The bullets removed from the victim didn’t match the gun that police claimed Ricks used.
Desmond Ricks has spent the last 25 years in a Michigan prison. Why? Well, if you ask him, he’ll tell you it’s because the police pinned a murder on him that he was never guilty of. Looking at the evidence after all these years since his trial, it’s hard to argue with his conclusion.
In 1992, Ricks was accused of shooting someone to death outside a restaurant in Detroit. Bullets were extracted from the body of Gerry Bennett, the victim, and then compared to a gun owned by Rick’s mother. At trial, a weapons expert told the court that the bullets removed from Gerry’s body were a match to those test-fired from Rick’s mother’s .38-caliber gun. In truth, however, they weren’t even close.
The Innocence Project at the University of Michigan’s law school persuaded the judge to reopen Rick’s case last year. The reason? Looking at photographs of the two bullets taken from the victim clearly revealed that they looked nothing like the bullets examined by the gun expert at trial. So what was that all about?
The bullets taken from the victim were still in storage 25 years later. Testing revealed that they were not a match for the gun owned by Rick’s mother. Which means that he couldn’t have used her gun to shoot Gerry Bennett all those years ago.
Which means that he had been innocent all along.
David Moran, director of the Innocence Clinic, went on the record and called the conduct of the police officers who investigated Gerry Bennet’s death “criminal”. And he was right. Ricks was nothing short of framed for a murder he didn’t commit. Unfortunately, as Moran also pointed out, it has been too long since the trial, and so none of the officers involved can be held accountable for their actions.
However, it does raise another issue that needs to be addressed. The Detroit gun lab was shut down in 2008 after an audit revealed that botched analysis and sloppy work was jeopardizing cases. Which means that Ricks had been right all along – the police lab did more than just a poor job of investigating Bennett’s murder. They switched out evidence in order to gain a conviction – at the expense of an innocent man!
According to Moran, the Michigan State Police should make it a point to investigate more cases that were handled by the Detroit police lab before it was closed down. Given that it’s been less than a month since the last time we shared a story about a wrongly convicted Detroit man being freed after years in prison, it would seem that Michigan’s criminal justice system needs some serious work! This isn’t a unique story. This is happening all over America.
One of the best ways to ensure that you and your loved ones avoid wrongful convictions is to get an aggressive and trusted defense attorney on your side from the start. Being falsely accused of a crime is a very serious situation. So don’t wait and hope that the prosecutor’s office will figure out the facts, or make the mistake of believing that the truth is all the defense you need. Call us today at 866 766 5245. The highly skilled defense attorneys at The Kronzek Firm fight fiercely for our clients, protecting them from police abuses and ensuring that they get the best defense available.