The N.C. Court of Appeals today overturned the conviction of Frankie Washington, who was convicted in February 2007 of a May 2002 house invasion in Durham.
Yeah, the trial was nearly five years after the crime. And exactly that was the problem — the appeals court determined that the delay amounted to a speedy trial violation. Seems the Washington’s trial got pushed back at least four years pending SBI testing of evidence – evidence that the prosecution didn’t submit for over three years, despite a court order requiring them to do so. The state also failed to compare the evidence to that of someone arrested for committing exactly the same sort of crime in exactly the same neighborhood despite a defense request to do so.
Ultimately, the evidence did not match Washington (!), but he still was convicted based solely on eyewitness identifications, with the victims and police testified about what happened nearly five years earlier. Memory fads over time, and the police remembered little that wasn’t in their notes while the victims’ identifications grew stronger over time. Both of these would, of course, be a problem.
Of course, given that it’s Durham, should any of this come as a surprise?
