A man convicted of murder in 1999 was released from prison after 27 years on Tuesday, after a Wayne County judge ruled to vacate his conviction and dismiss the charges against him.
George Calicut Jr., 56, was convicted of the murder of Virgie Perkins in October of 1999 and sentenced to life in prison based on what prosecutors, the Michigan Innocence Clinic and Circuit Judge Bradley Cobb deemed to be a false confession elicited by Detroit Police Detective Barbara Simon and DNA evidence that excludes Calicut as the murderer.
Calicut, appearing in Cobb’s courtroom via Zoom for a post-conviction review hearing, started crying after Cobb vacated his conviction and dismissed the charges. Olivia Vigiletti, his attorney, said she would take the order to the Lakeland Correctional Facility in Coldwater later Tuesday to pick up Calicut.
Calicut thanked the prosecutor’s office for “their bravery in confronting the issue that brought us here.”
“I have always professed my innocence,” Calicut said. “There hasn’t been a day that went by that I haven’t professed and claimed my innocence.”
Assistant Prosecutor Valerie Newman, director of Wayne County’s Conviction Integrity Unit, said Tuesday in court that “we now know former Detective Simon has a history of coercing confessions from people and eliciting false information from people.”
“Prosecutor (Kym) Worthy agreed this is not a conviction this office will stand behind … because it rests entirely on this officer’s statement and her claim that these are the words Mr. Calicut said,” Newman said.
In a 2005 petition seeking appellate relief, Calicut wrote that Simon told him that he could sign the statement she wrote for him and be charged with manslaughter and go home, or he could refuse to sign and be charged with first-degree murder. Calicut said he signed the statement thinking he could then go home and call an attorney. He wrote that Simon told him if he called an attorney from police headquarters, he’d be charged with first-degree murder.
“Simon explained the situation to Petitioner not as if it was a promise, but as though it was the law, so it would be inevitable,” Calicut wrote. “He wanted to get the bond to go home, and he expected to be found not guilty.”
The Detroit Police Department did not immediately respond for comment. Simon could not be reached for comment.
Ruben Piñuelas, a law student at the University of Michigan who worked on Calicut’s case with the Michigan Innocence Clinic, reiterated the issue in court Tuesday. He said Simon promised Calicut that signing the statement was the only way for Calicut to receive bond, and that it did not mean he was guilty.
“We now know these lies were common tactics of Barbara Simon to elicit false confessions,” Piñuelas said. “The false confession also did not match the facts of the case. … There are no eyewitnesses and no forensic or physical evidence connecting him to the scene.”
DNA testing last year excluded Calicut as a contributor to the DNA found on the murder weapon and on Perkins’ purse. Piñuelas said once Simon got her confession, officers failed to investigate other suspects, including those whose alibis did not hold up.
“The failure to investigate and pinning the crime on the wrong person only exacerbated and prolonged harm,” Piñuelas said. “No court order can return the years that were taken from him.”
Perkins’ children express frustration with Detroit police
Three of Perkins’ four children wrote victim impact statements that Newman and defense attorney Arni Chambers read aloud in court Tuesday.
Perkins’ daughter Wanda Moody, who is also Calicut’s aunt by marriage, wrote that her family has been destroyed by a “senseless act for which none of us were partakers.”
Moody and her sister Cynthia Perkins-Scott expressed frustration that their family had been failed by the justice system. Perkins-Scott wrote of her “utter disappointment” in the Detroit Police Department and the justice system.
“What the Perkins family is now being confronted with is this. One, if Mr. Calicut is guilty and his release comes solely because of police misconduct, can we accept that 27 years is the measure of accountability for taking my mother’s life?” Perkins-Scott wrote. “Two, if Mr. Calicut was wrongly convicted because of police misconduct, then the true perpetrator has walked free for nearly three decades, while our family and Mr. Calicut’s family have lived under the weight of a lie. Either way, the system failed.”
Perkins’ son, William Perkins, reiterated that his family has been let down by DPD and the system that imprisoned Calicut.
“This was a system that we trusted, a system that had us believing what they were telling us,” Perkins wrote. “I have been let down by everyone involved in the murder case of my mother.”
Simon has history of lying in murder cases
Assistant Prosecutor Maria Miller said in 2024 the prosecutor’s office was beginning the process of reinvestigating cases that were handled by Simon, who was a Detroit police homicide investigator for more than a decade before she retired in 2011. Simon was then hired by the Michigan Attorney General’s office as an investigator, a post she held until retiring in 2021.
Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy said her office’s systematic review of Simon’s cases are “exhaustive and ongoing.”
“Valerie Newman and her team have been consistently working on these cases and more involving other DPD Homicide detectives,” Worthy said in a statement. “After reviewing the CIU’s work in this case I agreed that relief should be granted.”
Wayne Circuit Judge Shannon Walker found in 2021 that Simon engaged in a “common scheme of misconduct” while she was at the Detroit Police Department. Walker expressed her concerns about Simon in an order granting a new trial for Mark Craighead, who was convicted of the 1997 shooting death of his friend, Chole Pruett. Craighead was paroled in 2009 but has continued appealing to clear his name and remove the felony conviction from his record.
At least four people have been exonerated after judges found evidence and confessions obtained by Simon to be tainted.
Lamarr Monson received a $8.5 million settlement from Detroit after accusing Simon of lying to secure a wrongful conviction. Monson said Simon tricked him into signing a false confession following the Jan. 20, 1996 slaying of 12-year-old Christina Brown in an apartment on Detroit’s west side. He spent more than 20 years in prison before being granted a new trial, then the charges were eventually dismissed.
In 2022, the city agreed to pay $8.5 million each to Kendrick Scott and Justly Johnson after they’d spent 19 years in prison for killing a woman on Mother’s Day in 1999; and in 2011, Damon Nathaniel was awarded $20,000 for spending eight months in jail as a murder suspect.
kberg@detroitnews.com
This article originally appeared on The Detroit News: Detroit man freed after 27 years in prison due to false confession
Reporting by Kara Berg, The Detroit News / The Detroit News
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
