A Deadly Past Repeats Itself (long)
Jen
A Deadly Past Repeats Itself
By Barbara Vobejda and Ira Chinoy
Washington Post Staff Writers
Wednesday, December 6, 2000; Page A01
Last of four articles
By the time Greg Brice Jr. was stopped, prosecutors say, he had killed four
times: on a busy street corner, in a dark alley and at a craps game where he
shot two men in the fading light of a spring evening.
Within days of the first death, police knew Brice's name. Within weeks, they
were convinced of his guilt. But they could neither capture him swiftly nor
contain him sufficiently. Over the next several years, a violent chronology
unfolded as police, prosecutors and judges inadvertently allowed a killer to
kill again.
In the District, such a story of crime and punishment gone awry is not
uncommon.
An analysis by The Washington Post of 3,900 homicides in the city over the past
decade found 225 slayings allegedly committed by people who police believe were
responsible for an earlier slaying. That represents 1 out of every 10 cases
police closed.
These latter crimes represent the very real cost of law enforcement's failure
to lock up killers and, in the process, protect the innocent.
A Post study of homicide investigations in the District found critical
weaknesses in the ability of police to solve slayings. The Post also found a
pattern of missing homicide case files, incomplete investigations and poor
record keeping.
Police closed just 37 percent of the homicides committed in 1999 by the year's
end, the lowest figure in years.
"There were too many cases coming in that were shoddy," said David Schertler,
the former assistant U.S. attorney who was in charge of homicide prosecutions
from 1992 to 1996. While some D.C. detectives were outstanding, he said, others
were inexperienced and poorly trained. "There was also a culture of doing only
what they absolutely had to do in order to close cases, no more."
The consequences have played out on the District's streets:
In roughly 6 out of 10 slayings in the city last year, the killers remain free.
That continues a trend of declining homicide case closures that has had a
profound effect on the sense of justice and safety in many District
neighborhoods. It is also a lesson not lost on criminals. "If you feel like you
can commit murder and not get caught, you're going to do it," said Carl
Gregory, a former District homicide detective.
Witnesses routinely refuse to help investigators, distrusting police and
fearing retaliation. In at least 17 homicides over the past decade, police
identified the motive as witness elimination. Other police and court records
suggest the number is even higher.
Of the 225 homicides by repeat killers, 125 were committed by someone who had
been arrested after an earlier slaying. The majority of those charges were
dismissed.
While there are no reliable national comparisons, a look at homicide cases in
Prince George's County showed a significantly lower rate of repeat killers.
There, The Post found 17 repeat killers in 11 years. That is less than half the
rate found in the District.
In the District, killers were able to repeat their crimes for many reasons: The
evidence police collected in the first case was insufficient to make an arrest;
prosecutors dismissed cases because they felt they were too weak to win at
trial; or judges, frustrated with delays, simply released suspects.
Case files show that when homicide charges are dismissed, police rarely reopen
the cases and try to amass new evidence. Instead, the case stays closed, a
successful statistic on the D.C. police books.
Repeat Offenders
With stunning regularity, the names of suspected killers resurface in new
homicide cases.
When Earl McDaniels, a security guard at a Southeast high-rise apartment
building, was shot in the head in July 1994, police suspected he was killed
because he had disrupted drug dealing around his building. He had been lured
from his post about 3‚a.m. by two men who asked for help finding a set of
keys. Police believe that when McDaniels took out his flashlight and began
searching, he was killed.
One of the two men police arrested, Albert Chapman, had been charged two years
earlier with killing Jose Diaz, 34, in the Petworth neighborhood in Northwest.
Police had closed their books on the Diaz homicide a month after it occurred.
But the prosecution against Chapman was dismissed six months later for lack of
evidence.
Chapman, 19, was convicted in the McDaniels case, but the case of Herbert
Harris, 16, the second person arrested in the slaying of the security guard,
didn't make it that far.
While his case was pending, Harris was released by a Superior Court
commissioner to the custody of his mother on the condition he would remain at
home between 8‚p.m. and 7‚a.m. But over a year later, police say, Harris
killed again on a Southeast street at 3 in the afternoon. He also died in the
shootout.
The same summer Chapman and Harris were accused of killing the security guard,
another teenager, Marvin Sanders, was charged with killing Richard Bowles
beside a public telephone on Columbia Road NW. At the time, Sanders, 18, was
wanted for another shooting two weeks earlier.
A witness told police he had seen a man named Marvin arguing with Bowles that
afternoon, had heard gunshots and watched the man run from the scene.
Sanders was indicted eight months later on gun charges, then released on
personal recognizance. Five weeks after his release, police records indicate,
Sanders killed again, shooting Nathaniel Brown, 18, a few blocks from the
corner where Bowles was killed. He was convicted of the Brown slaying, but the
Bowles case was later dismissed.
The District was reminded of the specter of repeat killers again this summer,
when Grace Edwards, a 76-year-old grandmother out for her morning walk in
Southeast Washington, was fatally shot.
Nakia Roy, 25, and Edward Settles Jr., 26, had together been charged with at
least 31 crimes before they were arrested for killing Edwards, who was caught
in their exchange of fire, according to police. Each had earlier been charged
with murder.
Roy was accused of killing a pastor in Southeast Washington in 1990, when he
was 15. That case was dismissed for lack of witnesses.
Settles was also a juvenile when he was first charged with murder in 1990, a
charge that was dismissed in adult court.
Slow to Respond
In a handful of instances, police records point to killers responsible for
three, four or more victims. The details of one of those cases – Brice's –
shows not only the obstacles District police have faced for years in trying to
solve homicides, but also the flaws in their pursuit of a criminal.
In Brice's case, records show, police were overworked and hampered by unwilling
witnesses. But they also did not move quickly and failed to act on information
that might have allowed them to catch him much sooner.
Brice, who was raised by his grandmother in Southeast, grew up with violence:
When he was 4, he saw his mother stabbed to death by a boyfriend.
His journey through the justice system began in 1992, when he was a teenager.
He was charged as an adult for attempted murder after shooting a neighborhood
boy in the legs. He pleaded guilty to a lesser offense, then was allowed to
withdraw the plea. By that time, prosecutors were no longer able to locate the
victim. They dropped the charges in January 1994.
Seven months later, Brice pulled the trigger again. This time he shot Darrell
Barnes, 18, who had served time in juvenile jail along with Brice. Barnes had
moved with his mother, Mable, to suburban Maryland but was drawn back to his
friends in his old Southeast neighborhood.
One night, he didn't come home. Mable Barnes got a call from a friend of
Darrell's, telling her he had been shot. She didn't believe it.
"It's true, Miss Mable," the friend said. "I closed his eyes."
When she rushed to H Street SE, she said, she knew immediately it was her son
sprawled across the sidewalk, face down, his head in a pool of blood in front
of Robinson's Barber Shop.
Homicide Overload
At D.C. police headquarters, the Barnes slaying fell to detectives Carl
Gregory, a veteran, and Todd Amis, who had grown up in Southeast Washington.
Within a day, they had received an anonymous call: "Little Greg" killed Barnes.
In another day or two, Amis knew from informants that Little Greg was Greg
Brice.
That weekend, the two detectives were juggling three other homicides. At one
point they had to leave witnesses in the homicide office to go a new crime
scene. They didn't go home from Friday night until Tuesday morning, catching
naps on a cot at headquarters. In three of the homicides, they made quick
arrests.
The fourth case was that of Darrell Barnes. The police file contains no reports
of witness interviews until nearly two months after the slaying. Then, one
informant told police Brice had been bragging about shooting Barnes, and
another said Brice had been heard threatening to kill Barnes.
But the detectives, hesitant to approach Brice without being able to charge
him, did not question him or seek a search warrant for his house. They feared
he would stop talking about the crime or get rid of the murder weapon,
Detective Gregory said.
Still, "we knew we were on the right suspect," he said.
On the night of Oct. 18, not quite three months after he shot Barnes, Brice
killed again.
One Suspect, Two Killings
Fourteen-year-old Marquerite Jenkins was crossing East Capitol Street when she
peered down an alley. Two men approached another from behind. She heard a
gunshot and saw a man crumple to the ground as two others ran off. But she
couldn't see much else, and she slowly walked to the fallen man.
It was her brother, Gerald Hill, bleeding to death in the alley.
Within a day, police found an eyewitness, Norman Isaac, a high school
basketball player who was staying with his grandmother nearby. He picked out
Brice's mug shot.
Two days later, police arrested Brice at his home nearby. They found a 9mm
Ruger wedged into the bed frame. It was later matched by ballistics tests to
the Hill slaying.
While Brice was being questioned for the Hill case at headquarters, Detective
Todd Amis happened to walk past a television monitor outside the interview
room. He realized he was looking at his suspect in the Barnes killing.
Brice agreed to talk to Amis. He quickly admitted to shooting Barnes. Brice
said he had seen Barnes on the street and tried to hug him to make peace over
an old feud. But Barnes went for a gun, he said. So Brice fired first, 11 times
in all. He put five of the bullets at the base of Barnes's skull.
Police closed their books on both homicides. But Brice had yet to be charged in
the Barnes case. And in the Hill case, prosecutors were having trouble getting
a grand jury indictment. When Brice was still not indicted six months after his
arrest, then-Superior Court Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly transferred him to a
halfway house, which he could leave during work hours.
Prosecutors indicted Brice on the Hill slaying five days later and argued he
should be moved back to jail. The judge declined.
What happened next could have been predicted. The year before Brice was
arrested, 1,530 inmates walked away from halfway houses in the District.
And on May 12, 1995, just three weeks after he arrived, Brice left in the
morning and didn't return.
'They Did Nothing'
As a fugitive, Brice toyed with law enforcement: strolling into Superior Court
next to police headquarters and at times disguising himself in a dress, a wig
and green contact lenses, according to police.
Police files on the Barnes homicide contain no updates during this period to
indicate any efforts to find Brice.
"After he escaped, there really wouldn't have been anyone following him at that
particular time," said Gregory, the former detective. "We just didn't have the
time."
The detective said that when he and his partner heard Brice had escaped, they
knew to expect another killing.
And then police got a chance to catch him.
In December 1995, seven months after Brice left the halfway house, an informant
told police where to find him. "This information was forwarded to the warrant
squad," police files note.
But the warrant squad, a task force of local and federal officers, treated the
search with little urgency, said a former prosecutor familiar with the case who
asked to remain anonymous.
"A whole year went by, and they did nothing," he said.
Finally, an Arrest
In late May 1996, just before 8 on a Friday evening, police were called to an
apartment complex in Northeast Washington, just blocks from the Anacostia
River. They found two men, one shot six times, the other eight. Ceremontinia
Hickman, 25, known as "Monty" and Rodney Wilson, 20, known in the neighborhood
as "Scoop," were pronounced dead less than an hour later.
Witnesses said the men were at a craps game when a black car with tinted
windows pulled up. Three men jumped out, and one started firing. The name of
the shooter quickly circulated on the street: "Little Greg."
Now, the search for Brice was given priority and handed over to a new point man
at the U.S. marshal's office.
Three weeks later, on June 14, 1996, a team of police officers and federal
agents assembled before dawn outside a building on the 2700 block of Robinson
Place SE. They pried open an apartment door, tossed in a "flash-bang" grenade,
rushed in and found Brice, sitting on the edge of his bed, groggy. He was
surrounded by an arsenal: a 9mm Ruger, a Colt rifle, a Mossberg shotgun and
hundreds of rounds of ammunition.
"I could have got all of them," Brice later told Amis.
What If?
At Brice's trial, lawyers fought over evidence and witnesses, but no one asked
the larger questions: What if Brice had served time for shooting his neighbor
in 1992? Or if police had questioned him when his name first surfaced in the
killing of Darrell Barnes? What if prosecutors had moved quicker and the judge
had kept him in jail? Would that have saved two lives? What if the warrant
squad had picked him up sooner? Would that have saved anybody?
On Jan. 17, 1997, Brice was convicted of first-degree murder in the death of
Gerald Hill and sentenced to 30 years to life. A year later, he pleaded guilty
to manslaughter in the death of Darrell Barnes and was given a sentence of five
to 15 years in prison.
When it came to the double-homicide of Hickman and Wilson, however, prosecutors
had problems getting witnesses to testify. Satisfied that the Hill conviction
would keep Brice incarcerated, the U.S. attorney's office dropped charges in
the Hickman-Wilson case.
As it now stands, Brice won't be eligible for parole until 2040, when he would
be in his late sixties.
"My parole officer isn't born yet," Brice said, in a recent interview over a
conference table at Lorton's maximum-security facility. He argues that he was
framed by witnesses and overzealous prosecutors. "I am 100 percent innocent,"
he said. Brice spends several hours a day trying to prove that, working on his
case in the prison library.
Earlier this year, he produced a letter suggesting that the eyewitness
testimony that led to his conviction was false. It was written by Norman Isaac,
the eyewitness.
Prosecutors contend the letter does not contradict the trial testimony.
A hearing is scheduled in Superior Court in January. If the judge grants a new
trial, prosecutors face a daunting problem: Isaac, their only eyewitness, was
killed more than three years ago in a shooting in Southeast Washington.
If Brice gets his first-degree murder sentence overturned for the Hill case, he
would remain in prison only on lesser charges, including his manslaughter
conviction for the Barnes case. Brice contends that the more than four years he
has already served would fulfill that sentence. He would, he says, go free
immediately.
Staff researcher Alice Crites and database editor Sarah Cohen contributed to
this report.
© 2000 The Washington Post Company
Jennifer
~~~~~~~~~~~
"To kill them teaches nothing," Anselmo said. "You cannot exterminate them
because from their seed comes more with greater hatred. Prison is nothing.
Prison only makes hatred. That all our enemies should learn."
