Science impacted justice for local DA
By Steve Herring
Published in News on January 5, 2015 1:46 PM
Full Size
Branny Vickory talks about some of the cases that impacted his time as district attorney.
Jurors watch crime shows like CSI and NCIS.
And that colors what they expect to see if they are called to sit on a case -- an answer generated by running evidence through a machine.
Former District Attorney Branny Vickory jokes that even his wife, Debbie, who is fan of both series, will ask him why he did not have "this or that" like they do on the TV shows.
While lacking the benefit of television-based gizmos, Vickory has seen firsthand the effect advancements in science have made on law enforcement and in the courtroom during his 30 years in the DA's office.
During the 1990s, local law enforcement knew that someone was raping and killing elderly women in Goldsboro.
DNA testing, which was just coming to be known to the trial world, revealed that all three murders and rapes had been committed by the same person.
But police did not know who, Vickory said, until years later when the State Bureau of Investigation got a hit on its DNA data bank.
The delay was the result of an overburdened crime lab.
When people went to prison on a felony, a DNA sample was taken, Vickory said.
"(SBI) had a protocol," he said. "They would check murderers and rapists first. They were always checking against those. The lower-level felonies, unless they really caught up, they never really got down to those.
"So it took years and years before they finally got down to the level of 'firing into an occupied home.' But they did, and they got a hit one day. The lab called me up, and I mean, he was ecstatic."
Vickory was told there was a hit on the case, a man named Linwood Forte.
"Well, I knew the name of Linwood, but I didn't know him as a murderer or rapist," Vickory said. "We had this case a few years before where he shot into a house, and we convicted him, and he got a felony conviction for shooting into a home.
"We didn't have any idea he was involved in something like (rape and murder)."
DNA technology was so new that law enforcement could not "run out and make an arrest," he said. Instead the information had to be used to get a search warrant, then they had to draw the suspect's blood and test it.
Law enforcement officers put Forte under surveillance. They approached him as he left work.
"I mean seriously, I had a (SBI) scientist sitting out there in the weeds with them," Vickory said.
The officers rode around with Forte, showed him the science and talked with him about the evidence.
"Over a cup of coffee at Krispy Kreme, I think, is where he finally spilled it," Vickory said. "But he acknowledged that he did all of that stuff. He took (the officers) around and showed them one we didn't know he was connected with, the rape of another lady that was found dead over at Fairview Homes.
"Why he got away with it was because he never told anyone about it. He kept it absolutely to himself. We had box after box after box of dead leads on that case that never went anywhere."
Forte was tried, convicted and is now on death row.
"I guess death penalty cases are the ones that stick out in my mind the most," Vickory said.
*
Vickory says the U.S. Justice System works -- and acts as an arbitrator between the government and the people -- a worthy and necessary task.
And that system works, he says, because of the people who join forces to get the jobs done -- from the judges and the attorneys to the clerks and the bailiffs.
And most of the time, the system gets it right, he said.
But responsible prosecution also requires an understanding that sometimes, even with the best of intentions, justice is not done, Vickory said.
One case in particular opened his eyes.
"I think that when I started, I thought everybody was guilty," Vickory said. "You know that just because somebody is charged, it doesn't mean that they are guilty of a crime. The mental gymnastics, I understood that. But I didn't always grasp that probably real well until Dwayne Dail's case came along. Dwayne was tried in this office in 1989.
"He was charged with raping a little girl -- coming through her window over at Jefferson Park. She is a little black girl, and he is a white male. Comes in through a window. It is dark. He rapes her. Tells her not to tell anybody. He is whispering in her ear. She knows her mother is right through the wall, but her mother doesn't hear anything until he leaves."
The victim sees Dail, a young white guy with sandy blonde hair, in the parking lot a couple of days later and is convinced he is the guy, Vickory said.
"We didn't have a lot of evidence," he said. "We had some. Semen was found. We could prove that she just didn't dream it."
DNA testing was not yet available. Instead, serology, the study of bodily fluids, was used.
The results showed a possible link between the man who raped the girl and Dail.
"We wound up trying that case," Vickory said. "The little girl was believable. She didn't come off as having any ax to grind. She didn't know the guy at all before all of this happened.
"You know, I referred to him as being kind of arrogant during course of the trial. But his lawyer pointed out to me in 2008 that it was the arrogance of an innocent man who was on trial for raping this little girl."
Dail got two life sentences.
"I remember," said Vickory, who was an assistant district attorney at the time. "I was over there in that big courtroom. I remember the wail that went up from him. The howl almost when he got convicted. He didn't have any idea he was going to be found guilty. He thought the system was going to work and he was going to be found not guilty. It was one of those kind of haunting type memories. They had to drag him out there. He couldn't even stand up."
Over the years various lawyers tried to bring up new evidence in Dail's favor, but nothing was concrete.
Vickory eventually was contacted by the Innocence Commission about the case. The commission wanted to test evidence thought to be in police department storage. Authorities thought the evidence had been destroyed -- until bedsheets and a gown were discovered.
They were tested for DNA -- and in 2008, Dail was acquitted and freed, but only after serving 18 years in prison for a crime he did not commit.
"You talk about getting hit between the eyes," Vickory said. "I had no idea that would happen. He was just as innocent as he could be. We brought him back from prison. I mean he shows up the next day in court. I file my own motion to set aside the verdict. I just can't say you can get out. I have to have a judge undo the prior conviction.
"We did that and that very day I got word back that it was William Jackson Neal who did it. His mother lived right behind this little girl's place. Two weeks before that, he had been charged in Raleigh with raping a woman. He was a habitual felon in Wayne County, but he wasn't a rapist or a murderer."
Neal was tried and sentenced to two terms of life in prison.
Dail's case would not be handled today as it was in 1988, Vickory said.
Rarely now are people charged based on an identification provided by a person, he said.
"We don't do lineups like we used to do," Vickory said. "We used to show a lineup, have six or eight people in it, and you look at them all and point to somebody and say, 'That is the one.'"
Former Supreme Court Justice I. Beverly Lake asked Vickory to serve on panels and finally the state Innocence Commission.
Vickory served on the commission for seven years.
"I think one thing that it has shown to me is that we do a pretty daggone good job as far as getting the right guy," Vickory said. "But we don't always get the right person. There is a tendency to want to hold us to a perfect standard. If you put all of the doctors in the hospitals to those standards, nobody would be open.
"I am not drawing the same analogy necessarily to that. I don't think many people out there are trying to do people wrong. But bad things have happened, and I think we have put some good things in place to keep them from happening or to minimize those things from happening."
Vickory said he is friends with Dail, who is involved with the innocence movement.