I shake my head. “I’m good.”
“Ain’t gonna sleep, wanna talk about the case?”
I had asked him if he remembered us going to see Maya Angelou back in ’99 and if he was familiar with the case earlier in the afternoon. He remembered the night and the case, but was also going to dig up what he could to refresh his memory about it.
“Absolutely,” I say.
I’ve always enjoyed talking to Merrill. He’s not only insightful, but he’s often entertaining, slipping in and out of standard American English, affecting ebonics for his own amusement. And I don’t just benefit from his insights, but from the insights he inspires me to have.
He says, “Probably won’t when you hear what I got to say.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Bottom line. He did it. I know the sister and Miss Ida won’t want to think he did. Know for their sake you don’t either, but . . . it’s a pretty ironclad case.”
“Kathryn says no way he could have.”
“What you expect her to say?”
“Says he was with the group all night,” I say.
“Sure that’s what she wants to believe.”
“What did the state have?” I ask. “They didn’t have a body. Didn’t have any physical evidence.”
“A credible eyewitness. An accessory after the fact who did time for his part in it. And evidence that corroborates his testimony.”
“Like what?”
“Cellphone calls and tower pings match up perfectly with what he says happened. He knew things he couldn’t have if he wasn’t telling the truth. And he was the one who took them to Angel’s car. He knew where Qwon hid it.”
I don’t respond, just think about what he’s saying. Not many eighteen-year-old kids had cellphones in 1999, and I wonder how both Qwon and Justice Witney did.
“I know you want him to be innocent for Ida’s sake. And I know why. But I just don’t see it.”
“So I probably shouldn’t ask for your help with it,” I say.
He laughs. “Didn’t say that. Not like I ain’t wasted time with you before. But what you need my help with?”
“Thing is . . . I can’t look into this officially. It’s a closed case. Gulf County investigator looking into a Bay County investigation wouldn’t go over well—with either department. Reggie wouldn’t like it any more than the Bay County sheriff would.”
“What happens when they find out?”
I shrug.
“You willin’ to lose your job over this shit?”
“Don’t want to, but I’ve got two.”
“You really feel like you owe Ida that much?”
“I’m not asking you to work the case or spend any time on it. Just need you to make the FOIA request.”
By Merrill making the Freedom of Information Act request for the files in the Angel Diaz case, I can get the case files and information I need while remaining anonymous.
“I can do that,” Merrill says. “Hell, who knows. Maybe I’a take a look at ’em and decide the shit deserves a second look and help your ass solve the case.”
The dilapidated old white clapboard farmhouse sits at the front of a four hundred acre farm about two miles from downtown Campbellton. A smallish, dogtrot-style floor plan with a breezeway running through the center, the entire structure slopes to the left.
It only takes a few minutes to search the place and determine no one is here—and hasn’t been for a while. And whoever was here last left nothing behind.
“Seem a little suspicious not to find anything in a low rent place like this,” Merrill says. “Transient, month-to-month renters in a place like this usually move out quick and leave a mess behind. Not even a single piece of trash in this bitch.”
I nod. “Yeah. Be nice to talk to the owner, get more info and a better description. See if he knows where they went.”
“Too late to do that tonight,” he says. “I’ll call him tomorrow.”
“Thanks for all you’re doing to find Daniel,” I say.
“Just gettin’ started.”
165
The next morning, on my only day off from both jobs, I drive to Atlanta to pick up my five-year-old daughter, Johanna.
Up through Marianna, Dothan, Eufala, and Phenix City, from my door to Susan’s is five and a half hours—longer on the way back with frequent stops for Johanna to snack and use the bathroom.
My daughter will get all the non-driving attention I can spare on the journey back, but on the way up it all goes to Angel Diaz and the case against Qwon.
Trapped in a car for an extended period of time is the perfect place to work on a case.
I plan to start with the Wrongful Conviction podcast.
While it’s downloading, I think about what Merrill said and the chances that Acqwon Lewis could actually be innocent.
Merrill may be right. Qwon may be guilty, but there are far more innocent people incarcerated than any of us would like to believe.
Wrongful convictions happen for a variety of reasons, but the primary ones are eyewitness misidentifications, faulty forensics, false confessions, prosecutorial misconduct, and ineffective assistance of counsel.
The single biggest cause of wrongful conviction is eyewitness misidentification. Eyewitnesses are notoriously unreliable. Study after study shows how faulty our perceptions and memories are—and how easy our recall of information can be influenced or corrupted.
In the post-OJ, DNA, Trial of the Century, and CSI world, forensic science is not only accepted as credible and irrefutable, but is believed in with a certainty that no other element of the criminal justice system is. But many forensic testing methods are either applied with little or no scientific validation or peer review, are incorrectly carried out or interpreted, or are contaminated by a compromised process. There is also, of course, much room for confirmation bias and forensic analysts’ misconduct.
Not long ago, before many high profile cases taught us differently, most of us couldn’t fathom that an innocent person would confess to a crime he or she didn’t commit. But false confessions are far more common than anyone realized. Actual innocent people make incriminating statements, give faulty confessions, and or even plead guilty all the time. And though there are many, many factors involved, the one thing nearly all false confessions have in common is a certain tipping point during the interrogation where making a false confession is more beneficial than maintaining the truth of innocence.
The history of criminal justice is littered with example after example of prosecutors, and even occasionally judges, taking actions to ensure a defendant is convicted even when the evidence is weak or nonexistent.
In the American judicial system, the single largest influential factor is wealth. Those who can afford a good defense team are far, far less likely to be convicted than those who cannot. Too many innocent people are sitting in prison because they were represented by a weak, ineffective attorney or an overworked, under-resourced public defender who was unable to investigate, call witnesses, hire experts, or prepare for trial.
Is Acqwon Lewis one of these? If so, who killed Angel Diaz? Is she even dead?
The Wrongfully Convicted podcast is hosted by a former reporter named Natasha Phillips, who had once had the top-rated talk radio show in Tampa. She is smart and smooth, assertive without ever getting overly aggressive, always prepared, and her voice sounds as if it had been especially designed by the radio gods for true crime podcasting—clear, resonate, and slightly sultry, as if a throwback to a film noir actress or radio melodrama.
Phillips made a name for herself back in the late ’90s, around the time Angel went missing, by taking on the sex trafficking trade in Florida. Later, after her radio career ended because her station was sold and changed formats and she began podcasting, Wrongfully Convicted became the number one podcast when she worked on a case with a crime reporter for the Ft. Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. Together they helped in the efforts to exonerate an innocent man who spent nearly forty years in prison
for a crime he didn’t commit.
There are several episodes of the Wrongfully Convicted podcast, but I skip ahead to the one that deals with Justice Witney and his testimony against Qwon.
“Welcome to another edition of Wrongfully Convicted. I’m your host Natasha Phillips, and today we’re going to be talking about the state’s star witness against Acqwon Lewis, the inimitable Justice Witney.”
I still can’t listen to a podcast without thinking of Merrick and Daniel’s In Search of show and wondering where and how Daniel is. Did he choose to go or was he forced? Is he still alive? Will we ever find him?
“I think it’s safe to say that without Justice Witney’s testimony, Acqwon Lewis would not have been convicted, would not have been in prison the past eighteen years. Why did he do it? What made him confess and turn state’s witness? Did he accuse Qwon to cover a crime he himself committed? Is he covering for someone else? Or is there another motive we can’t see because we don’t have access to all the facts? We’re going to talk about all of that later, but let’s begin with Justice’s testimony itself. Here’s what he says:”
A clip of one of Justice Witney’s actual police interviews begins to play.
“I was doing what everybody else was doing—looking for Angel,” Justice says.
“You’re speaking of Angel Diaz, your classmate who went missing the night of January 16, 1999 in downtown Panama City,” an unidentified investigator says.
The clip fades and Natasha says, “That’s the voice of Roddie Andrews, the Bay County Sheriff’s investigator who headed the case and took Justice’s confession.”
“Yes, sir,” Justice says.
“You were downtown that night?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Doing?”
“You know just hangin’ out mostly. I’s dealing at the time, so I’s supplying several of the kids from my school that night.”
“Supplying them with what exactly?”
“Weed mostly, but a little E and Special K, too.”
“Okay, then you heard a classmate of yours had gone missing?”
“Yes, sir. Girl I hang out with sometime . . . Uma Green ran up to me and said ‘Angel’s missing. Everybody’s looking for her.”
“Ran up to you where?”
“I’s walkin’ down Beach Drive. Headin’ to some lame-ass house party at Kim and Ken’s ’cause they’s good customers.”
“What’d you do then?”
“Turned around and started looking for her. Everybody was walking around, calling her name. AN-GEL. AN-GEL. I joined in. I didn’t think she’s really like missin’, missin’. Just figured she was fuckin’ around with Qwon somewhere or decided to go home early—she do that sometime, just get ready to go and leave without sayin’ shit to anyone. You just look around and she’d be gone.”
“Then what?”
“Well, everyone was sort of lookin’ along the roads, walking up and down the sidewalks . . . so I decide to check some of the darker places—alleys, vacant lots, kinda places where bad shit usually happen. I’s doin’ that when Qwon pull up in Angel’s car and told me to get in.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, sir, I did. I’s like nigga did you find her? He said ‘Wait ’til you see this shit.’ He drove out of downtown, down Beach . . . toward like St. Andrews, but stops at one of those little pullover places where white people park to look at the bay. We get out, go around to the back of the car and he’s like ‘Wait for it . . . wait for it . . . look at this shit.’ Then he pops the trunk and . . . and . . . Angel’s dead body is laying there all folded up unnaturally and shit. Motherfucker was all like, ‘No bitch gonna breakup with or blackmail me. Look at that. All these little niggas runnin’ around hard with their nines and their Tupac bandanas thinkin’ they street and shit. Not a one of ’em ever put a bitch down.’ I was like why you showin’ me this shit? ’Cause nigga, you gonna help me deal with this bitch’s body.’ I’s like hell no I ain’t. ‘Hells yes you are. I know shit on you, Just. Plus your prints and hair and fibers and shit are in her car now.’ Then the nigga pulls out a camera and snaps a picture of me standing there beside her dead body. ‘You stirred up in this shit now,’ he says. ‘Question is, you wants to be stirred up to the top or not?’”
Justice Witney is a showman. Very little about the way he says things seems authentic—neither the yes sirs nor the street talk. His language and demeanor are part of an obvious affect. But that doesn’t necessarily mean the content of what he’s saying is untrue. It might. What he’s saying may be as false as the way he’s saying it. That’s what I’ve got to find out.
“So that’s why you agreed to help him get rid of the body?” Roddie says.
“Yes, sir. Didn’t have a choice. Knew everyone would believe his little goody-goody ass over my drug-dealing one.”
“Why do you think he came to you?”
“’Couple a reasons. One, I the most criminal element, street nigga he know. And two, he know my uncle owns Legacy.”
“And what is Legacy?”
“Affordable direct cremation for cheap ass niggas don’t want to be buried.”
“Did he say that?”
“He said a lot of shit. But yeah. He was like ‘We can burn her, bro. No one’ll ever know.’”
“So that’s what y’all did, cremated her?”
“Eventually. First, I was like if I’m gonna do this shit, I gots to be high. So we drove over to St. Andrews to one of my boys. Got hooked up.”
“You got high?”
“We got fucked up. Everything after that’s a little, you know, fuzzy and shit, but . . .”
“Then what’d you do?”
Justice hesitates for a moment. “Ah, let’s see.” The sound of papers shuffling can be heard. “Then we’s headed over to Legacy and Qwon was like, I left my phone and my jacket where I killed her, we got to go get it. I’s like, nigga we ridin’ around in the bitches car with her dead body in the trunk and you want to go back downtown where everybody lookin’ for her?”
“So you drove back downtown?”
“Part of the way, then we parked and walked the rest of it.”
“Did you ask him where and how he killed her?”
“Yeah. Nigga wasn’t real specific. Said he’d been looking for her and got tired. Sat his ass down on one of those benches on Beach Drive that looks out over the bay. She pull up in her car and said get in. Need to talk to you. He was like, everybody’s looking for you. But he got in. Left his jacket on the bench. The phone was in it. Said he had gotten hot and took it off to take a piss. Said she drove to some dark, secluded spot over behind or beside the civic center and parked. He thought they were about to fuck, but she said she was gettin’ back with her ex.”
“Eric Pulsifer?”
“Yeah. Said he was like, ‘What the fuck?’ They started arguing and fighting. She told him he wasn’t gonna make trouble for her or mess with Eric ’cause she knew too much shit on him and could turn him into the cops. Also told him she knew he’d been cheatin’ on her and guess what, two can play at that. Told him she’s already fucked ol’ Pulsifer while he was hangin’ with the fags at the Fiesta. Think she hinted that she thought he might be gay. Said he lost it and started beating her ass. Said some shit like she taunted and mocked him. Said he hit like a girl. She was a tough bitch, promise you that. Said she started calling him names and making fun of the size of his dick. Said she thought black guys were supposed to be big, but she could never even feel his little limp dick, even when he gave her all three inches as hard as he could. He said he snapped and lost it and before he realized what he was doing, he was on top of her, his hands around her throat, chokin’ her, stranglin’ the shit out of her, watching the defiance, then fear, then panic, then realization in her eyes, then seein’ the life go out of them. Kept sayin’ over and over he was glad he did it. He’d do it again. How cool it was to see the life leave her big dark eyes. Then he threw her ass in the trunk and drove around trying to think o
f what to do next—and thought of my black ass and my uncle’s crematorium.”
“When y’all went back down to get Qwon’s jacket, did y’all see anybody?”
“Lots of people. All still lookin’ for Angel. Not knowin’ they’s lookin’ at the fuckin’ angel of death right there in the nigga standin’ beside me. We acted like we’s still lookin’ for her just like they was. I remember someone said ‘aren’t you cold’ to Qwon but can’t remember who it was. We pretended to look. He got his jacket. Checked his phone. Had a lot of missed calls. Think he made a few calls. Pretended to look for Angel some more, then someone notice her car was gone and said ah shit, bitch just went home, so they went to the party and we walked back to where we’d hid her car and drove over to Legacy.”
“And cremated Angel?”
“Yes, sir. Snuck in there late that night. Did the deed.”
“What did you do with her ashes?”
“Gave ’em to him. Cleaned out the crematorium. Made sure there were no teeth or bone fragments or any shit like that, gave him the ashes, and got the hell out of there. Have no idea what he did with her remains after that. Said he was gonna make sure to scatter them where no one would ever find them.”
“What happened next?”
“After all this, after all I’d done for this nigga he was like, ‘I’m hungry. Let’s go get some chicken and waffles.’ I was like, how the hell can you eat? That’s some cold shit. I was like, fuck no, nigga, I ain’t goin’ to eat no goddamn waffles after just burnin’ a bitch. He was like, ‘Nigga, I own your ass now. If I say we goin’ to eat, we goin’ to eat. If I say you payin’, you payin’.’ So three o’clock in the morning, we drive up 231 to Coram’s in Bayou George and I sat there and watched while that cold ass nigga ate fuckin’ chicken and waffles.”
“Were you still on Angel’s car?”
“Oh, ah, no, sir. Sorry. Forgot that. We’s on his. When we went back downtown to get his jacket, we got his car too. I drove it. I was like I ain’t driving the car with the body in the back.”
True Crime Fiction Page 65