CNN has picked up Metro Times’s reporting on retired Detroit homicide Detective Barbara Simon, bringing national attention to a scandal that has led to multiple exonerations, millions of dollars in settlements, and mounting calls for a full review of the cases she handled.
In a story published Sunday, CNN credited Metro Times with first exposing the allegations against Simon in 2024.
The story, by CNN’s Ray Sanchez, described Simon as a once-feared interrogator known as “The Closer” whose legacy is now defined by false confessions, coerced witness statements, and innocent Black men who lost decades of their lives behind bars.
The national coverage comes after Metro Times published a series of stories beginning in July 2024 that examined Simon’s role in wrongful convictions and the larger failures of police, prosecutors, and judges who allowed her tactics to go unchecked for years.
Metro Times’s initial investigation found that Simon illegally held suspects without warrants, denied them access to attorneys and phone calls, threatened them, made false promises of leniency, and wrote confessions and witness statements that were coerced. At the time, evidence of Simon’s misconduct had helped free at least four men convicted of murder, while a fifth man was released before trial after DNA evidence showed he was not the killer.
Following the series of stories and nearly a dozen protests calling for innocent men to be released and Simon to be investigated, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy assembled a team to review the old cases. As a result, two men have been released from prison in a one-month period beginning in March.
First, George Calicut Jr., who spent nearly 30 years in prison after signing what his attorneys said was a false confession written by Simon, was released on March 3. DNA testing later excluded him from the crime scene.
On March 31, Roy Blackmon walked out of prison after nearly 28 years behind bars, becoming at least the sixth person freed because of misconduct tied to Simon. Blackmon was convicted in a 1998 Detroit shooting that killed one man and wounded two others, even though there was no physical evidence tying him to the crime. Witnesses later said police threatened and coerced them into implicating him.
Wayne County prosecutors agreed to vacate Blackmon’s conviction and dismiss the charges after a joint review by the Michigan Innocence Clinic and the Wayne County Conviction Integrity Unit found that the case rested on false witness testimony obtained through police threats and coercion.
Together, Calicut and Blackmon became the first two people released after Metro Times’s series renewed scrutiny of Simon’s cases.
CNN’s story highlighted many of the same cases Metro Times has followed for nearly two years, including those of Mark Craighead, Lamarr Monson, Justly Johnson, Kendrick Scott, Calicut, and Blackmon. It also quoted attorneys with the University of Michigan Innocence Clinic, who said more exonerations are expected as Simon’s cases continue to be reviewed.
The issue has drawn persistent public pressure from exonerees and families of incarcerated people, who have held repeated protests demanding that Worthy’s office review every case connected to Simon and meet with the families of people who say they were railroaded.
At several protests outside the Wayne County Criminal Justice Center, families accused Worthy of failing to follow through on promises to meet with them. Marlon Taylor, whose brother Damon Smith has been imprisoned for 26 years and maintains his innocence, said the families are not giving up.
“We’ve been at these protests for over a year asking for Kym Worthy to sit and talk to us,” Taylor said at the time. “She hasn’t done that. She hasn’t answered our emails or phone calls. She hasn’t kept her word. So I just wanted to let it be known that this fight still continues.”
Worthy’s office has said it is reviewing Simon’s cases. A spokesperson previously told Metro Times that Worthy hired a full-time Conviction Integrity Unit attorney and a full-time detective to work on the review.
But families and exonerees say the process has been too slow, especially as more prisoners come forward alleging they were victimized by Simon or by other Detroit homicide detectives from the same era.
Meanwhile, most local media outlets have paid little attention to the growing Simon scandal, even as exonerees protested, families pleaded for reviews, and new cases unraveled.
“I think it’s a damn shame that it has to go to a national level before anyone locally recognizes it,” Craighead tells Metro Times. “That is so crazy. What the hell is going on? Is everyone else scared or something? You guys are the only ones who had the balls to write about it.”
In its story, CNN noted that Simon has never been charged with a crime and has repeatedly denied wrongdoing in past testimony. The Detroit Police Department never disciplined her over the allegations, and she continues to receive a tax-funded pension from the city.
Simon has been accused in lawsuits of using coercive interrogations, fabricating evidence, and relying on unconstitutional tactics that have led to at least 18 federal lawsuits, according to a complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Justice. Four of those lawsuits have cost taxpayers roughly $25 million in taxpayer-funded settlements.
In Craighead’s case, Wayne County Circuit Judge Shannon Walker cited Simon’s “history of falsifying confessions and lying under oath” when she vacated his conviction in 2021. The Michigan Court of Appeals later found that Simon’s interrogation tactics showed a “scheme, plan, or system to obtain false confessions.”
Those rulings opened the door for a larger look at Simon’s cases and helped validate what exonerees had been saying for years.
Simon worked in the Homicide Division for about 20 years before she retired in 2010. Shortly after, then-Attorney General Mike Cox hired Simon as an investigator. She retired under current Attorney Dana Nessel in August 2021.
For Craighead and others, the question now is whether national attention will lead to accountability.
“Barbara Simon is still walking the streets and collecting two pensions,” Craighead says. “The attorney general hasn’t said shit. We just don’t understand that. Are they in cahoots together?”
CNN reported that Simon declined to comment, and the Detroit Police Department and city of Detroit did not respond to requests for comment. The Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office declined to comment on Craighead’s case or other cases handled by Simon, though Prosecutor Kym Worthy said in a statement that her office’s review of Simon’s cases is “exhaustive and ongoing.”
So far, no one in law enforcement has been criminally charged for the misconduct tied to Simon’s cases. Families say that without a full review and public accountability, more innocent people may remain behind bars.
“We have family members who can’t get any help,” Craighead says. “They need to be able to feel like they are moving forward with something.”
Metro Times will continue to follow the cases, protests, and pressure on prosecutors to confront one of Detroit’s most troubling police misconduct scandals.
