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By The Washington Post 
11h ago
By Keith L. Alexander
When Troy Burner was a teenager in the late 1980s, he worked as a radiology assistant at George Washington University Hospital. Occasionally he also sold crack on the streets of DC.
Sporadic drug trafficking, Burner said, put him under suspicion among DC police and made him an enemy of competing drug dealers. He said it also positioned him for an unfair arrest and conviction in the fatal shooting of 19-year-old Michael “Bate” Wilson when Burner was 17.
After nearly 25 years in prison, Burner was released in 2018. But he never stopped fighting to clear his name.
DC Superior Court Judge Robert Rigsby weighed Burner’s plea for actual innocence and this spring reversed Burner’s conviction, saying it had been based on a “rickety” account by an alleged witness who later said he made up the history. The judge did not reach a full exoneration, but concluded that it was “more likely than not” that Burner was innocent. Last month, prosecutors said they would not retry the case and dropped the charges.
Burner, 48, watched the virtual court hearing in August from his computer. When she learned that the charges were dropped, her eyes filled with tears. The murder case had disappeared.
“It was a surreal moment. It’s been a long journey from the beginning. Even though I worked like I worked to get to this point and I was hoping this would happen,” Burner said, then paused. “Just the finality of everything. I can’t really explain how I feel. I have so many emotions.”
Seth A. Rosenthal, Burner’s pro bono attorney, said his client’s case exemplified a common problem in wrongful convictions: reliance on a witness seeking the favor of cooperation. In Burner’s case, the key witness was a three-time felon who, at the time, was charged with another murder case.
“It shows the real problems with cases that are based solely on cooperators’ testimony and how flawed those cases are,” Rosenthal said. “In these innocence cases, you often see incentivized testimonies that turn out to be false.”
Although federal prosecutors dismissed the charges against Burner, they do not consider him exonerated. “Mr. Burner has not proven that he is truly innocent,” said Shelia Miller, a spokeswoman for the US attorney’s office.
Wilson was assassinated on April 21, 1990, the year the District had more than 470 homicides. The case went unsolved for almost three years. Then in 1993, a man named Antoine Payton was arrested in a different murder. After being questioned by detectives, Payton told authorities that he had information about Wilson’s murder.
Using court transcripts and notes from the detectives, Burner’s attorney revealed how Payton began to tell a series of mixed narratives that culminated in his testimony that he saw Burner with two friends when Wilson was shot.
Payton initially told authorities that he did not see the shooting and only learned about it from friends, according to the documents. But as Payton continued to meet with detectives, his story changed. He told authorities that shortly after 9 p.m. that April night, he was sitting inside his parked car and saw two men he recognized running and shooting at Wilson and his friend in northeast DC.
Three men, all friends of Burner, were charged.
Prosecutors alleged that two of them, Nathaniel Harrod and Louis McCoy, were the gunmen. They said a third man, Francois Bracmort, was a drug dealer who was not at the scene, but ordered the murder after he heard on the street that Wilson intended to rob him.
Burner said detectives questioned him.
“It was a situation where I was not guilty and the detectives came up to me and said from above, ‘We know you have nothing to do with this, but we need you to help us with others. “Burner said.” I didn’t know anything about the shooting and they didn’t believe me. “
Later, when Payton testified before a grand jury, he said he saw three, not two, robbers. For the first time, he implicated Burner in the murder. Payton said again that he was in his parked car, but this time he moved closer to the scene of the shooting. He told jurors that Burner was among the group that saw Wilson killed and that he remembered seeing Burner freeze in place when the shooting began. Burner was arrested a day later.
As the trial progressed, Payton changed his account again, this time telling the jury that he was standing outside his car when the shooting began. He said he saw Burner standing behind Wilson, who started backing off as others started shooting.
Payton was the only witness who testified seeing three men. Two other witnesses testified that they saw two attackers. The man who was with Wilson and was injured stated that he did not remember how many people were chasing them.
The trial lasted a week. Currently, multi-defendant murder trials typically take several weeks. Prosecutors argued that three of the men, on command of the fourth, chased Wilson and his friend and that two of the assailants shot and struck Wilson six times on the back. They alleged that Burner had a gun that night but did not fire it. They argued that he instead positioned himself to prevent Wilson from fleeing.
Judge John H. Suda, who conducted the trial, rejected a request by Burner’s attorney that he be tried separately from his co-defendants. Burner believes the jury viewed the evidence collectively against all four, as opposed to each individually.
The jury found Burner and his co-defendants guilty of first degree murder and related charges.
“The only thing I had in mind at the time was that I didn’t do anything. I don’t know anything,” he said. “This was unfamiliar territory to me. I was being naive now, looking back, I know. But, unfortunately, I was a believer that the truth would set you free.”
Decades later, despite prosecutors’ objection, a judge in 2018 ordered Burner’s release from prison as part of the District’s Incarceration Reduction Amendment Act (IRAA). The 2016 law allows for the early release of inmates who were minors at the time of their crimes, who spent at least 20 years behind bars and who have shown evidence of reform while incarcerated.
Of the 52 former inmates released since the law was enacted, Burner is the only one who maintained his innocence, according to the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth.
Back in the community, Burner continued to focus on his case and asked the court to find him not guilty.
Two of his co-defendants, Harrod and McCoy, made statements from jail. Both men said Burner was not with them when Wilson was killed.
Two childhood friends told the court that they were with Burner playing dice when the murder occurred.
Perhaps most importantly, Payton, the alleged government eyewitness against Burner, submitted an affidavit in which he admitted that his testimony had been fabricated and that he was not at the scene of the shooting.
Payton admitted that his account was composed from the details he heard in the neighborhood and what the federal prosecutor shared with him during his questioning.
Payton also admitted to implicating Burner because Burner had refused to give him a false alibi after a previous arrest.
“I thought it would make a better testimony and help me more in my own murder case. I knew the prosecutor would go directly to the judge after the trial and tell him that I had cooperated, so I told the prosecutor what I thought he wanted to hear. I also falsely testified against Troy because, at the time, I thought Troy could help me in my case, but I had refused to do so, “Payton said, according to court documents.
Payton, who was initially charged with first degree murder, pleaded guilty to second degree murder. He was also recently released from prison.
Keeping anger at Payton would be pointless, Burner says. “I realized a long time ago that I couldn’t waste time being angry, vindictive or overthinking it. I understand that those emotions, if you allow them, will take over.”
These days, Burner focuses on helping inmates. Last year, she graduated from the Georgetown University Prison and Justice Initiative, a program for students who had been incarcerated. She also works with the Mid-Atlantic Innocence Project on cases of prisoners who claim they were wrongly convicted. And she works with the Changing Perceptions organization to help other IRAA recipients adjust to life outside of prison.
Burner’s name has been added to the National Registry of Exonerations database, which includes more than 2,670 exemption cases since 1989. The database is compiled by the University of California Newkirk Center for Science and Society in Irvine, the University of Michigan School of Law and Michigan State University School of Law.
“My goal is to dedicate my time to the people who supported me and who were waiting for me. My mother, my brother, my family and friends,” Burner said. “I have had a vast support system. Many of them were integral to my ability to persevere in these circumstances.”
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