After Baltimore teen wrongfully placed on house arrest is cleared, local officials promise change
TheGrio...
Deryl Bright Jr. spent months on an ankle monitor, missing out on prom, graduation, and his job as a pharmacy technician. State’s Attorney Ivan Bates says his office is changing how evidence is reviewed.
For seven months, Deryl Bright Jr. spent the remaining days of his senior year of high school wearing an ankle monitor. The Baltimore teen, who attended Green Street Academy, could not attend his graduation, prom, or family trips centered around his birthday.
The reason? Investigators wrongly identified Bright as participating in an attempted carjacking and robbery in Baltimore earlier this year. And what occurred to the now 18-year-old is something that City State Attorney Ivan Bates seeks to prevent from happening again.
“These are people’s lives,” Bates told The Baltimore Sun, which broke the story of Bright’s plight. “We can see what we did wrong, and we have to fix it.”
Brad MacFee, a criminal defense attorney in Baltimore who sits on the board of directors for the Maryland Criminal Defense Attorneys’ Association, felt that Bright’s case should have been exonerated within days or weeks.
“This should have been snuffed out from the get-go,” MacFee told The Sun. “Had I been representing this kid, I would have immediately … spoken to the teacher who was conversing with him that day in the classroom. I want to get that teacher under affidavit, which I then want to take to the state’s attorney.”
Wrongfully accused
Bright was in agriculture class when the incident took place at a McDonald’s on Frederick Avenue shortly before 9 a.m. on January 23. The three teens followed a man from inside the fast food restaurant outside, where they assaulted him, stole his cell phone, car keys, and wallet before attempting to steal his car. The teens ran off before police arrived at the scene.
Why investigators went to Green Street Academy, half a mile from the McDonald’s, remains a mystery. An unnamed school administrator was shown evidence from the incident at the McDonald’s, including still images from the video showing the assault, and said that Bright was involved, despite Bright being six inches taller and thinner than the individual pictured.
However, school records and statements from school officials confirmed Bright was in class. Still, given the administrator’s statement, Bright was arrested on campus on February 20 and charged as an adult. Had he been convicted, he faced 55 years in prison.
For months, he wore an ankle monitor as the case sat largely forgotten. The teen could only go to work, school, and doctor’s appointments, but could no longer work as a pharmacy tech due to the nature of the crime he was alleged to have committed.
According to Bates and his office, multiple checkpoints will now be in place when their office reviews evidence against defendants, and critical evidence submitted by defendants, their parents or guardians is sent to an attorney on the case, not just through a lawyer.
Bates also blamed the Office of Public Defenders for Blight’s case, as few motions were filed to investigate the teen’s alibi of being in class or to challenge the evidence. It took five months for the District Attorney to dismiss all charges against the teen summarily, but the emotional damage had already been done.
Bright told the Sun that he “felt like a victim of prejudice” and that he was “excluded and isolated” throughout the experience.
He’s not alone.
In August, Baltimore City paid $11 million in a settlement to Anthony Hall, a man who spent 25 years in prison for a murder he did not commit. Hall says Baltimore Police at the time pressured witnesses into false testimony surrounding the 1991 death of Gerald Dorsey. No physical evidence tied Hall to the shooting, and one witness, Nancy Hill, said detectives “treated me like a suspect. They repeatedly accused me of lying. They threatened to lock me up for withholding evidence related to the murder of Mr. Dorsey if I did not tell their version of events.”
In January, the city paid a $14 million settlement to Gary Washington, who had been wrongfully imprisoned for 31 years for the 1986 killing of a man in East Baltimore. A coerced statement from a 12-year-old witness was the key evidence used to convict him. Washington’s lawyers argued that the child was threatened by detectives determined to solve the case, that he could be taken from his mother or charged with killing the man himself if he did not identify Washington as the man who pulled the trigger.
Bright’s family has a history of wrongful accusations. His mother, Yinka Bryant, was falsely accused in her 20s of stabbing a man near a store she was visiting. She spent a weekend in jail on suspicion before being released, and a judge tossed out her charge. Her cousin, Malcolm, was jailed for nearly two decades for a murder he didn’t commit in a story that made national headlines. He was freed in 2016, but died of a stroke the following year at the age of 43.
Despite prosecutors dropping the case against him, Bright could have it expunged from his record, but only if he agrees not to sue the city.