A Durham County man alleges in a new federal lawsuit that police detectives used a federal inmate and other witnesses to wrongfully convict him of a 1993 fatal shooting.
Attorneys for Timothy Evans filed the lawsuit on February 20 in U.S. District Court in the Middle District of North Carolina. The lawsuit is against the city of Durham; former Durham police officers Jack Cates Jr. and Erwin Baker; and former probation officer James Edward Melvin II.
In May 2009, a jury convicted Evans of second-degree murder in the fatal shooting of Shelton Lamont Johnson on June 13, 1993 outside of a second-floor apartment. Evans served 13 years before he was released on parole in 2022. In November 2023, Superior Court Judge Edwin G. Wilson overturned Evans’ murder conviction after a key witness, Richard Waller, recanted.
For a decade after Johnson’s death, Durham police had no suspects. It wasn’t until a district attorney wrote in October 2003 to federal inmate Kendrick Doakes that detectives said they got a lead. The lawsuit said that a police detective interviewed Doakes about three separate unsolved homicide cases and that Doakes implicated Evans. There was no follow-up until the summer of 2005, when Cates reopened the Johnson case and assigned Baker to interview Doakes. The lawsuit said Baker wrote a statement that Doakes signed, saying Evans shot Johnson.
Doakes also implicated two other men—Anthony Davenport Sr. and Waller. Both men signed statements implicating Evans in the shooting after Cates and Baker interviewed them, the lawsuit said.
Davenport and Waller were both charged with first-degree murder, but in exchange for their testimony against Evans, they pleaded guilty to lesser charges—Davenport to obstruction of justice and Waller to second-degree murder, the lawsuit said.
The lawsuit also alleges that Melvin served Evans with a notice of probation violation in August 2005, soon after Evans was charged with Johnson’s death, and accuses Melvin of using his position to coerce a false murder confession out of Evans. When Evans refused, Melvin fabricated a confession from Evans, the lawsuit says.
Evans filed a motion for appropriate relief and an evidentiary hearing was held in November 2023. At that hearing, Waller recanted. Davenport died in 2021, but he had testified at Evans’ trial that he felt he had no choice but to sign a police statement implicating Evans. In his order overturning the conviction, Wilson said he was troubled that Durham police detectives relied on Doakes, despite his “questionable truthfulness.”
Wilson ordered a new trial, but Durham County prosecutors dismissed the murder charge against Evans in January 2024.
The lawsuit said Evans’ case is part of a systemic problem involving detectives in the Durham Police Department engaging in misconduct that resulted in wrongful convictions. For example, Cates was one of two officers accused of fabricating witness statements in the case of Kevin Johnson, whose conviction was vacated in 2023 after a key witness recanted.
Durham Police officials referred all questions about the lawsuit to the city attorney’s office. City Attorney Kimberly Rehberg said in a statement that she has reviewed the complaint. She said she has no significant comment on the lawsuit at this time and noted that Cates and Baker are retired.
Cates, who now works for North Carolina Alcohol Law Enforcement, declined to comment. Baker could not immediately be reached for comment. A man who answered a cell phone associated with Melvin repeatedly asked why a reporter was calling and then hung up when asked for comment about the lawsuit.