In 1996, a trust­ed infor­mant told the FBI that Dan Bright was doing time for a mur­der com­mit­ted by some­one else. For years, the bureau fought to hide the name that’s list­ed on Document 212. That fight may final­ly be over.

By Katy Reckdahl
Gambit Weekly

March 32003

In 1999, as Daniel Bright III sat on death row at Angola, he wrote the FBI, ask­ing that they release any files on him. After back-and-forth cor­re­spon­dence, Bright received a 65-page pack­et. One of those pages was FBI 166E-NO-58945 – 212, or Document 212.

Document 212 looks more like a Rothko paint­ing than a law-enforce­ment report. The sheet is filled with black, except for two thin lines of type near the cen­ter, which read, The source fur­ther advised that Daniel Bright, AKA Poonie,’ is in jail for the mur­der com­mit­ted by –.” The next word — like the rest of the page — is blacked out.

For years, the FBI has fought the release of what’s beneath that blotch of black. It is a name, they’ve said, and that name is not Dan Bright. Bright and his fam­i­ly say that rev­e­la­tion was no sur­prise. For years, they’ve watched this case’s odd twists. Now, they are now pin­ning their hopes on this doc­u­ment, which a New Orleans fed­er­al judge may be view­ing this week.

Dan’s moth­er, Rose Bright, spent Jan. 29, 1995, inside her for­mer apart­ment in the Florida hous­ing projects with her twin grand­daugh­ters. When Dan — her old­est son — was about this age, an aun­tie had dubbed him Pooney” because he was such a tiny, pret­ty baby with big eyes and lots of hair,” she recalls.

It was Super Bowl Sunday, and the twins’ par­ents — Dan and his girl­friend, Shelita Christmas — were at a par­ty Uptown. Rose Bright remem­bers that the TV news had already gone off when the cou­ple returned, so it must have been after 10:30 p.m., she guess­es. She kept the small­er baby, Dana, who had col­ic. Dan and Shelita packed up Danielle — the big­ger twin — and drove off in Christmas’ lit­tle gray car.

Before head­ing back to their apart­ment in east­ern New Orleans, the cou­ple made a stop at their friend Yam’s house, about a block and a half from a lit­tle neigh­bor­hood bar called Creola’s. They were at Yam’s, Christmas would tes­ti­fy, when they heard gunshots.

Creola’s sits on the first block of a five-block street called Lausat Place, in a part of the Ninth Ward known as the Hole.” A big sil­ver door spells out the bar’s name in home­made sil­ver let­ters. Nearby, young kids play ball in the street and neigh­bors linger on the side of the street, talking.

Nights can be less idyl­lic. During the mid-1990s, the Hole became known as one of the city’s mur­der hotspots — in part because of its geog­ra­phy. The area is a tri­an­gle with rail­road tracks on two sides and the Industrial Canal on the oth­er. A gun­man can take off on foot and be long gone before a police car can wend its way to the scene of the crime.

One recent after­noon, Genore G” Bickham stands behind Creola’s long, dark wood bar topped with slight­ly worn Formica. Two young girls in pig­tails and school uni­forms dash in, hand Bickham their back­packs and jack­ets, and run back out­side to play. A cou­ple cus­tomers walk in and sit at the bar. Bickham pulls two cold beers — $2.50.

Bickham has been com­ing into Creola’s since 1959 and has worked here for the past 20 years. The clien­tele is most­ly fam­i­ly and friends, she says. Everybody knows everybody.”

Murray Barnes, the young man who was killed out front on Super Bowl Sunday, lived around the cor­ner on Montegut Street. He drove trucks for a liv­ing and came into Creola’s to shoot pool, she says. He was medi­um height, weighed more than 200 pounds, and was a very nice guy who would give you his heart.”

Bickham tells what she remem­bers from that night: Barnes came into col­lect his mon­ey — he’d won $1,000 in the bar’s Super Bowl pool. Bickham count­ed out the mon­ey to him, and he hand­ed her $30 and told her to play it at the casi­no. He was with two guys that Bickham had nev­er seen before, and the men played a few games of pool before head­ing toward the front door around mid­night. Bickham remind­ed Barnes of the tab they’d built up. He stopped and paid her, then strolled out. Almost imme­di­ate­ly, she heard gunshots.

At first, Bickham thought the shots were Barnes and his friends cel­e­brat­ing. But then Barnes walked in Creola’s side door, behind the bar. He was alone — his two friends, accord­ing to police accounts, had dri­ven off in his truck — and he had his hands fold­ed in front of his stom­ach. He said, G, call some­body — I’ve been shot,’ ” she says.

I said, Boy, stop play­ing,’ and I hit him on top of his hand.” With that tap, she says, Barnes start­ed sink­ing down toward the floor, and Bickham rushed to the phone. The police came, the ambu­lance came, every­body came. It just went wild.”

Bickham did­n’t see blood until Barnes was turned over. He’d been shot in the back. The para­medics car­ried him out, she says, but a police­man soon returned and said that Barnes was dead.

Eighteen months lat­er, Bickham would tell this account at Dan Bright’s tri­al. Once in the court­room, she says, I asked which was Pooney because I did­n’t know.” On the night of the mur­der, Bickham says, she did not see Bright in Creola’s. But there were so many peo­ple in here, I don’t know if he was in here or not.”

Bickham did, how­ev­er, see a woman named Christina Davis, a Creola’s reg­u­lar, she says. Freddie Thompson, one of the guys who had been with Barnes that night, would tes­ti­fy that Davis had led Barnes out­side to his death. Since Davis liked to shoplift, a fact con­firmed both by neigh­bors and law enforce­ment records, Bickham sus­pects that she sim­ply had some­thing hot to sell.

Bickham was inside tend­ing bar, so she isn’t sure who killed Barnes. Driving around that part of the Ninth Ward, it seems as though oth­ers are less unsure. A group of men stand on a near­by yard, enjoy­ing the sun­shine and a few beers. The word on the street, they say, is that Bright had been in the game” — involved with drugs — and in the midst of some pret­ty tough stuff. But he did­n’t mur­der Murray Barnes, they say.

Rose Bright remem­bers hear­ing, back in 1995, that some­body had been mur­dered down in the Hole on Super Bowl Sunday.

About a week lat­er, she says, Dan’s 5‑year-old daugh­ter Ronaisha, who lives with her, was watch­ing America’s Most Wanted. Suddenly Ronaisha start­ed hol­ler­ing, My dad­dy’s on TV!”

Rose Bright rushed into the room and saw Dan’s name and pic­ture on the screen. She was shocked. No police detec­tives had even come to her house look­ing for Dan, she says. She called Dan’s father and then Dan, who told her he had­n’t been involved. Turn your­self in and we’ll get a lawyer,” she and his father told him. Don’t let your­self get gunned down out there for some­thing you did­n’t do.”

Rose Bright had a rea­son to wor­ry about her son’s safe­ty on the streets. Less than a year before, in April 1994, Dan’s younger broth­er Donnie was shot 11 times in front of her door. Rose Bright admits that Dan had been in trou­ble before — an aggra­vat­ed drug charge in 1991 land­ed him in Angola for two years. But the shoot­ing changed Dan, she says. After Donnie got killed, Dan came in and set­tled down. He got qui­et and start­ed spend­ing more time with his babies.” To Rose Bright, this mur­der charge did not make sense.

Before Dan’s mur­der tri­al, the Bright fam­i­ly took out loans and held bake sales, din­ners and card games to raise mon­ey for his attor­ney’s fees, says Dan’s 31-year-old sis­ter, Donna Bright. But on July 3, 1996, Daniel Bright III was sen­tenced to death.

It was a crush­ing end, espe­cial­ly because the pros­e­cu­tion’s entire case hinged on the tes­ti­mo­ny of one eye­wit­ness, Freddie Thompson, who had been with Barnes that night. Not only had Thompson left the scene when Barnes was shot, but he, on the stand, admit­ted that he had been drink­ing steadi­ly for 12 hours before the murder.

Orleans Parish Prison records show that Dan Bright’s attor­ney, the late Robert Oberfell, vis­it­ed Bright just once before tri­al. In a series of 2001 hear­ings, Oberfell’s friend and fel­low attor­ney Gary Wainwright tes­ti­fied that Oberfell had told him that he was receiv­ing only $5,000 and, there­fore, his sole strat­e­gy was to earn his fee’ by try­ing it into a life impris­on­ment case.”

Oberfell did not even call Creola’s reg­u­lar Christina Davis to the stand. Because she had accom­pa­nied — per­haps lured — Murray Barnes out­side to his death, Davis received prison time, for acces­so­ry to mur­der after the fact. Soon after the mur­der, Davis began writ­ing what would even­tu­al­ly become stacks of let­ters to Dan Bright, Rose Bright and District Attorney Harry Connick’s office, telling them that she knew who the real killer was and it was not Dan. Her let­ters nev­er were intro­duced as evi­dence. She has since reit­er­at­ed those state­ments in court hearings. 

During the mur­der tri­al, Rose Bright sat in the court­room and watched the pro­ceed­ings. Things were going so bad­ly, she says, that she began her own inves­ti­ga­tion. She went to Charity Hospital for files show­ing that her son’s left hand — Dan is left-hand­ed — had been in a cast at the time of the mur­der. Thompson had tes­ti­fied that the shoot­er had no phys­i­cal disability.

Rose Bright also took it upon her­self to trans­port defense wit­ness­es to the court­room. Two eye­wit­ness tes­ti­monies placed not Dan but anoth­er per­son — who they named — at the scene. Shelita Christmas and Yam — William Thomas — cor­rob­o­rat­ed Bright’s ali­bi. But the pros­e­cu­tion was able to pick apart all these tes­ti­monies for the same rea­son, says Rose Bright. They said the wit­ness­es weren’t cred­i­ble because of where they live and because they had lit­tle records,” she says. Let me tell you. There ain’t no doc­tors or lawyers stay­ing down in that Hole.”

As it turned out, Thompson, the state’s eye­wit­ness, also had a felony record and at the time of the mur­der was under Department of Corrections super­vi­sion — on parole. Previous court opin­ions have main­tained that a per­son­’s parole sta­tus can be sig­nif­i­cant, because law-enforce­ment offi­cers can exert more pres­sure on a per­son whose parole is on the line.

Orleans Parish District Attorney records show that the pros­e­cu­tion knew of Thompson’s rap sheet, but did not dis­close that to the defense, even upon request.

Improper with­hold­ing of evi­dence was stan­dard dis­trict attor­ney office prac­tice for years, says local attor­ney Clive Stafford-Smith, who dur­ing the past few decades has rep­re­sent­ed more than 300 peo­ple on death row. I have yet to defend a cap­i­tal case from Orleans Parish where Harry Connick’s office did not cheat to get a death sen­tence,” he contends.

Connick cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly denies that charge. There’s not been one case of any assis­tant under Harry Connick where it’s been shown that we inten­tion­al­ly with­held evi­dence,” he says. Sometimes assis­tants — like oth­er peo­ple — make errors in the course of their work, Connick admits. But no one has ever shown that what we did was inten­tion­al­ly done. Mistakes, occa­sion­al­ly. But inten­tion­al, never.”

Stafford-Smith will, how­ev­er, get lit­tle argu­ment about with­held evi­dence from the new dis­trict attor­ney, Eddie Jordan. That’s one of Mr. Jordan’s issues, that the past admin­is­tra­tion had a pol­i­cy of keep­ing infor­ma­tion away from the defense,” says Jordan spokesper­son Melanie Roussell. Roussell can’t com­ment on this ongo­ing case, but she notes that Jordan recent­ly promised sanc­tions for any lawyers found to be with­hold­ing evi­dence from the defense.

Stafford-Smith, along with his col­league Ben Cohen, rep­re­sent Bright on his crim­i­nal case. As a result of their work, Bright was moved off death row in April 2000, after the Louisiana Supreme Court found that the evi­dence in his case did not mer­it a first-degree mur­der con­vic­tion. The next step would be a new trial.

Which is where FBI Document 212 comes in.

You have this doc­u­ment that on its face appears to exon­er­ate Dan Bright,” says Jill Neiman, who, with her senior col­league John Shiner at the West Coast law firm Morrison & Foerster, heard about Dan Bright’s FBI case from the American Bar Association’s death penal­ty-defense arm. The pair enrolled as co-coun­sel on the case in August 2002.

It’s a shame that the gov­ern­ment would­n’t hand this over, that we had to fight them so hard,” says Neiman.

FBI spokesper­son Theresa Hudson said that because Bright’s case is an ongo­ing mat­ter, it would be inap­pro­pri­ate for her to comment.

Bright’s strug­gle might be typ­i­cal, says Charles Davis, direc­tor of the Freedom of Information Center at the University of Missouri School of Journalism. It’s extra­or­di­nar­i­ly dif­fi­cult — damn dif­fi­cult — to obtain infor­ma­tion about ongo­ing inves­ti­ga­tions by the FBI,” he says. This is because, Davis says, the fed­er­al Freedom of Information Act con­tains a series of exemp­tions that FBI can use to block the release of infor­ma­tion. One is the law-enforce­ment pri­va­cy prong,” he says, which says that, if with­in the sweep of crim­i­nal inves­tiga­tive records, there are doc­u­ments that iden­ti­fy third par­ties — inno­cent third par­ties, unin­dict­ed third par­ties, infor­mants, neigh­bors, what­ev­er — those records are going to be pro­tect­ed.” That’s per­haps too broad a stan­dard, says Davis.

An ear­li­er court order did allow Neiman and Shiner to ask the FBI a series of what she calls is it big­ger than a bread­box” ques­tions. From that, they learned that the miss­ing infor­ma­tion was a name, that it came from a reli­able source who reg­u­lar­ly informed the FBI, and that it was pro­cured on Feb. 9, 1996 — a few months before Bright’s mur­der tri­al began — while the bureau was work­ing on a joint state and fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion con­cern­ing rack­e­teer­ing in vio­lent crimes.

Last month, fed­er­al judge Martin L.C. Feldman ruled that the FBI must pro­duce Document 212 in its entire­ty on or before March 6. Feldman will then review it in cam­era” — in his cham­bers — at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Louisiana on Camp Street.

He might look at it and say, Dan’s right — he should have this doc­u­ment,” says Neiman. That’s what we’re hop­ing for. And we hope it’s the first step in revers­ing his crim­i­nal conviction.”

Shelita Christmas, Dan’s girl­friend and the moth­er of his twins, died of lupus in October. Rose Bright and Dan’s sis­ter Donna are now rais­ing all three of Dan’s girls. (An eight-year-old son, Dan IV, has a dif­fer­ent moth­er and lives with her.) Pooney sent me Father’s Day cards from Angola last year,” says Donna.

Rose and Donna Bright are pin­ning their hopes on FBI Document 212. The twins were only five months old when their father was arrest­ed, says Donna. And Ronaisha, now a long-legged 14-year-old, has always been close to her father. The first name she said was Pooney,” says Donna.

Ronaisha skips into the liv­ing room from the front yard. Look at her ears,” says Donna, point­ing. Each ear­ring reads Pooney” in slant­ed gold script. She’s Miss Pooney,” Donna says. She wants that in all her jewelry.”

Rose Bright takes a blood-pres­sure pill from a bulging bag of pre­scrip­tion bot­tles. She has suf­fered two heart attacks since Dan was con­vict­ed. I’ve done every day of time with Dan since this hap­pened,” she says, sit­ting on her sofa.

Above her is a wall cov­ered with fam­i­ly pho­tos. Under the bed is an archive of clip­pings and doc­u­ments about Dan’s case. As she lists off the worst errors, it’s appar­ent that she knows the case by heart. I hope that some­body opens their eyes and sends my son home before I close my eyes,” she says. He should see his chil­dren grow up a bit.”