Laura Glesby Photo
Adam Carmon in court with his teenage mugshot on screen.
As one of Adam Carmon’s lawyers summed up a case centered on dropped leads, concealed evidence, and “chicken scratch pencil behind a random guy’s photograph,” another squeezed Carmon’s shoulder.
Eight days of passionate argument revisiting the 1994 murder of a baby were coming to a close. Carmon’s fate now rests with a judge who must decide whether the revelations merit a new criminal trial.
Both sides offered their final arguments in Courtroom 5A on Church Street Wednesday at the end of an emotional civil case prompted by Carmon’s effort to gain a new criminal trial. Carmon has served over 28 years behind bars for the shooting death of 7‑month-old Danielle Taft and the paralysis of Taft’s grandmother, Charlene Troutman.
Now it is up to Superior Court Judge Jon Alander to decide whether to order the state to conduct a new trial.
The proceedings prompted debate about the reliability of police investigative methods, the possibility that detectives deliberately hid and manipulated evidence in Carmon’s case, and how much those questions matter to Carmon’s conviction.
In Carmon’s original criminal trial, the prosecution had to prove his guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Now, during Carmon’s fourth habeas lawsuit for a new trial, the burden lay on Carmon’s legal team to prove that new evidence or new science could change the outcome of Carmon’s case in the eyes of a jury.
“The question is, do we have a verdict worthy of confidence?” Doug Lieb, one of Carmon’s lawyers asked Judge Alander during closing statements. “Can this court be confident that not one juror would vote to acquit Mr. Carmon?”
As summarized in Lieb’s closing arguments, Carmon’s attorneys focused largely on evidence that prosecutors had not disclosed to defense before Carmon’s original 1995 trial — evidence they argued was relevant, significant, and favorable to the defense, constituting a violation of the Brady Rule.
That undisclosed evidence included:
• Images of the people from whom eyewitness Jaime Stanley selected Carmon in an unconventional identification procedure taking place in arraignment court.
• Fingerprints on an ammunition box near the crime scene belonging to another key suspect, Arthur Brantley, who confessed to a role in the shooting before recanting; information about a police visit to Brantley’s mother that, Lieb argued, could have motivated the confession; and all information about the alibi witness of Brantley’s alleged accomplice whose police statement confirmed aspects of Brantley’s confession.
• Context about the lighting conditions and emotional state that could have affected Stanley’s identification; rape charges against a second eyewitness that were withdrawn after his statement; and audio recordings of an Anthony Stevenson interview during which police appeared to pause the tape recorder.
The Stevenson interview had tied Carmon to the gun prosecutors said was involved in the Taft shooting. Stevenson was “clearly being fed information by police,” Lieb argued.
Doug Lieb: "This is the most important week of Mr. Carmon's life since the trial."
Carmon’s lawyers argued that another piece of evidence presented to defense late in the trial should count among this undisclosed evidence: a photo array that Carmon’s attorney had been able to review quickly during a court recess after the state had rested its case. On the back of one photo — not a photo of Carmon — someone had scrawled “look-alike” in pencil, a phrase that Carmon’s original attorney later testified he had not seen.
In addition to evidence that, according to Carmon’s attorneys, prosecutors unlawfully withheld from the defense, Lieb summed up scientific developments casting doubt on the reliability of Stanley’s identification. He argued that new findings undermined the “foundational validity” of the gun identification process that police used to tie the murder to the gun that Stevenson connected to Carmon.
State: Perhaps Adam Carmon Is Demetrius Bates
Craig Nowak: Undisclosed evidence isn't significant enough.
After Lieb concluded his arguments, the state made its final case. Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Craig Nowak argued that the undisclosed evidence did not amount to enough to warrant a new trial.
While there may be gaps in the Stevenson police interview tape, “I haven’t seen any evidence that they were feeding him information,” Nowak said.
And the firearms identification methods are “still being used today in court,” he argued, albeit with a more limited scope than in Carmon’s trial.
Nowak argued that Carmon’s defense lawyer had the option to blame Brantley for the murder, but chose not to. And he suggested that even if Brantley’s confessions to being in the getaway car were true, that wouldn’t necessarily exonerate Carmon.
Brantley had told police that a man named Demetrius Bates shot the bullets that killed Danielle and paralyzed Charlene Troutman. He later said he’d invented Demetrius Bates’s existence, and police were never able to find someone with that name or alias.
“Has anyone considered that maybe Adam Carmon is Demetrius Bates?” Nowak asked in his closing.
Judge Jon Alander presides behind layers of plexiglass.
Judge Alander jumped in.
“Is there any evidence connecting Arthur Brantley to Adam Carmon?” he asked. Carmon’s attorneys had previously argued that the two did not know each other.
From the petitioner’s table, Carmon himself shook his head quietly — and then raised his eyebrows in surprise when Nowak replied, “Yes.” Nowak pointed to a court record describing Carmon and Brantley waving to one another.
“Arthur Brantley told the whole story to the police,” Nowak said. Carmon’s original attorney “had all that, and he used it to the best of his ability.” So there’s no need for a new trial, Nowak argued.
A Family Still Haunted
Baby Danielle Monique Taft.
As the attorneys uttered their final arguments and the court proceedings drew to a close, the families connected to the case remained in limbo, waiting for a decision that will likely take months to arrive.
Danielle’s mother, Shirley Troutman, attended nearly every day of Carmon’s trial, usually supported by other members of the family. The week and a half resurfaced a nearly 30-year-old trauma that’s hard to bear.
Each day when Troutman arrived home, she said, her surviving kids gather and ask her about what happened.
“It affects my kids, too,” Troutman said. “I need peace… I just want this to be over.”
Since the start of the habeas proceedings, Shirley Troutman’s mother, Charlene, has been haunting her dreams. A week ago, a tape recording of a police interview with Charlene played aloud in court, over a decade after her death — the first time Troutman had heard her mother’s voice since her passing.
Meanwhile, Troutman’s older daughter, Tempie, has been getting ready for prom. Tempie wants to wear a green dress; Troutman took her shopping one afternoon after court, but they haven’t found the right one yet.
Troutman’s preparing to go above and beyond for Tempie’s prom, with a red carpet down her porch and a limo, or at least a fancy Uber.
“I can’t do it for Danielle, so I have to go all out for Tempie,” she said.
Angel Ogman-Stanley outside Courtroom 5a.
Angel Ogman-Stanley, who is Danielle’s cousin (her uncle was Danielle’s father), echoed Troutman in saying that Carmon’s lawyers did not convince her that Carmon was innocent of the murder.
She’s still figuring out how to process the new evidence, she said. “I don’t understand why he was arrested by himself.” The trial made clear to her that there were others, possibly Brantley, involved in the murder who deserved accountability, she said. “In my point of view, Danielle never got justice.”
No legal procedure can fix that. Danielle’s family “cannot request a new hug, a new kiss, let me see her walk, let me hear her voice. We cannot request anything,” Ogman-Stanley said.
As the family remembers Danielle, Ogman-Stanley is pregnant with a baby of her own. Ogman-Stanley was eight or nine years old at the time of Danielle’s murder. “She was my first funeral that I ever been to,” Ogman-Stanley said. “Her casket was the size of a shoebox. I will never forget that.“
Since that day, she’s held onto a fear of 810 Orchard St., the building that became her family’s crime scene. “Becoming a mother has made Danielle’s murder feel even more devastating, Ogman-Stanley said.
She recently learned her revised due date: July 5th, the same birthday as Danielle.
A Shot of Java
Najee Carmon-Reynolds: feeling hope, no longer anger.
On the other side of the courtroom, Adam Carmon’s son, Najee Carmon-Reynolds, affirmed his own conclusion about his father as the trial proceeded. “All the evidence doesn’t point to my dad,” he said. “It points to someone else.”
The trial has highlighted to Carmon-Reynolds how his own personality echoes his father’s, he said.
He watched Carmon greet his lawyers, the court marshals, and other members of the audience with a nod, smile, handshake, and sometimes a hug.
“Me and him, we’re just alike,” Carmon-Reynolds said. “We love people … We’re loving, we’re optimistic, we always see the bright side.”
The two have been calling regularly about the trial, Carmon-Reynolds said. “We talk about it like it’s sports,” he said, recalling conversations full of “Did you hear that?” and “Did you see what happened then?”
Carmon is like a “shot of java,” Carmon-Reynolds said. “When I’m down, he’ll call and I’ll feel upbeat again.”
Carmon’s lawyers advised him not to speak with the media during the trial. Carmon-Reynolds said the trial has been hard for his dad, but also a source of hope for the both of them.
“I’m past angry,” he said of his father’s conviction. “I’m not angry no more.” The judge seems fair, he said, and his father’s lawyers have been working hard. “I’m hopeful, and happy.”
Click here to read articles published at the time of Danielle’s murder about the circumstances both in the case and the surrounding neighborhood, as well as an interview with the man who owned the gun stolen to commit the killing. Click here for a story about how the family and neighborhood were faring 20 years after the murder, and here for an account of Danielle’s posthumous 21st birthday.
Previous coverage of Adam Carmon habeas trial:
