Defense Says Delay Puts Client at a Disadvantage

By D.C. Witness Staff - June 5, 2018
Court | Homicides | Suspects |

Defense counsel challenged the prosecution’s intent to try a murder defendant nearly 25 years after the crime, calling it a violation of due process.

Therion Bryant is charged with first-degree murder while armed for allegedly stabbing Charlene Johnson. Johnson, 25,  died in the basement landing of a residence on the 3600 block of New Hampshire Avenue, NW in 1993.

Bryant was not a person of interest in the case until 2014 after DNA from the crime scene was uploaded to a FBI database. Bryant’s DNA, which was already in the system, matched DNA recovered from the murder scene. However, the FBI lost several samples of DNA related to the case and potential witnesses died.

“If the government has been reckless… Then under the due process of law the case should be dismissed,” defense attorney Jacqueline Cadman told Superior Court Judge Craig Iscoe on May 29. She said the more than two decades delay crippled her client’s ability to mount a defense.

A research biologist from the FBI crime lab in Quantico, Va., who was assigned to the case in 2007, said the sample was not uploaded because a killer was allegedly caught. According to the witness, an agent told her Daryl Turner,  who was a serial murderer, was suspected in Johnson’s case. At the time, Turner was being prosecuted for an unrelated crime.

DNA collected from the scene excluded Turner as a possible suspect. The other suspects included Johnson’s boyfriend and a man who confessed to the killing while confined at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, DC’s psychiatric hospital. The man later retracted his confession.

Bryant’s motion hearing is scheduled to continue on June 13.