Detroit families still seeking answers in wake of police misconduct scandal
With lives on the line, families fear loved ones will die in prison without a full review of tainted cases
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Nearly a year after a Metro Times investigation exposed the widespread misconduct of former Detroit Police Detective Barbara Simon, families of men still imprisoned because of her tainted cases are growing increasingly frustrated.
Despite public promises, protests, and mounting evidence of wrongdoing, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy has yet to meet with victims’ families or launch a transparent investigation into their loved ones’ convictions.
Simon, once known as “the closer” in the homicide division due to her ability to obtain confessions and close cases, has cost the city more than $25 million in lawsuit settlements after multiple judges found she coerced false confessions, lied under oath, and detained suspects without warrants. At least four men have already been exonerated because of her conduct, and a fifth, who falsely confessed after being unlawfully imprisoned, was freed before his murder trial because DNA evidence showed he wasn’t the killer.
But others who say they were victimized by Simon remain behind bars, waiting and wondering if they’ll ever be heard.
Now, they fear they’ll die in prison as innocent men.
“We’re just asking for people to look at the obvious,” Ochga Smith, whose uncle Damon Smith has been locked up for 25 years, tells Metro Times. “Barbara Simon cases have been proven time and time again that there has been misconduct. When you have a judge or even the state supreme court saying the way she has gone about things are wrong, somebody has to take a step back and say, ‘Let’s look at this.’”
Two protests have been held outside the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office since last summer’s Metro Times series, which detailed how Simon used coercive and illegal tactics to close homicide cases in the 1990s and early 2000s. She routinely confined suspects and witnesses — usually young Black men — to small rooms for hours without a warrant, threatened them, made false promises, and fabricated confessions. Some of those coerced statements later became the only evidence used to convict.
One of the most damning assessments came from Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Shannon Walker, who in 2021 granted a new trial to Mark Craighead, an innocent man imprisoned for more than seven years based on a confession elicited by Simon.
“Simon has a history of falsifying confessions and lying under oath,” Walker wrote. “This impeachment evidence demonstrates that Simon has repeatedly lied as part of her misconduct, which would allow a jury to evaluate whether to trust her testimony in light of information demonstrating a character of truthfulness.”
Craighead was eventually exonerated. But others, like Damon Smith and Nathan Peterson, remain behind bars despite similar allegations of misconduct by Simon in their cases.
In 1999, Simon interrogated Smith, a 24-year-old aspiring barber with no criminal record, about a shooting on Detroit’s east side. Smith says Simon grew aggressive and warned him that if he didn’t tell her who did the shooting, she’d make him the shooter. He denied any involvement but was ultimately convicted and sentenced to life without parole. A prosecution witness — Smith’s brother — later recanted, saying Smith had nothing to do with the crime and that he implicated him only after being threatened.
“My voice has been silenced for 25 years,” Smith says from Chippewa Correctional Facility. “I never committed a crime in my life. ... The justice system is the only criminal in my case.”
Peterson, accused of fatally shooting a man in 2000, says Simon used a cameraman during the interrogation to threaten him with public humiliation if he didn’t confess. She promised he could go home if he signed a statement she had written for him, Peterson says. He signed. That statement became the basis of a murder charge that sent him to prison, where he has been ever since.
It took two trials to convict him after the first one ended in a hung jury in July 2001. Peterson says police and prosecutors changed the narrative of the showing during the second trial, and he was convicted.
“She gets to live her life as if she hasn’t impacted the lives of others,” Smith’s niece says. “She gets to wake up every day and have breakfast with her family, and these individuals don’t.”
Peterson’s cousin, Yolanda Garrison, has taken over advocating for his release after his mother and grandmother passed away during his incarceration. She says her cousin’s wrongful conviction has left him heartbroken and grieving.
“He is so hopeful and then we hit a roadblock and he gets heartbroken,” Garrison says. “He couldn’t even go to his mom’s funeral. He lost quite a few family members while he was in jail — where he should not be.”
Despite the mounting public pressure, the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office has not publicly committed to reviewing all of the convictions stemming from problematic Simon investigations. Prosecutor Worthy initially said she was willing to meet with Craighead and the families. But after months of silence, Worthy backed away.
In September 2024, Craighead emailed Worthy to request a meeting that included himself, Lamar Monson (another exoneree), and family members of the wrongfully convicted.
“This issue deserves careful and immediate attention,” Craighead wrote. “We believe that an open dialogue will help with some of the concerns we are addressing and hopefully facilitate a constructive way forward.”
Worthy responded the same day: “I am happy to meet with you. Please send all of your contact information.”
But just days before Christmas, she reversed course, saying she was willing to meet only with Craighead and not Monson because of a wrongful imprisonment lawsuit Monson had filed naming her office. She later suggested that even a meeting with Craighead was off the table due to pending litigation.
Despite the excuses, Craighead says, the families were led to believe a meeting would happen.
“They had hope in those emails,” he says. “They thought Kym Worthy was going to meet with us. It’s very frustrating for them.”
Craighead says he believes the prosecutor’s office never intended to act in good faith.
“She didn’t think it was going to go this far,” he says. “As soon as it died down, she went into the shadows and didn’t say anything after agreeing to meet with us three times.”
In response to questions from Metro Times this week, Valerie Newman, head of Worthy’s Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), said in a written statement that the office received a federal grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance to help fund systemic reviews of officers who engaged in repeated misconduct. While not specific to Simon, Newman confirmed that the Detroit Police Department is “in the process of identifying the cases involving Barbara Simon and is in communication with CIU during this process.”
It’s the first official acknowledgment that Simon’s cases are under some level of review.
But for the families of those still imprisoned, that isn’t nearly enough. They want transparency. They want urgency. And they want accountability.
“We want validation that they are doing what they said they would do,” Smith says. “We want them to really take the initiative and scrutinize what has been done to individuals who have given years of their lives when they didn’t have to.”
Craighead, who filed a criminal complaint against Simon in September, is now working with Monson on a nonprofit called Freedom Ain’t Free to help connect innocent inmates with legal resources.
“We get a lot of calls about Barbara Simon,” Craighead says. “Because exactly what she did to me, she did to many, many others.”
He believes an outside agency — not the prosecutor’s office — should investigate Simon’s misconduct.
“How can the prosecutor’s office investigate itself?” Craighead asks. “Worthy doesn’t want an outside investigation because she knows what’s going to happen.”
Worthy has insisted her office is committed to justice. But for many, that claim is wearing thin.
“Let’s just say this is to pacify us and let this die down until people forget about it,” Smith says. “I will never do that. It’s like saying your loved one doesn’t exist.”
