Civil rights complaint targets Detroit police misconduct and Wayne County records purge

A civil rights complaint is urging the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate Detroit’s wrongful convictions and Wayne County’s illegal record purge that advocates say landed numerous innocent people in prison and blocked exonerations. 

In a letter sent to the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, Freedom Ain’t Free, a Detroit-based nonprofit led by two exonerees, is asking for a “full federal investigation” under the Justice Department’s police misconduct authority. 

“The people of Detroit deserve transparency and justice,” the complaint says, adding that years of “unchecked prosecutorial misconduct” and “abusive practices” have disproportionately harmed Black defendants.

Central to the complaint is retired Detroit Police Homicide Detective Barbara Simon, whose deceptive and coercive interrogation tactics were the subject of a two-part Metro Times series in July 2024. Simon’s techniques led to at least four exonerations and five lawsuits, which so far have cost taxpayers about $25 million. All of the men were charged with murder, and some of them falsely confessed after they say Simon illegally isolated suspects without access to attorneys or phones, fabricated evidence, and threatened life prison sentences unless they signed statements she drafted.

The letter cites 11 inmates who have reached out to Freedom Ain’t Free, saying they were also victimized by Simon’s tactics. 

“This list demonstrates that Simon’s misconduct is not a matter of history alone, but an ongoing crisis impacting numerous individuals and families who remain trapped by wrongful convictions,” the letter, written by exoneree Lamarr Monson, states.

In October 2024, Monson reached an $8.5 million settlement with the city after he alleged Simon tricked him into falsely confessing. Based solely on that false confession, Monson was convicted of second-degree murder in the death of a 12-year-old at a drug house in Detroit. He was 24 years old at the time and was sentenced to 30 to 50 years in prison.  

According to the letter, Simon has been sued at least 18 times in federal court. Michigan courts, including the state Supreme Court, “have already found statements obtained by Simon to be unreliable and her credibility deeply compromised.”

The complaint spotlights the case of Mark Craighead, who was convicted in 2002 and later won relief after new evidence showed a “common scheme of coercion and falsification.” Craighead alleged Simon told him he would “spend the rest of his life in prison if he did not sign” a confession written by the detective.  

Under duress, Craighead signed the confession and was convicted of manslaughter in 2002. He was freed from prison in 2009 and exonerated in 2022.

The letter also calls for an investigation into the illegal destruction of felony and misdemeanor case files when Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan was the elected county prosecutor. Between 2001 and 2004, while Duggan was prosecutor, most if not all records from 1995 and earlier were allegedly destroyed in violation of state law. 

The records contained a wealth of vital information, including police and forensic reports, lab results, transcripts, video recordings, and witness statements, all of which are essential for mounting a defense against wrongful convictions. What makes the file purge especially concerning is that it involved records from a deeply troubling era in Detroit’s Homicide Division, a time plagued by rampant misconduct, false confessions, constitutional abuses of witnesses and suspects, and a widespread federal investigation. In the 1980s and 1990s, the misconduct among police, especially homicide detectives, was so pervasive and egregious that the DOJ demanded reforms to avoid a costly lawsuit while Duggan was the county prosecutor.

Duggan has repeatedly denied that his office was behind the destruction of records. 

Freedom Ain’t Free says the missing files have impeded innocence claims and post-conviction reviews, including work by the Wayne County Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), which was created in 2018 and has secured at least 15 exonerations since then. 

The complaint points to incarcerated people like Carl Hubbard, who was sentenced to life in prison in 1992 without any physical evidence and “cannot prove his innocence after his case file vanished.” It also argues that the wholesale destruction of records undermines due-process rights under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments and constitutes obstruction of justice. 

As Metro Times previously reported, Wayne County officials have acknowledged that large swaths of older prosecutor files cannot be found. Current Prosecutor Kym Worthy’s office has said the purge occurred before she took office in 2004 and has hampered appeals and CIU work. 

The complaint alleges that Detroit murder cases in the 1980s and ’90s were rife with coerced confessions, witness intimidation, and Brady violations, or when prosecutors fail to disclose evidence. It cites more than 30 wrongful convictions from that era and notes that “no officers, prosecutors, or officials have faced discipline, demotion, or termination.”

The filing highlights three recurring problems: 

• Reliance on jailhouse informants and scripted statements later recanted or disproved.
• Detectives “concealed” leads and evidence in separate files that were not turned over to the defense. 
• About 88% of exonerees from these cases are Black men. 

The Detroit Police Department operated under a federal consent decree beginning in 2003 after the DOJ found unconstitutional arrests, detentions, and interrogation practices. Freedom Ain’t Free argues the civil rights abuses of those years kept innocent people in prison, particularly those with missing case files.

The complaint requests subpoenas for records tied to the record purge, a review of convictions linked to discredited officers and jailhouse informants, and a top-to-bottom audit of cases that involved Simon. 

“The people of Detroit deserve transparency and justice,” the letter states. “The destruction of evidence, unchecked prosecutorial misconduct, and the abusive practices by detectives such as Barbra Simon have perpetuated a cycle of harm, disproportionately impacting Black communities. We implore the DOJ to act swiftly to restore faith in the rule of law.”

More than a year after a Metro Times investigation revealed the widespread misconduct of Simon and the destruction of prosecutor files, families of men still imprisoned because of her tainted cases are growing increasingly frustrated with the lack of accountability and action. 

Worthy has pledged that her office would investigate Simon cases, but despite public promises, protests, and mounting evidence of wrongdoing, Worthy has yet to meet with victims’ families or launch a transparent investigation into their loved ones’ convictions.

“To this day, men whose convictions were tied to Simon remain incarcerated, unable to secure justice due to lost files, missing evidence, and institutional resistance,” the complaint states. “Simon’s history is not an anomaly — it is symptomatic of a department that rewarded abusive tactics while ignoring accountability.”

Whether the complaint gets any traction is another question. Under the Trump administration, the Justice Department has pledged to halt oversight of police misconduct cases. 

“The DOJ under Biden found police were wantonly assaulting people and that it wasn’t a problem of ‘bad apples’ but of avoidable, department-wide failures,” Jenn Rolnick Borchetta, deputy project director on policing at the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement. “By turning its back on police abuse, Trump’s DOJ is putting communities at risk, and the ACLU is stepping in because people are not safe when police can ignore their civil rights.”