On March 10, a North Carolina supe­ri­or court judge released his opin­ion throw­ing out mur­der charges against Derrick Michael Allen, who was accused in the 1998 death and sex­u­al assault of a 2‑year-old girl. Judge Orlando Hudson dis­missed the case after find­ing that a State Bureau of Investigation (SBI) report was pre­pared in an ​“inac­cu­rate, incom­plete and inten­tion­al­ly mis­lead­ing man­ner.” Judge Hudson also found that an SBI agent (now sus­pend­ed) and a for­mer assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney work­ing on the case ​“decid­ed to stop fur­ther test­ing of items for DNA test­ing because they believed fur­ther test­ing of phys­i­cal evi­dence of the case would not prove incul­pa­to­ry to the defen­dant Derrick Allen and could pos­si­bly incul­pate oth­ers.” He wrote that Allen was coerced into enter­ing an Alford plea (a plea in which the defen­dant accepts that the weight of the evi­dence points to his guilt but with­out admit­ting actu­al guilt) after being threat­ened with the death penal­ty. An autop­sy showed that the girl died of shak­en baby syn­drome. Allen spent more than 10 years in prison. Allen’s case was among 200 cas­es that an out­side audit dis­cov­ered were mis­han­dled by the SBI. The audit revealed that agents failed to report cor­rect evi­dence in a num­ber of cas­es. Because evi­dence has been destroyed or is miss­ing since Allen’s case start­ed, Judge Hudson not­ed, ​“It is no longer pos­si­ble for Mr. Allen to ever receive a fair trial.”

The for­mer assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney, Freda Black, main­tained that she had nev­er mis­rep­re­sent­ed her­self in any court in 25 years. The cur­rent head of the SBI stat­ed that the meth­ods of test­ing used in Allen’s case are no longer employed by the bureau. 

(“Judge: SBI report was ​‘inten­tion­al­ly mis­lead­ing,’ ” WRAL​.com, March 10, 2011). See Innocence and Arbitrariness.

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