AP Photo/Paul Sancya
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy is under fire for failing to investigate cases handled by retired Detroit Detective Barbara Simon.
A little more than a month after Metro Times published a two-part series exposing a former Detroit detective who used illegal tactics to elicit false confessions and witness statements, both prosecutors and police oversight officials pledged to take action Thursday.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy plans to expand a unit dedicated to exonerating innocent people, and the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners is investigating complaints that Detective Barbara Simon engaged in a pattern of criminal wrongdoing.
On Thursday, Worthy requested an increase in funding for her Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), which is tasked with freeing innocent people from prison, after she told county officials that news reports suggested that Simon “may have tainted many cases.”
“My view is, if you’re running an office, you should never be afraid to look at old convictions to make sure they were done the right way,” Worthy said.
Wayne County Executive Warren Evans, a former Detroit police chief, is proposing the increase in CIU funding in his budget that still needs approval from the Wayne County Board of Commissioners.
Worthy said she was getting hammered in the media for declining to comment on investigating Simon’s cases. She said she wanted to wait until Evans supported the increase in funding for the CIU.
“I wanted to make sure that funding was approved by you and that will give me an opportunity to hire someone to focus on those cases,” Worthy said.
Worthy launched the CIU in 2018 to review old cases to determine if people were wrongfully convicted. But the unit is understaffed and overwhelmed with cases, according to Valerie Newman, head of the CIU.
Since the CIU was created, she said, prosecutors have received 2,311 requests to review cases. Of those cases, the CIU reviewed 1,177.
The CIU’s work has resulted in 38 inmates either being exonerated or their cases being dismissed. A disproportionate number of those cases occurred in 2020, the year Worthy was running for reelection.
By contrast, only three cases were dismissed since January 2023.
None of the CIU’s cases involved defendants who accused Simon of misconduct, leaving potentially innocent people with very little recourse.
“Currently, there is a backlog of requests for conviction review that the CIU is working through,” Newman told Metro Times last month. “The CIU strives to handle all claims with care and attention as it works through its backlog.”
Also on Thursday, four members of the Detroit Board of Police Commissioners spoke in favor of an investigation into Simon, who was known as “the closer” in the 1990s and early 2000s because of her knack for gaining confessions and witness statements. Her methods of confining young Black men to small rooms at police headquarters for hours without a warrant, making false promises, and lying about evidence that didn’t exist led to the false imprisonment of at least five men. Many more innocent people are still behind bars because of Simon, activists and defense attorneys say.
Mark Craighead, who was exonerated after spending more than seven years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit and has led the effort to investigate Simon’s cases, says he’s relieved that authorities are beginning to take action. But he’s skeptical of Worthy’s office handling the investigations, saying prosecutors tried to keep him and three other exonerees in prison for years before it became abundantly clear they were innocent.
Craighead, another exoneree, and family members of inmates who say they were convicted because of Simon’s misconduct protested outside of Worthy’s office on Aug. 28, calling for an independent counsel to investigate Simon’s cases and demanding a meeting with Worthy.
“We still want to meet with Worthy,” Craighead tells Metro Times. “And we want an independent investigation, not an in-house investigation. We don’t trust her office.”
Craighead called the CIU’s proposed budget expansion “a good step, but it’s not the right step,” he says, to address the hundreds of cases that Simon handled during her career.
On Wednesday, Craighead filed a criminal complaint against Simon with the Board of Police Commissioners. He alleges Simon repeatedly engaged in criminal conduct by committing perjury, illegally detaining suspects for long periods without a warrant, and assaulting and threatening witnesses.
Some commissioners are asking the police department to investigate Simon’s actions while she was a detective and determine if anyone else was complicit in her misconduct.
But Commissioner Linda Bernard said more needs to be done and called for creating a task force to investigate Simon. She said the task force could include Detroit’s Office of Inspector General, the Michigan State Police, the Michigan Attorney General’s Office, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“I don’t think that what we’re suggesting is enough, quite frankly,” Bernard said. “I do not think this is something that is a casual situation. There are major civil rights issues that have been raised in this matter.”
During the meeting, Commissioner Chairman Darryl Woods suggested that the board get into contact with the prosecutor’s office and the Michigan Innocence Clinic, which previously helped exonerate four people convicted as a result of Simon’s investigations.
In an interview with Metro Times on Friday, Woods reiterated his support for urging the proper agencies to investigate cases handled by Simon, who has been sued four times for wrongful convictions.
“Communicating with the right entities that have the authority to look at the cases and make the decisions about them is the best thing we can do,” Woods says. “This situation is not lost on us.”
Woods has a reason to be suspicious of improper investigations. He spent nearly 29 years in prison for a murder he says he didn’t commit. In 2019, Woods was released from prison after former Gov. Rick Snyder commuted his sentence. A trial judge determined that witnesses in Woods’s case may have committed perjury.
“I understand the pain of the wrongfully convicted,” Woods says.
