LAKE DALLAS, Texas — The Denton County District Attorney's Office called the Lake Dallas Police Department's handling of evidence in a murder "negligent" days after a judge threw out the case before it went to trial.
The rare move to dismiss the murder case in a pre-trial hearing came after several lengthy delays and "evidentiary failings" on the part of the police department, the judge's docket notes indicated.
The suspect in the case, Brandon Johnson, was released from jail. His attorney said he was "in tears" as the judge made the ruling.
"He maintained his innocence from the beginning," Rebecca Lively said. "There is a very good chance that Brandon could be spending the rest of his life in jail because of the tunnel vision of a couple of detectives who just didn’t feel like doing the actual work."
The Lake Dallas Police chief said in an email to WFAA that he was unable to comment on the case because the judge's ruling could be appealed.
In the early morning hours of February 6,2021 Lake Dallas Police said officers responded to the Lakeshore Apartments on Swisher Road. They found Michael Darrough, 38, shot in the parking lot and brought him to the hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Johnson was booked later that spring, records indicate. Lively was appointed by the judge to serve as his defense counsel and raised concerns about the evidence she was receiving in the discovery process.
"I gave the state a list of 17 categories of evidence that were missing that were mentioned in other parts of the discovery," she said. "Where is everything?"
She said the Lake Dallas Police Department was not turning evidence over to the district attorney's office, which in turn was not then able to pass it along to her.
"It happens and more frequently than people would know," First Assistant District Attorney Jamie Beck said.
Beck said DA's office investigators went to the Lake Dallas department personally and copied two terabytes of data from the department's hard drives -- including some evidence they previously had and a "substantial amount" of new evidence.
When Lively received the files, she said she was furious.
"I was overwhelmed because this was two weeks before trial and I was furious because it contained so much evidence that I had never seen before," she said.
Lively said the evidence included timelines of the crime, phone records, photos, and witness interviews to which she did not previously have access.
"One of the things I found that was most egregious was evidence of a viable alternative suspect that was exculpatory -- meaning that it could’ve proven the innocence of my client," she said. "That evidence had never been turned over to the district attorney’s office, which meant I never knew anything about it."
In an August hearing where Lively said she pointed this out, Judge Steve Burgess wrote in his docket notes "The police department JUST turned over further evidence."
He reset the trial to February "based on the evidentiary failings of the police department." On February 1, he ruled in favor of Lively's motion to dismiss "due to due process violation," records indicate.
Burgess called the police department's conduct "reckless," attorneys for both sides said. Beck said the DA's office would not agree with that term, but called the department "negligent."
"It’s devastating. We are here to seek justice and to get justice for victim’s families. Somebody was literally executed out in a parking lot and we can’t move forward at this time because of these issues," Beck said.
She said the DA's office was not giving up on the case and was examining whether it would appeal Burgess' ruling.
"It could have an impact on other situations," Beck said, noting that Johnson's co-defendant was also asking for a dismissal following Burgess' ruling. "It's extremely frustrating."
Lively, by contrast, called it a relief -- for her and her client.
"Whether it's intentional or not intentional or negligent or just complete absence of thought, it doesn’t matter," she said. "You’ve just had a person sitting in jail for almost three years because you didn’t do your job."