Our clients were innocent. Now Tulsa will pay millions.
By G.W. Schulz
Norwood.Law is getting two men the compensation they deserve after spending two decades in Oklahoma’s unforgiving prison system for a murder they didn’t commit.
A Tulsa judge in 2016 declared Malcolm Scott and Demarchoe Carpenter innocent of a deadly driveby shooting. The two men were just 18 when they were sent to prison.
Now the Tulsa City Council is approving a $15 million settlement for Carpenter and Scott after the judge freed them from the 1994 assault. A 19-year-old woman had been killed. Two others were injured.
Our earlier lawsuit named police and the city of Tulsa. Now local officials acknowledge that going to trial instead of settling could have resulted in a much bigger cost to taxpayers.
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Darling
The story of Demarchoe Carpenter and Malcolm Scott doesn’t end with the settlement.
Shockingly, Tulsa police also tried to send one of the two men, Demarchoe Carpenter, back to prison in a new case that was just as troubling as the first. By the end, Tulsa law enforcers had lost again.
An important new character emerged in Carpenter’s second case.
The handsome lead investigator from the Tulsa Police Department was also a celebrity on the police-reality show “Live PD” and a darling of social media.
The two cases have important parallels. There was no physical evidence. The crimes occurred in dark, nighttime conditions. The few witnesses were sketchy.
Shadow
This isn’t the first time Norwood.Law has helped free innocent people who were wrongfully confined for decades.
- Client Glynn Simmons is entered into the National Registry of Exonerations as the longest-serving wrongfully convicted man in America at 48 years.
- A total of five Norwood.Law clients (all black) were wrongfully convicted in four individual cases. Freeing them has earned us national media attention.
- These erroneous convictions led to 30 years in prison for Perry Lott, 28 for Corey Atchison, and 22 for Demarchoe Carpenter and Malcolm Scott.
Other wrongful convictions in recent decades have cast a shadow over Oklahoma.
There are some 3,700 entries in the National Registry of Exonerations.
Drive-by
The Oklahoma Court of Criminal Appeals eventually demolished the government’s position in the Carpenter and Scott case from 1994. But it took two decades.
The appeals judges concluded in a 2016 ruling that the government’s case was “weak” and that the evidence “did nothing to strengthen the state’s position.”
On the night of the 1994 drive-by killing, someone shot into a crowd of party goers in north Tulsa. A 19-year-old woman was killed and two people were injured.
Malcolm Scott and Demarchoe Carpenter were blamed for the murder and sentenced to life in prison.
It took year after year to finally prove police had been wrong all along.
From our application for post-conviction relief:
“The shooting occurred in less than a minute, the shooting occurred at night, and the actual perpetrators were in the backseat of an automobile moving further and further away from the eyewitnesses.”
Despite the eventual innocence declaration for Scott and Carpenter, it took another eight years before their civil lawsuit for wrongful conviction against Tulsa and police reached a conclusion.
It hadn’t been solely a lack of training and technology. There were human mistakes.
One glaring example is a Tulsa police detective closing the case before the ballistics test could be completed. That ballistics test eventually revealed that the projectile found in murder victim Karen Summers was shot from the gun of a third person.
And that third person was not Malcolm Scott or Demarchoe Carpenter.
Collapsed
After Demarchoe Carpenter and Malcolm Scott were declared innocent and released, police in Tulsa made a stunning move.
They attempted to send one of the two men, Demarchoe Carpenter, back to prison in a new case alleging attempted murder.
But with Joe Norwood and Norwood.Law at Carpenter’s side, the government’s case fell to pieces.
Lead police investigator Sean Larkin had taken the case to local prosecutors with no physical evidence and only one witness.
This witness was also the victim who’d been shot five times.
The victim’s name was Sheldon Reed. He would testify in court that Demarchoe Carpenter was the one who shot him.
But according to court records, Reed couldn’t say who shot him when he first called 911.
Amid all of this, the attractive lead investigator, Sean Larkin, was becoming a star on social media and police-reality TV. He was also a podcaster and wrote a book.
Lt. Larkin would say under oath that he knew who committed the crime after interviewing only the victim.
Brothers
Somehow, this story gets even worse.
Malcolm Scott’s own brother, Norwood.Law client Corey Atchison, was sent to prison in an entirely separate case of wrongful conviction.
It happened four years before brother Malcolm Scott was ensnared in the 1994 driveby shooting.
Brother Corey Atchison had to wait nearly three decades before finding justice in 2019. As in our other cases, there was no physical evidence.
Three witnesses in the case later recanted statements they made against Corey Atchison, who was 19 at the time of the alleged crime. All three witnesses said they had been coerced by the government to blame Atchison for a 1990 murder in Tulsa.
There was even an alternate suspect. At the outset of the investigation, a witness gave the name of a lifetime criminal to police. The name of this person was kept secret from Corey Atchison for years.
And there’s no evidence that investigators ever seriously entertained this alternate suspect.
Said the judge who eventually set Atchison free:
“This court thinks the purported eyewitnesses who were used were coerced. Without those witnesses, I don’t think a jury would have found Mr. Atchison guilty of this crime.”
In both cases, prosecutors had cast brothers Corey Atchison and Malcolm Scott as ruthless criminals.
But Corey Atchison’s sentence was vacated in 2019 by a Tulsa County judge, and he was found actually innocent by clear and convincing evidence.
Next we helped Atchison file a federal civil rights lawsuit against the government in 2021.
Darkness
So what happened with Demarchoe Carpenter, Malcolm Scott, and the 1994 drive-by shooting?
In May of 2016, after more than 20 years of trying to prove their innocence, a Tulsa County judge ruled that Carpenter and Scott – by “clear and convincing evidence” – were not involved in the murder.
Two witnesses who had initially testified against Carpenter and Scott were now telling a different story. They said police had pressured and coerced them into identifying Scott and Carpenter.
Eventually, the actual shooter confessed. That man, Michael Wilson, would say that he couldn’t believe police had overlooked him for so long.
The gun and car used in the drive-by had been traced to Michael Wilson, not Demarchoe Carpenter or Michael Scott.
Michael Wilson admitted to the drive-by while he was awaiting execution in another case for beating a convenience store clerk to death. He said in the moments before his execution:
“Malcom Scott and Demarchoe Carpenter are innocent.”
Police nonetheless had kept their attention focused on Carpenter and Scott during the investigation.
Sticks
After he was set free, a new frightening reality descended over Demarchoe Carpenter.
Carpenter was being accused of murder once again. The outcome looked grim. He was up against a good-looking lead investigator from the Tulsa Police Department.
The detective was also the star of a police-reality show and adored on social media.
But the jury wasn’t impressed and wouldn’t just do what the government wanted. They wouldn’t send Carpenter back to prison again for a crime he didn’t commit.
The only witness in Demarchoe Carpenter’s new case was also the victim, Sheldon Reed, who’d been shot five times without being killed.
When asked who shot him, Reed first told police he didn’t know. He also allegedly told a witness he didn’t know and that he was being pressured to point the blame at Carpenter.
In court, Tulsa police Lt. Sean “Sticks” Larkin, who was the lead detective in the case, testified that he didn’t know Sheldon Reed.
That’s when Lt. Larkin had to be reminded under oath that in fact he had arrested Sheldon Reed in 2005 on a felony charge.
Shortly after the jury ruled in favor of Demarchoe Carpenter, Sean Larkin left the Tulsa Police Department.
Joseph M. Norwood is a Tulsa attorney with the courtroom expertise you need. Contact his office at 918-582-6464.