#530 Ben Bowlin with Duane Williams

On the morning of August twenty, twenty twelve, a Detroit house fire killed two men, Bobby Cross and Daryl Simms. Citing an argument from the night prior, the Cross family wondered whether Bobby Cross's girlfriend's son, Dwayne Williams, had set the blaze. However, with no evidence of arson, these deaths were ruled accidental until three months later, when someone tied to the family was looking for a way out of a jam. They claimed that Dwayne confessed to this arson,

You're listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Welcome back to Wrongful Conviction. I'm Ben Bullen, the host of Stuff they Don't Want You To Know, and your host here on Wrongful Conviction for the next few episodes. This story takes us to Detroit, Michigan, where we've previously covered stories involving an elaborate jailhouse snitch system. We'll link some of those in the episode description, but this one is a little different from those scenarios. And the state's alleged witness in this case was able to flip two

Thanks.

What I think we should start off with first is to have you tell us a little bit about your childhood before the series of tragic events.

I'm from a neighborhood in the trait called Brightmore. It's on the west side of the trait. If you ask them about it, it has a reputation for like selling drugs and like the neighborhood being abandoned. I would say it's considered possibly one of the worst neighborhoods on the west Side.

That's the neighborhood I grew up in.

I hate that I had to grow up someone like that, but it helped to make me the person who I was now. In my childhood, I lived with my mother till I was about seven.

From seven to thirteen, I.

Ended up having to go live with my grandmother because of physical abuse. But I think that maybe separation issues or the situation with my mother my father's not being there, I started getting into trouble hanging with the wrong people. Luckily, I always had like an interest in music, though.

What's the kind of music that speaks to you rap?

I think like when I was younger, where I would have problems, I would just listen to the music. That's all I did. And around that time I figured out that I could rap. I used to write poetry before that, and I just kind of put the poetry to music.

Unfortunately, when I was.

Like fourteen, I got locked up for stealing cars and I went to a place called Boysville of Michigan.

Dwayne spent nearly four years there, but when he was released, he continued to follow his music dreams through the early nineties.

I always was doing something with music, but music didn't make money, so I kind of was off and on with it. I was managed by a company called Starlight Entertainment and Limousine.

They had limousine.

So what we would do is if you were a permoder and you would bring in somebody big in that we would basically tell you, We'll give you the limousine to pick this guy up at the airport, take him to the shows, take him to the hotel, any promotional events that you have, but you have to put my stage with Diablo.

So you have to put Diablo on the show.

My name has to be on all the flyers, all the radio advertisers, and when you go to pick that artist up, I'm in the limit.

You can believe that.

That's a pretty brilliant move that gave.

Me the ability to connect with the artist or anybody else who was with him. Besides getting rich, I did everything in the music business. I signed all the grand I toured, and like how Eminem says, you only had one hot to blow, I actually have had probably a shot at four major record deals. But at any rate, the point that I want to make was I had way more opportunities than most people to be successful in

And this isn't the first time we've had a guest with multiple wrongful convictions. Dwayne was on the receiving end of a false accusation, but with no evidence. He was still convicted of a lesser charge in two thousand and two, after which his public defender responded to his claims of innocence with and this is a quote, Well, innocent people go to jail too, end quote. Dwayne perouled in two thousand and four, and the address on record belonged to his mom's longtime boyfriend, Bobby Cross.

Bobby Cross was like a bully. She was kind of a big guy. And anybody who knows and they know this is shoeing. He basically bullied everybody around him. When they was at a neighbor's house and he started telling me basically, get so sit excuse my leg gets so sick in that bitch, sit out of my house. And he was talking about my mother and neighbors. Now they want us out of the house. So when they're sending us out of the house, I'm basically telling Bobby.

Hey, look, I don't want the problems. I don't want the trouble. Whatever you tell.

Every time I try to walk away from him, he would like step in front of me and block me. So I told him I didn't want no physical altercation. He told me that's what he wants.

It.

So, to make a long story short, I hit him and I knocked him out, and so it hurts his pride. So for years and years he never brought it up. We never had problems about it, but because I know the type of person that he is, and this is really embarrassing to him. From that point on, if he was drinking, it had a good I see there for four or five minutes and I'm leaving.

So it appears, as is honestly often the case, that alcohol can exacerbate personality traits as well as a quietly held grudge, and so Dwayne chose never to live at that address while continuing to pursue his music dreams with this brilliant limousine strategy.

Eventually we did that a few times with Tea Pain, and when T Pain's brothers saw it that, he basically told me that it's amazing. In the midst of this, I started sending my music all over the country and clubs started booking me. So now I'm basically nobody, but well, yeah, he's nobody, but he's connect It's a Tea Pay t Pay's brother mandyism. So now they're paying me to come to different places in America to do so, but unfortunately I had a bad row officer who didn't like me.

And that brings us to August twenty twelve. This is when Dwayne and his new wife spend the weekend of the eighteenth to nineteenth with Dwayne's mother and with Bobby Cross. They're following leads on a new place to live in that area, and when Sunday came, there was a barbecue in the neighborhood, as well as some drinking that went late into the night.

I had got some stakes for somebody to barbecue. At some point, somebody told me that Bob Cross wanted to talk to me, so I went across the street. He told me that I cooked steaks and I didn't offer one. I told him that you can have all of them. He told me that he didn't like steaks. So basically, there's nothing else to say.

It appears this was just the begetting of some unnecessary drama. So the night continued on, as did the drinking, all the way until somewhere after two am.

In the midst of this, an argument occurs between my wife, Bobby Cross's daughter, and Bobby Cross. This disagreement and I'm not even in it, but it got turned around to look like something else. So from two in the morning to whatever time in the morning when my mother left, my mother and Bobby Cross basically they're arguing from room to room. The last thing my mother said to me was I'm leaving it before he kills everybody in the house and they drinking.

I ain't paid no attention to that. I went you was the bathroom.

When I came out of the bathroom, I saw Bobby Cross standing there with a shotgun. He never said anything to me, never threatened me, nothing happened, but nah, he has a good So I left.

And that was four in the morning.

So Dwayne left to find somewhere else to stay for the night. Bobby was sleeping it off. Around six in the morning, first responders were dispatched to a fire at Bobby Cross's house, and it's important to mention that a man named Darryl Simms stayed on the couch. This was determined to have been the origin point of the fire.

Mister Simms, he did have disabilities, he was known to smoke on the couch. Initially, the fire was classified as undetermined, which means that there was no conclusion that the fire was intentionally set.

Well, because the whole situation the night before that I just told you about.

Remember now, me and mister Cross, we're not.

Arguing, but because of that situation, I guess the family members had animosity. Jackie crossed his daughter. He ended up being one of the main people accusing me of.

Star Thankfully, the investigators followed the facts at the scene and therefore the deaths were ruled accidental. This did not become a homicide investigation until three months later. A man named Gary Jennings, the boyfriend of one of Bobby Cross's relatives, Shannon Tyler. Gary Jennings is arrested for driving without a license, cannabis possession, and copying audio video recordings for.

Gates, and that last one was a felony charge. He had previously been convicted of the same offense and was on probation at the time. Gary Jennings said to police, and he testified at trial that the impetus for him making contact with Dwayne was that another individual, Deshaun Seabrooks, told Gary Jennings that Dwayne had made a big mistake. He used different words, but Gary said that made me contact Dwayne, and Dwayne confessed to me.

So Gary Jennings claimed that Dwayne said that he lit the blaze after this argument over rent money, which sounds like the ky narrative that might arise when perhaps an investigator looks into the addressed which Dwayne was paroled, but not where he actually lived. By the way, this statement was unrecorded.

It's always a red flag when there is a so called statement or confession that's not recorded, prime opportunity to just make something up. And the fact that mister Jennings was currently in jail facing some pretty serious charges while he was already on probation and he just magically has all of this information about a quote unquote crime that had occurred, and that mister Williams was involved. All of those things also very problematic.

And then from what we understand as well, I believe his felony charge is dismissed.

Yeah, he got a really sweet deal out of this.

Gary Tannings, So he's not a snatch, he's a liar because I never talked to him about anything.

It was anything for him to talk about.

But after Gary Jennings popped up and talks to the correct police officers, it comes up with a rent story. Then months later the family members come up with a rent story in a motive tube. So in the beginning this didn't exist.

Despite no previous mention of this rent disagreement from the Cross family, their statements and eventual testimony become aligned with Gary Jennings statement.

I think the statement itself is suspect, but what came after or what didn't come after, is arguably even more concerning, because a member of the public can go to the police and say whatever they want to, but it's on the police and other law enforcement prosecutors and the like to make sure that the statement is credible if they intend to use it, and in fact, police talk with

But first they had to present the dubious statement to the medical examiner to have her reconsider the cause of these two deaths.

The deaths were initially deemed accidents. The medical examiner changed the determination to homicide, but we actually went back and spoke with the medical examiner who told us that if she were evaluating the case now, the correct determination, if there was going to be one for manner of death, should have been undetermined.

But that determination was the last stop gap between Dwayne and charges for arson and two counts of felony murder.

I was at my assist in law's house and I'm in the basement asleep. All of a sudden I heard somebody called it by name, and they ended up coming down. They had goods out ay Keffy, and I remember I kept asking, what are you arresting me for? They never taught me of what was going on, but they brought me outside, took me to the station, and I remember getting there and we got in the room.

They started talking about the fire.

I guess I was kind of stocked and a lot of the days he's saying to me, it doesn't make sense. You know you watched TV shows. The police say, well, we already know the answer to the question. He asked me questions like had me and missus Cross ever had disputes about money? When no, I never got any money from him. He never got any money from me. But I didn't realize that he was asking this question because of the lies that Jenny told.

For some reason, the prosecution had trouble locating Gary Jennings for trial as scheduled, so it was postponed until August twenty eighth, twenty thirteen. What he testified about Deshaun Sebrooks telling him about Dwayne, who then allegedly confessed to setting the house on fire over a disagreement about rent, as well as how Gary Jennings' girlfriend Shannon Tyler had told

Then miss Cross gets understand and now she has a story about two weeks where for argument's over rent, which is what Jenny said. It made it look like me and her father were having continue as problems, and none of those things that she testified to whoever happened, and my lawyer didn't do any investigation, wouldn't talk to anybody.

And had he spoken to Deshaun Seabrooks or Miss Tyler, perhaps he would have been able to impeach the state's witnesses. But most importantly, the defense neglected to even consult with a fire expert.

One thing that stood out to me immediately was that only one expert testified, and that expert was the government's expert, Captain McNulty, who's now retired, who arrived at the scene hours after the fire, testified on behalf of the prosecution, but no defense expert testified to poke holes in what turned out to be a really faulty analysis.

McNulty testified that no smoky materials were found near the couch, but oddly no photographic evidence was shared with the defense nor offered to the jury to corroborate that claim. McNulty also claimed that an open flame like a cigarette lighter, was a more likely cause of the blaze, and that it's extremely hard to get a couch to burn with a cigarette. This all begs the question, are all couches

I would say in most arson cases the defense should at least consult an expert. But here we have two sets of problems, and you've pointed out some of them. We have problems with the experts testimony, even knowing what the defense and the prosecution knew at the time of trial, what was presented and unchallenged. And then we have things that we discovered in our investigation later on that blew this wide open.

And we'll get to all that they hid from the defense and in just a bit. But still trial counsel failed to use what was available to him to discredit the state's case, not only lay witnesses but also their expert. Even the jury was curious enough to ask for the transcript of McNulty's testimony and other documents as they were

At that moment, cross family members, we're making faces at me like a little kid is like you stick your tongue out like that. They kept doing stuff like that to me. And what really bothered me about that word that you just said in this court room and got my.

Whole life took for me. And now you back there doing that. You think this is the game.

I think that until you're in a real serious situation. Maybe people think the appeal process works. There's all these mechanisms in the system that look like they work until you the.

Guy stuck in the system trying to use them.

As time goes on and you watch people who you know in they file briefs and you know that they should have won and they got shot down, it's hard to keep hoping. So going through the process, I was disappointed things were getting shot down, and at some point I decided that I can comprehend things, I can read well. I decided I better do my own thing can work, because at least if I stay in prison, it's my fault. I can live with that.

After Dwayne's direct appeal, as that died up through the State Supreme Court as well as on federal habeas. He began writing to anyone who might be able to help, which included the newly formed Wayne County Conviction Integrity Unit. This is how an guaranted the Kooley Innocence Project got involved.

The Cooley Innocence Project has a partnership with the Wayne County Conviction Integrity and Cooley is primarily a DNA and forensic clinic. And in twenty twenty his case was referred to our office here at Cooley. A very sharp student came across Dwayne's file and brought it to our attention and said, something is very wrong with this man's conviction. And the student and the staff attorney went to visit Dwayne and introduced themselves.

And then Dwayne's outreach also scored him help with the Michigan Appellate Defender's office. In twenty twenty one, I.

Ended up on the case kind of through dumb luck. Dwayne had filed a request for and on post judgment motions like this one. It's very rare at that stage of the proceedings to get counsel appointed, but it happened that way, and it was exciting to me to work on a case with actual innocence issues, and by the time I came on the scene, he had already done so much research, so much writing, so much communication with Cooley,

Which is obviously a Brady violation. It's also interesting that the same fire investigator even eschewed a smoldering cigarette as a less likely option to a lighter like the one removed from that report.

So we discovered that there was this additional version of the report. We also discovered that there were fifty eight photos that had never been given to the defense, and in those photos you could see the Zippo style lighter that was indeed at the area of origin. So this mattered because the defense theory at trial and our theory now is that the fire was caused by careless smoking.

A lot of us listening tonight. The idea of purposely excising something that pivotal feels illegal, if not highly unethical.

It is illegal and unethical. I do not know who did it, and I do not know if it was done purposefully. I have to be totally honest with you. I think we can all imagine what may or may not have happened. But at this point, all I can tell you is that it's in one version and it's not in another, and both of those reports, what I call the original and then the redacted or excised version, we're both in the prosecutor's possession at the time of trial.

This also leads naturally to another question. If there is this zippo lighter in the photograph, what happened to the physical object.

Well, we know that the prosecution could not locate it during the course of our investigation years after trial, and there's no record of it ever having been collected and kept or tested or anything that should have happened. Our expert Mark Fennell talked with us about the importance of in a case like this, collecting any smoking materials, any implements that could have been used to start a fire, and then testing them to determine whether they actually had

Okay.

And Mark Fennell also called into question and some of the earlier statements by Captain McNulty, especially the idea of flammability of couches and cigarettes, and something I thought a lot of people would have already clocked. Not all couches are made of the same material. I mean, some stuff is more flammable than other stuff, right.

That's absolutely right. That's something that unfortunately the jury did not hear at the original trial, and I wish they had because Mark Fennell even provided us with a video that to this day lives rent free in my mind, because it shows just how quickly many of the couches that we may have in our homes could combust and could start an absolutely disastrous fire. So it's true that it's difficult to light a leather couch on fire, but the evidence that we have suggests that the couch that

That's the lawyer answer.

My answer, Yes, he knew what he was doing and he did it all part.

It's difficult to maintain faith in this investigation and these people, especially when we see a Brady violation of this magnitude, I'm, of course, speaking about what appears to be an altered version of the original fire investigation report. And it becomes even more difficult to maintain faith when you consider DeShawn Seabrooks.

Gary Jennings said to police and testified at trial that I got information from Deshaun and that made me contact Wayne. What the defense was never told at the time of trial, and what we didn't get our hands on until years of working on the case myself, was a statement by Deshaun Seabrooks. The Waynkenny prosecutor sent an investigator to speak

But wait, there's war.

Yes, there was another witness who the prosecution interviewed and whose statement was not turned over to the defense, and his name was Ron Rogers. Now, Ron Rogers' involvement in all of this is a little bit more attenuated, but we can sum it up by saying that had mister Rogers statement been turned over to the defense, the defense could have chosen to either call him as a witness or call the prosecution's investigator as a witness to discredit

So now all they needed was a court date to file a joint motion to vacate convictions and sentences, which happens on June seventeenth, twenty twenty four, over a decade after Dwayne's arrest to.

Here to just say that my sins was vacate and the know that they finally went away after all that time, he was really gone.

That was something.

Walking out the prison light five o'clock that afternoon, walking through the metal detectors going out of the prison, and I remember like how some of the seels were talking to me, and I remember thinking, well, man, why didn't they talk to me like that before? But just walking out that gate and getting in, I was band and coming to Detroit, knowing that I was coming back to Detroit, I don't know how to describe it really.

Now the Dwayne's out, He's been working with two nonprofits, one called Firefly Advocates, which works toward criminal legal system reform as well as supporting reintegration for system impact of folks, and the second comes to us from another Michigan based exogneri Ken Nixon. His group is called the Organization of Exogneries Will Length. Thus in the episode of description. Outside of that, Dwayne is back out there making music, meeting other artists, and we'll link ways for you to find him.

Uh yeah, you gotta like YouTube dio d I a b l O white mess and I just posted on my Facebook for the first time since I've been out. I started recording. So it's like a little snippet or something. Rest It's like they didn't killed. I was probably you had a station through a cloud for the lives. Hey, get the yard, I was robbing. Even call me with a knife. I'm mother the police and your muss I got thirty red. That's a lifetime. I'm innocent. Plus I

Touchdown with the pics. You might see me your round high. Yes, I'm easy to miss.

Out of town house.

We probably meet you still, Holly.

Who is a'm good and never hood in this dating the rapper And that was let them do what I call him the mouth hit the make a couple of times, put a.

Couple hounded out for self.

It's kind of interested what I'm talking about, the wrong for QB. So I just did that this born.

We wish ed Wayne all the luck in the world. And with that we come to the last segment of the show, where first I'd like to thank you all for joining us today. Then I'll open the space for our guests to share and enclosing thoughts they might have. Why don't we go in alphabetical order, so we'll start with Ann, then Maya, and last but not least, we leave it to Dwayne.

Dwayne's case is a case that never should have happened, A crime wasn't committed. I think that society has this false sense that it's a justice system. Look at all the people that were impacted by Dwayne's case, including Dwayne, his family, society, and it takes an absurd amount of time. I always tell people it's like unringing a bell. It's very easy in theory to put someone into this situation, but it takes a miracle to get someone out of

I would also note that at the time of Dwayne's trial, he was represented by appointed council and I happen to know the attorney who represented him, and he does a lot of really great work. So this is not to slander him or to suggest that he's a bad lawyer.

Just really did take a team.

And that's one of the things that God's Christy said to me before I left. I don't have what you had, but God put all of these things in place and all of these people in place to help me. And I really realized now how hard it is and how blessed I really am. So I'm going to use the words a kind Nixon, the president of the Organization of Exigner rees Ken always se is it starts with voting. A prosecutor is a powerful position and they answer to the people in all your choices. When you vote, you

Thank you for listening to Wrongful Conviction. You can listen to this and all the Lava for Good podcasts one week early and ad free by subscribing to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I want to thank our production team, Connor Hall and Kathleen Fink as well as my fellow executive producers Jeff Kempler, Kevin Wartis, and Jeff Cliber. The music in this production was supplied by three time