A Michigan man who spent 15 years in prison for a crime he didn’t commit was moments away from being set free when he was stopped in his tracks by a rogue Detroit cop presenting purportedly new evidence, throwing everything into chaos.
“He’s been through a lot, and he was fully prepared to go home that day,” said Michael Mittlestat, Assistant Defender at the Michigan State Appellate Defender Office.
Mittlestat is representing Terance Calhoun, 35, who has been locked up since 2006 when he was accused of criminal sexual conduct and kidnapping in two separate incidents involving two teenage girls in the fall of 2006 in Detroit, Michigan.
On Friday, April 22, Calhoun was moments away from becoming a free man when he and his representatives learned his release would be delayed. Detroit police Officer Robert Kane had disrupted proceedings by coming to the judge that day with what he claimed was new evidence in the case.
Valerie Newman with the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office said not so fast.
“I informed the defense, as soon as I reviewed the file, I got in contact with all the defense attorneys and let them know this file was a file that’s already been turned over to them and that everyone already had in their possession,” Newman said with an envelope in hand given to her by Officer Kane containing his supposed new evidence.
“It was extremely unorthodox and extremely inappropriate for him to do this, this by the way is the officer that was responsible for taking in Mr. Calhoun’s confession which had all of the red flags in the first place,” Mittlestat said.
Calhoun was first arrested for the alleged criminal sexual conduct on Nov. 3, 2006, after a police officer canvassing the location near where the criminal sexual conduct occurred saw Calhoun at a convenience store buying lottery tickets. Calhoun was arrested after the officer believed he was the suspect resembling a composite sketch produced by police with the 15 and 13-year-old girls’ description of their perpetrator. Both girls identified Calhoun in two separate photo arrays.
“They did supposedly pick Mr. Calhoun’s picture up out of a lineup, and the integrity of which we have no record of. It’s just quite suspicious given all of the other circumstances,” Mittlestat said.
Calhoun was later sentenced to at least 17 years in prison for first degree criminal sexual conduct and kidnapping after he pleaded no contest to charges, but Mittlestat says in addition to the composite sketch, more red flags arose in the police handling of the investigation.
“This plea was entered despite some flags there, he’s got some cognitive delays and some of the clear warning signs for a false confession were present here. He was not represented by counsel, some of the things, many of the things he said in his inculpatory statements did not match up with the facts,” Mittlestat said.
For more than a decade Calhoun sat in prison, and even though he caught a lucky break in 2019 when Mittlestat’s office got ahold of his case, investigators already had the necessary DNA evidence that could have cleared Calhoun of the alleged criminal sexual conduct back in 2007 when tests revealed the DNA in the condom left at the scene of the attack on the second victim did not belong to Calhoun.
“Twelve years go by before anybody really knows outside of the police that there was an exclusion here,” Mittlestat went on to say, “there was a hit on the DNA profile to another suspect, that suspect has been arrested and is currently being charged on a number of other rapes in the Detroit area.”
The identity of the other man who police say the DNA belongs to has not been released, but it was this revelation that cleared a pathway for Calhoun’s release from prison.
Wayne County prosecutor Kym Worthy said in a statement regarding Calhoun’s exoneration, “I want to stress that the Calhoun case was never a Sexual Assault Kit Task Force case. However, important Sexual Assault Kit Task Force protocols for reviewing criminal sexual conduct cases, implemented after the SAKs were discovered in 2009 allowed the CIU to consult with them to evaluate significant evidence in Mr. Calhoun’s case. This evidence disproved that he committed the two crimes.”
Worthy also said her office is currently prosecuting the man who is the alleged perpetrator in the criminal sexual conduct cases.
With an exoneration hearing set, Calhoun’s family traveled from Tennessee to the Maxey Woodland Correctional Facility in Whitmore Lake, Michigan, only to be heartbroken as they watched live on a Zoom feed and learned Officer Kane had delayed the hearing, extending Calhoun’s time in prison by a few more days.
“They’re working people they don’t have unlimited means and they came all the way up here, they were in the parking lot waiting for him to walk out the prison doors, watching this whole thing unfold on Zoom and they were absolutely devastated, it was really tragic to see and my heart goes out to them,” Mittlestat said.
Despite Kane’s insistence, Mittlestat says there was nothing new to present in Calhoun’s case; however, Mittlestat’s suspicions heightened when considering, Kane was involved in Calhoun’s original 2006 investigation.
“The original police reports, the original statements and descriptions that we’ve had all these years and prosecutors have had all these years so all of that material has been vetted and investigated and it appears that he was trying to make his final plea to overturn what the prosecutor had agreed to do, but for whatever motivated him to do that, you can read whatever you want into his motivation whether he truly believed he was doing the right thing or if he was trying to compensate for some culpability in sending this innocent man to prison,” Mittlestat said.
Detroit Police Department spokesman Rudy Harper said last week of Kane, “The events that unfolded in court today in the People v. Terance Calhoun matter were outside of the Detroit Police Department policy and are not how the administration expects our investigators to act. The officer did not adhere to our policy or procedures to prevent such a situation. We have been in communication with the Prosecutor’s Office and are working to rectify the situation.”
Despite the setback, Mittlestat says, Calhoun remained in high spirits.
“He’s such a gentle soul, he’s got cognitive delays as I’ve said, he was able to take it in stride at least outwardly, he said, I’m a patient man, I just want to make sure they got it right,” Mittlestat said of his client.
Just before Calhoun was released from prison, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Kelly Ramsey apologized to him.
“Mr. Calhoun, good luck to you, on behalf of Wayne County Circuit Court and myself, I apologize for the delay, and I hope you understand the court’s intent was to ensure justice is done,” Ramsey said.
