A Detroit-area judge on Tuesday overturned the 1999 murder conviction of a man serving a life sentence after prosecutors acknowledged that his confession was coerced by a dishonest police officer.
Additionally, recent DNA testing “further supports the lack of evidence” connecting George Calicut Jr to the murder of Virgie Perkins in her Detroit home, the Wayne County prosecutor’s office and its attorneys said.
Calicut, 56, has been in prison for more than 25 years. He has long professed his innocence (there were no eyewitnesses or physical evidence against him) and said he never saw his alleged confession until the trial.
Calicut’s cleanup “reflects this office’s unwavering commitment to conviction integrity and the credibility of the system,” said Valerie Newman, head of the conviction integrity unit.
The Department of Corrections said Calicut would likely be released from prison within hours.
He was represented by the Innocence Clinic at the University of Michigan Law School. The Cooley Innocence Project at Cooley Law School also played a role.
Calicut was accused of choking Perkins and slitting his throat while stealing money and a phone from her home in 1999. She admitted that she took a phone from Perkins’ son the next day, but said she grabbed it from a vehicle.
At trial, a Detroit homicide investigator, Barbara Simon, acknowledged that she wrote Calicut’s alleged confession before he signed it. Calicut testified in his own defense and denied the claims, but was still convicted of murder and automatically sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
“Simon told Mr. Calicut, who had no prior interactions with police, that he could help him by creating a plea that would reduce the charge to involuntary manslaughter, allowing him to get bail and go home,” prosecutors and Calicut’s attorneys said in a four-page agreement to have the conviction dismissed.
Simon, who is retired from Detroit police, could not immediately be reached for comment. A phone number was left unanswered.
Detroit has spent millions of dollars settling lawsuits related to Simon’s work as a homicide investigator.
Records show that the prosecutor in the Calicut trial was Mike Cox, who later served as Michigan attorney general and is now a Republican candidate for governor. An email seeking comment on the exoneration was not immediately returned.
