Article Independence Day for an Innocent Man
| Jurisdiction | Nevada,United States |
| Citation | Vol. 31 No. 1 Pg. 24 |
| Pages | 24 |
| Publication year | 2018 |
January, 2018
Team DeMarlo, J.
Independence Day came a bit early this year for a Nevada man. On June 30, 2017, attorneys from Richards Brandt Miller Nelson (Richards Brandt), working in conjunction with their local counsel Weil & Drage and the Rocky Mountain Innocence Center (RMIC), saw three years of intense legal effort come to fruition when the Nevada Department of Corrections released DeMarlo Antwin Berry from custody after he spent more than twenty-two years in the Nevada prison system for a murder and robbery committed by someone else.
DeMarlo’s journey from imprisonment to freedom is a compelling if disturbing example of what can go wrong when the ideals of the criminal justice system are abandoned or abused to other ends. And it is an example of what attorneys committed to those ideals can accomplish, not only for the exoneree and the system, but for themselves.
DEMARLO’S JOURNEY
1994: A young African-American male enters a North Las Vegas Carl’s Jr. intent on committing robbery. When he exits the store and flees the scene in a waiting vehicle, the night manager has been shot execution style and lies dead or dying behind the counter. Las Vegas is outraged.
All but one eyewitness describes the perpetrator as roughly six feet tall and weighing 200 pounds or more. Anonymous tips identify two alternative suspects: Steven ‘Sindog’ Jackson, six feet tall, 230 pounds, a leader of the San Bernardino Crips and a familiar face with a reputation on the streets of North Las Vegas, and eighteen year-old DeMarlo Berry, five feet, eight inches tall and 150 pounds who, as it turns out, was in the parking lot of the Carl’s Jr. that night, along with several others, watching Jackson through the restaurant’s windows. Las Vegas police never investigate Jackson because, as the state’s attorney would explain later to the habeas court, police thought Jackson was the driver of the getaway vehicle. Instead, they arrest DeMarlo.
No physical evidence ties DeMarlo to the crimes, and he professes his innocence from the outset. Fearing for his family’s safety, he refuses to tell authorities that it was a Crip – Steven “Sindog” Jackson – he saw in Carl’s Jr. that night. But when it became clear that authorities weren’t going to realize their mistake and were, instead, intent on pinning the crimes on him, DeMarlo tells authorities that it was Jackson he saw...
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