprisoned for more than seven years on the basis of a confession triggered by Simon.

“Simon has a story to fake confessions and be under oath,” Walker wrote. “This proof of office show that Simon repeatedly lied as part of her misconduct what a jury would make it possible to evaluate whether she should trust her testimony in view of information that demonstrates a character of truthfulness.”

Craighead was finally relieved. But others, such as Damon Smith and Nathan Peterson, remain behind bars in their cases despite similar allegations by Simon.

In 1999, Simon Smith, a 24-year-old up-and-coming hairdresser without a criminal register, interviewed a shootout on Detroits East Side. Smith says Simon became aggressive and warned him that she would make him protect if he didn't tell her who would make the shootout. He denied any participation, but was ultimately convicted and condemned without probation. A witness to the public prosecutor – Smith's brother – later and said that Smith had nothing to do with the crime and he only associated him after he was threatened.

“My voice has been silent for 25 years,” says Smith from the Correctional Facility of Chippewa. “I have never committed a crime in my life. … The judicial system is the only criminal in my case.”

Peterson, who was accused of being fatally shot in 2000, said Simon used a cameraman during the survey to threaten him with public humiliation if he did not confess. She promised that he could go home if he signed an explanation that she had written for him, says Peterson. He signed. This statement became the basis of a suspicion of murder that sent him to prison, where he has been since then.

It took two legal proceedings to condemn it after the first in July 2001 ended in a suspended jury. Peterson said the police and the public prosecutor have changed the narrative of the exhibition during the second process and he was convicted.

“She can live her life as if it hadn't affected the lives of others,” says Smith's niece. “She can wake up every day and have breakfast with her family, and not these people.”

Peterson's cousin, Yolanda Garrison, campaigned for his release after his mother and grandmother died during his detention. She says that the illegal conviction of her cousin left him back with a broken heart and grief.

“He is so hopeful and then we have hit a roadblock and it becomes a broken heart,” says Garrison. “He couldn't even go to his mother's funeral. He lost some family members while he was in prison – where he shouldn't be.”

Despite the increasing public pressure, the Wayne district has not publicly committed itself to reviewing all convictions that result from problematic Simon investigations. Prosecutor Waldig initially said she was ready to meet Craighead and the families. But after months of silence, dignified.

In September 2024, Craighead sent an e -mail to an e -mail to apply for a meeting that had condemned himself, Lamar Monson (another exonere) and family members of the wrongly condemned injustice.

“This topic deserves careful and immediate attention,” wrote Craighead. “We believe that an open dialogue helps some of the concerns we address and hopefully make a constructive way forward.”

Worthy replied on the same day: “I would be happy to meet you. Please send all your contact information.”

But only days before Christmas, she kept the course up and said she was ready to only meet with Craighead and not with Monson, since Monson, who was on the right, had submitted her office. She later suggested that even a meeting with Craighead was off the table due to pending legal disputes.

Despite the excuses, according to Craighead, the families believed that a meeting would take place.

“You had hope in these e -mails,” he says. “They thought Kym Worth would meet with us. It is very frustrating for her.”

Craighead believes that the public prosecutor has never intended to act in good faith.

“She didn't think it would go that far,” he says. “As soon as it subsided, she went into the shadow and said nothing after she had agreed to meet us three times.”

In response to questions of U -Bahn times This week, Valerie Newman, head of Worthy's Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), said in a written explanation that the Office for Justice support received a federal grant to finance systemic checks of civil servants who were involved in repeated misconduct. Newman not specifically for Simon, confirmed that Detroit's police “in the process of identifying cases with Barbara Simon and during this process in communication with CIU”.

It is the first official confirmation that Simon's cases are under a certain review.

But for the families of those who are still imprisoned, that's not nearly enough. You want transparency. You want urgency. And they want accountability.

“We want confirmation that you do what you said,” says Smith. “We want you to really take the initiative and examine what people who have given years of their lives have done when they didn't have to.”

Craighead, who submitted a criminal complaint against Simon in September, is now not working freely with Monson on a non -profit organization called Freedom Ain in order to combine innocent inmates with legal resources.

“We get many calls about Barbara Simon,” says Craighead. “Because she did exactly what she did to me, many, many others.”

He believes that an external agency – not the public prosecutor – should examine Simon's misconduct.

“How can the public prosecutor investigate themselves?” Asks Craighead. “Worthy doesn't want an external examination because she knows what will happen.”

Worthy insisted on the fact that your judiciary is obliged. But for many, this claim is thin.

“Let's just say that this means calm down and let it down until people forget,” says Smith. “I will never do that. It's like saying that your beloved person doesn't exist.”