Man Exonerated for Deadly Arson Suing Detroit Fire and Police Departments
The Detroit News
(TNS)
Duane Williams said even though he's been out of prison for months, serving 11 years for a crime he didn't commit continues to haunt him.
The Detroit resident recalled he was out of town recently and walking down a street where there was some construction. Choking back tears and emotions, he explained it was like walking through a cave, and it made him feel like he was back in prison.
"It was like I was walking down a hallway in prison, and I could feel people behind me," he said, his voice trembling. "I had to keep telling myself not to look back.
"In prison, you don't want anyone walking behind you because you don't know who it is. But I wasn't in prison. I was free. I tried so hard not to look back, but I had to. I couldn't help it."
Williams recounted the incident during a virtual news conference on Tuesday.
His attorney, Todd Flood, joined him for the event and announced his firm filed a federal, seven-count complaint on Williams' behalf over his wrongful conviction in 2013. The complaint was filed in U.S. District Court in Detroit on Tuesday.
Flood said they are seeking a jury trial and more than $100 million in damages from the city of Detroit as well its police and fire departments.
"Duane was put in prison for more than a decade," Flood said. "These people have destroyed time that my client will never get back. Those years are missing from his timeline."
Conrad Mallett, Detroit's corporation counsel, said through a spokesman Tuesday that the city has no comment on the pending litigation.
In 2009, Williams was accused of setting a house on fire that left two people dead. At the time, he was 27.
Four years later, Williams was charged with two counts of felony murder, a count of second-degree murder, and arson, according to court records.
In September 2013, a Wayne County Circuit Court jury found Williams guilty, and he was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, court documents said.
His attorneys said the conviction was primarily based on false, perjured testimony and manipulated evidence. After a new investigation uncovered suppressed evidence — including photos of a lighter and smoking materials near the fire’s point of origin — Williams’ conviction was vacated in June 2024. The state dismissed the case entirely four months later.
Flood said Tuesday that the two victims died from smoke inhalation and breathing in soot.
"It was an accidental fire that started on a couch," the attorney said. "One of the decedents was a known smoker and was highly intoxicated. That burning couch is what caused the tragic death of two people."
During the news conference, Flood also played a video demonstration of an upholstered chair burning within minutes.
He alleged that a Detroit Fire Department investigator found a Zippo lighter in the couch, but lied about it, and Williams was ultimately charged. Flood said the investigator has since retired from the department.
Flood also said the same Detroit police investigator involved in the case that led to the wrongful imprisonment of Davontae Sanford was also involved in Williams' case.
On Tuesday, Williams and his attorney thanked everyone who was part of the effort to exonerate Williams and get him released from prison, including the State Appellate Defender Office and Criminal Defense Resource Center, the Wayne County Prosecutor's Conviction Integrity Unit and Firefly Advocates.
Based in Farmington Hills, Firefly Advocates is a nonprofit that works to reform the criminal justice system and supports those who have been wrongfully convicted. The organization operates in Macomb, Oakland, Wayne and Washtenaw counties. Flood serves as the group's legal counsel.
On Tuesday, Williams said he continues to feel the impact of his time in prison in other ways.
For one, he said he is overcome by emotion sometimes. "I can't stop," he said, dabbing tears from his eyes. "Someone told me that in prison, you hold so much in that when you finally let it out, you can't control it many times."
Williams said inmates develop a sort of PTSD. "I didn't think I was affected, but then I realized I probably am."
He said he isn't sure that his relationship with his wife will ever be the same.
Williams also said his time in prison taught him to appreciate things more now that he's free.
"Believe it or not, prison teaches you to be respectful," he said. "But more than anything, I think now I care more about humanity, people. I can't walk past someone asking for money and not give them some because I know what it's like to have everything taken from you."
Flood said he hopes Williams' lawsuit sends a message "loud and clear across this country."
"I'd rather see a guilty person go free than see an innocent man be charged and thrown into a cell for something he never did," the attorney said. "We have too many (cases like Duane's) in this world."
Williams' lawsuit is the most recent filed over wrongful conviction claims.
Last November, a man serving a life sentence for a 2000 double shooting that killed one person in southwest Detroit filed a lawsuit against the Wayne County Prosecutor's Office and the Detroit Police Department, claiming evidence was withheld and a witness was coerced into giving false testimony. The lawsuit continues to proceed in Wayne County Circuit Court.
In October, the Detroit City Council agreed to pay $8.5 million to settle a 2018 lawsuit filed by a man who was exonerated after spending more than two decades in prison for the slaying of a 12-year-old girl.
In August, a man released from prison in 2022 after murder charges were dismissed filed a federal lawsuit claiming a Detroit police homicide detective buried a witness' statement.
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