The Protection of Ashton Davis #3
Demarious Gray is Ashton Davis’ look-a-like cousin. Davis convinced Gray to move from Chicago to Madison in late January of 2011. Gray claimed that Davis was framing him for crimes that Davis orchestrated. Gray was arrested and charged with a second armed robbery committed in mid-February to which Darell Fowler has admitted his own involvement. Fowler claimed that Gray, whom Fowler has no history with, had the primary responsibility and that Davis, with whom Fowler has a lifelong history, was not involved. The police and the DA’s Office took Fowler’s word verbatim and thus the aforementioned plea agreement to Fowler. Simultaneously, evidence was withheld that connected Fowler and Davis while the DA’s Office denied the evidence existed.
The initial discovery provided by the Dane County DA’s Office did not contain the name “Ashton Davis” a single time. The DA’s Office inferred that police claimed Davis’ name had never come up and that Gray was not only making this up, but that he was also making up the fact that he had had an extended conversation with Detective Helgren about Davis and the Lic Squad.
However, it was later acknowledged that a conversation did indeed take place, but the claim now was that the conversation was very brief, as indicated in Helgren’s report. The DA’s Office did acknowledge that Helgren’s report was problematic given other facts. This led to a later acknowledgement and production of a prior report by Helgren that had been withheld for over two months. In this report Detective Helgren acknowledges a lengthy conversation with Gray that discussed Davis and the Lic Squad.
Gray claimed that the report mischaracterized and omitted aspects of the conversation that would be confirmed, if one reviewed the video recording referenced in Helgren’s report. However, both Helgren and Stephan took strong exception to this claim because they vehemently denied that a video recording existed, and asserted that they should be taken at their word. They claimed there was no recording despite what was said in the report because an unnamed police officer was responsible.
Over their objection, the court ordered that the unnamed officer be identified. This led to Stephan and Helgren acknowledging, roughly two weeks later, that in fact the video recording indeed existed and had been sitting on Helgren’s desk for the previous 2 ½ months.
It gets worse…
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