Police misconduct indictments cause a Georgia prosecutor to drop charges in three murder cases

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This article was published 22/08/2024 (477 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SAVANNAH, Ga. (AP) — A Georgia prosecutor announced Thursday she’s dropping charges against six people in three pending murder cases following the indictment of a pair of Savannah police officers accused of misconduct.

Chatham County District Attorney Shalena Cook Jones, whose jurisdiction includes Savannah, said the decision came after her staff reviewed dozens of cases involving the two former officers, who were indicted in May on multiple charges of perjury and violating their oaths of office.

Jones said she sympathized with the families of the five total victims slain in the cases being dismissed, but insisted police misconduct had tainted them to a point they were no longer winnable in court.

“These cases, they likely will not be reopened and reinvestigated,” Jones told a news conference. “Our office’s determination is that they have been compromised.”

The fallout comes two months after a Chatham County grand jury indicted Ashley Wood, a former Savannah police detective, and former police Cpl. Darryl Repress in unrelated misconduct cases.

Repress was indicted following his firing in 2023, when an internal affairs investigation concluded he had a relationship with an informant who was a convicted felon. His indictment accuses Repress of lying about the relationship to his supervisors and to investigators.

Kimberly Copeland, listed in court records as Repress’ attorney, did not immediately respond to an email message seeing comment Thursday.

Wood’s indictment accuses her of knowingly including false information in search warrant applications in multiple cases. One of her attorneys, Keith Barber, said Wood is “completely innocent.”

“Her character is completely beyond reproach,” Barber said in a statement. “We have always and continue to remain fully confident that she will be fully exonerated of these charges.”

Attorneys for Marquis Parrish, who was charged with murder in a 2021 fatal shooting, accused Wood of lying about seeing Parrish in a video recorded by a security camera. Parrish spent two years in jail before Jones’ office dropped the charges in June.

Parrish was among the six defendants whose dismissed cases the district attorney mentioned Thursday. She also dropped charges against two men in a 2016 killing in which a woman was fatally shot after being caught in the crossfire of what police called a shootout between gang members.

Murder charges were also dropped against three men accused of fatally shooting two brothers and their cousin who were found dead in a Savannah home in 2015.

Jerrell Williams was one of the men who had been charged in the triple killing. His attorney, Jonah Pine, told WTOC-TV: “After over three years of fighting and over two years of incarceration, Mr. Williams finally stands vindicated.”

Jones declined to give specifics on what prompted her to dismiss charges in each of the three murder cases, citing the pending prosecutors of the two former officers.