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When a Witness Recants
Annals of Justice | November 1, 2021 Issue
When a Witness Recants
At fourteen, Ron Bishop helped convict three innocent boys of murder. They’ve all lived with the consequences.
By Jennifer Gonnerman
October 25, 2021
For nearly four decades, Ron Bishop has had nightmares about an afternoon from his youth. It was November 18, 1983, and he was in science class with his friend DeWitt Duckett, at Harlem Park Junior High School, in West Baltimore. When the bell rang, the boys, both fourteen and in ninth grade, left class with another friend. They headed to the cafeteria for lunch, and, to avoid the crowds of students, they took a shortcut down a deserted corridor. As they passed rows of metal lockers, Bishop joked about Duckett’s antics back when they were in first grade. “We were laughing,” Bishop recalled. “And within seconds I turned, and someone had a gun in my face. And then the gun went from being in my face to the back of DeWitt’s neck.”
{snip}
In early 2020, I met with Lipscomb in her office to learn more about this case. Three months had passed since she had finished her reinvestigation, and she was still livid. Speaking about the prosecutorial misconduct that she had uncovered, she said, “This is absolutely the worst that I have seen.” Why did the prosecutor refuse to give the police investigatory reports to the defense lawyers and then bury them in the court file? “I haven’t spoken to anyone yet who can explain why that occurred,” she said. (She couldn’t ask the prosecutor; he had died in 2016.) Among her other findings was a prison record from years earlier in which, she wrote in her report, Watkins said that the “arresting detective” in his case, Kincaid, had told him, “You have two things against you, you’re black and I have a badge.”
The way the police had treated the teen-age witnesses in this case had alarmed Lipscomb, too. Each of the three boys had been brought to the homicide office without a parent, and, at one point, the mother of one of them had come to Police Headquarters searching for him. “He could hear her from the interrogation room raising hell: ‘Let him out!’ ” Lipscomb said. “I just can’t imagine a scenario where these officers would have arrived at a high socioeconomic group in the suburbs and taken three teen-agers without notifying their parents.”
In wrongful-conviction cases, there are often secondary victims: individuals who, having helped incarcerate an innocent person, must confront their own culpability once that person is freed. They can include the jurors who unintentionally convicted the wrong person, and the judges who sentenced those people to prison. Bishop’s situation was slightly different, because he’d known that the defendants were not guilty when he testified against them. But “he was a teen-ager at the time and a direct product of what was happening to him by the police, by the prosecutor,” Lipscomb said. “He set out to do the right thing.”
{snip}
Listening to Bishop’s words, Watkins had his elbows propped on the table, with his hands clasped and his head leaning against them. Now he looked up, with tears in his eyes. “For me, that’s everything,” he said. “The whole time I was locked up, I used to think about why they did what they did. I used to just think about it constantly.” He paused. “Just knowing that he gets it—that means everything to me,” he said. “Sometimes in life, that’s all you want. You just want people to recognize that ‘Man, I messed up, and for that I apologize.’ ” ... “Absolutely true,” Stewart said. For years, he had believed that Bishop and the other students who had testified against them were “the worst people.” But now he said, “He just in that letter showed me that sorrow, that remorse, that hurt that he carried around for thirty-six years.” He added, “If you talk to him, tell him I appreciate that and I accept his apology.” ... “Me, too,” Chestnut said.
{snip}
Published in the print edition of the November 1, 2021, issue, with the headline “The Witness.”
Jennifer Gonnerman joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2015. She is the author of “Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett.”
When a Witness Recants
At fourteen, Ron Bishop helped convict three innocent boys of murder. They’ve all lived with the consequences.
By Jennifer Gonnerman
October 25, 2021
For nearly four decades, Ron Bishop has had nightmares about an afternoon from his youth. It was November 18, 1983, and he was in science class with his friend DeWitt Duckett, at Harlem Park Junior High School, in West Baltimore. When the bell rang, the boys, both fourteen and in ninth grade, left class with another friend. They headed to the cafeteria for lunch, and, to avoid the crowds of students, they took a shortcut down a deserted corridor. As they passed rows of metal lockers, Bishop joked about Duckett’s antics back when they were in first grade. “We were laughing,” Bishop recalled. “And within seconds I turned, and someone had a gun in my face. And then the gun went from being in my face to the back of DeWitt’s neck.”
{snip}
In early 2020, I met with Lipscomb in her office to learn more about this case. Three months had passed since she had finished her reinvestigation, and she was still livid. Speaking about the prosecutorial misconduct that she had uncovered, she said, “This is absolutely the worst that I have seen.” Why did the prosecutor refuse to give the police investigatory reports to the defense lawyers and then bury them in the court file? “I haven’t spoken to anyone yet who can explain why that occurred,” she said. (She couldn’t ask the prosecutor; he had died in 2016.) Among her other findings was a prison record from years earlier in which, she wrote in her report, Watkins said that the “arresting detective” in his case, Kincaid, had told him, “You have two things against you, you’re black and I have a badge.”
The way the police had treated the teen-age witnesses in this case had alarmed Lipscomb, too. Each of the three boys had been brought to the homicide office without a parent, and, at one point, the mother of one of them had come to Police Headquarters searching for him. “He could hear her from the interrogation room raising hell: ‘Let him out!’ ” Lipscomb said. “I just can’t imagine a scenario where these officers would have arrived at a high socioeconomic group in the suburbs and taken three teen-agers without notifying their parents.”
In wrongful-conviction cases, there are often secondary victims: individuals who, having helped incarcerate an innocent person, must confront their own culpability once that person is freed. They can include the jurors who unintentionally convicted the wrong person, and the judges who sentenced those people to prison. Bishop’s situation was slightly different, because he’d known that the defendants were not guilty when he testified against them. But “he was a teen-ager at the time and a direct product of what was happening to him by the police, by the prosecutor,” Lipscomb said. “He set out to do the right thing.”
{snip}
Listening to Bishop’s words, Watkins had his elbows propped on the table, with his hands clasped and his head leaning against them. Now he looked up, with tears in his eyes. “For me, that’s everything,” he said. “The whole time I was locked up, I used to think about why they did what they did. I used to just think about it constantly.” He paused. “Just knowing that he gets it—that means everything to me,” he said. “Sometimes in life, that’s all you want. You just want people to recognize that ‘Man, I messed up, and for that I apologize.’ ” ... “Absolutely true,” Stewart said. For years, he had believed that Bishop and the other students who had testified against them were “the worst people.” But now he said, “He just in that letter showed me that sorrow, that remorse, that hurt that he carried around for thirty-six years.” He added, “If you talk to him, tell him I appreciate that and I accept his apology.” ... “Me, too,” Chestnut said.
{snip}
Published in the print edition of the November 1, 2021, issue, with the headline “The Witness.”
Jennifer Gonnerman joined The New Yorker as a staff writer in 2015. She is the author of “Life on the Outside: The Prison Odyssey of Elaine Bartlett.”
Harlem Park Three (Alfred Chestnut, Andrew Stewart, & Ransom Watkins)
Alfred Chestnut, Andrew Stewart, and Ransom Watkins were exonerated after each spending 36 years in prison for the 1983 murder of 14-year-old DeWitt Duckett. The Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) at the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office announced that it would agree to vacate the convictions and dismiss all charges. A joint investigation led by the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit, and assisted by the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, the University of Baltimore Innocence Project Clinic, the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, Nieto Law Office, and Nathans Biddle, proved they did not commit the crime.
The three men, then teenagers, were convicted of the November 18, 1983, murder of fellow teenager DeWitt Duckett, who was shot and killed in Harlem Park Junior High School (HPJHS) by someone who wanted to steal his Georgetown jacket. They were convicted based on the testimony of four teenage witnesses who have now recanted, saying they were pressured by police to change their initial, truthful stories — that one person committed the crime — and instead identify the three boys.
“Everyone involved in this case — school officials, police, prosecutors, jurors, the media, and the community — rushed to judgment and allowed their tunnel vision to obscure obvious problems with the evidence,” said Shawn Armbrust, MAIP’s Executive Director. “Like the Exonerated Five and 8th & H cases, this case should be a lesson to everyone that the search for quick answers can lead to tragic results.”
{snip}
Alfred Chestnut, Andrew Stewart, and Ransom Watkins were exonerated after each spending 36 years in prison for the 1983 murder of 14-year-old DeWitt Duckett. The Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) at the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Office announced that it would agree to vacate the convictions and dismiss all charges. A joint investigation led by the Baltimore City State’s Attorney’s Conviction Integrity Unit, and assisted by the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project, the University of Baltimore Innocence Project Clinic, the Maryland Office of the Public Defender, Nieto Law Office, and Nathans Biddle, proved they did not commit the crime.
The three men, then teenagers, were convicted of the November 18, 1983, murder of fellow teenager DeWitt Duckett, who was shot and killed in Harlem Park Junior High School (HPJHS) by someone who wanted to steal his Georgetown jacket. They were convicted based on the testimony of four teenage witnesses who have now recanted, saying they were pressured by police to change their initial, truthful stories — that one person committed the crime — and instead identify the three boys.
“Everyone involved in this case — school officials, police, prosecutors, jurors, the media, and the community — rushed to judgment and allowed their tunnel vision to obscure obvious problems with the evidence,” said Shawn Armbrust, MAIP’s Executive Director. “Like the Exonerated Five and 8th & H cases, this case should be a lesson to everyone that the search for quick answers can lead to tragic results.”
{snip}