An Atlanta police detective can’t escape a civil lawsuit brought by a wrongfully accused man who spent 15 months in jail as the suspect in his parents’ deaths, a federal appeals court has ruled, reviving the case.
Detective James Barnett omitted key facts in his affidavit supporting the arrest warrant for Keith Sylvester, whose mother and stepfather were found strangled and burned to death in their northwest Atlanta home, court records show.
On Monday, a three-judge panel of the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals said a reasonable jury could find that Barnett intentionally or recklessly left out information that exonerated Sylvester. The judges said that if the omissions in Barnett’s affidavit were corrected, his reasoning for arresting Sylvester “fails to establish even arguable probable cause.”
“When Detective Barnett submitted his affidavit, a great deal of evidence tending to exonerate Sylvester had already come to light,” the judges said. “Yet, none of that evidence was included in the affidavit.”
Sylvester discussed the matter during a 2020 interview with The Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
“When (the detective) presented me with a citation and told me that I was under arrest for the murder of my parents, I thought it was a trick for him to try to get more information,” Sylvester said then. “I was thinking that this was a mistake. They were going to realize something, and I was going to be out of there pretty soon. I was thinking I was going to get out within a couple of days.”
Instead, he spent more than a year behind bars.
“I prayed a lot,” he said. “I would cry when I was alone in my cell.”
A federal judge in Atlanta had tossed Sylvester’s malicious prosecution case against Barnett, finding in August 2022 that the detective had probable cause to arrest Sylvester in the deaths of Deborah and Harry Hubbard. The judge said Barnett was therefore entitled to immunity on the claim that he violated Sylvester’s constitutional right to be free from unreasonable seizures.
That decision was reversed by the appellate panel, which noted that “many important statements in (Barnett’s) affidavit are seriously misleading.”
Zack Greenamyre, an attorney for Sylvester, said he hopes the case goes before a jury.
“Keith is still dealing with the effects of this every day,” Greenamyre told the AJC. “He feels like there will always be a cloud hanging over him. The Court of Appeals decision helps to lift that to some degree, but his search for justice is still ongoing.”
Barnett handled the investigation into the Hubbards’ deaths in July 2018 and determined Sylvester was to blame, the appeals court said.
It said evidence showed that the Hubbards were strangled and their home set alight shortly before 4 a.m. on July 3, 2018, and that Sylvester hadn’t set foot inside the house after 9 p.m. the night before. Barnett knew this but didn’t include it in Sylvester’s arrest warrant, the court said.
Barnett’s theory that Sylvester strangled his parents and started a “slow burn” fire before leaving their home around 9 p.m. is contradicted by the evidence, the court held. It said Barnett knew that Harry Hubbard had called his niece at 9:30 p.m. on July 2, 2018, showing no sign of distress, and that Barnett excluded that information from the warrant.
Autopsies revealed the Hubbards were alive and likely unconscious from being strangled when the fire started, the court noted, adding that fire investigators determined the fire started shortly before 4 a.m. on July 3, 2018.
In seeking Sylvester’s arrest, Barnett alleged in part that Sylvester was motivated by a home insurance policy payout and that he had purchased mothballs and rubbing alcohol the day before the fire. But Barnett failed to disclose that the mothballs were discovered in unopened boxes on the Hubbards’ kitchen counter after the fire, and that arson investigators found no trace of alcohol as a possible accelerant.
The court said Barnett’s knowledge of some of the information exonerating Sylvester is beyond dispute. It said Barnett had no reason to doubt Sylvester’s movements on July 2 and 3 of 2018, which were corroborated by video footage and cellphone location data.
“This isn’t a case in which a police officer harbored doubts about a suspect’s alibi,” the court said. “Instead, Detective Barnett concedes that Sylvester was exactly where he claimed to be when he claimed to be there.”
Sylvester was jailed in December 2018 on murder, arson and aggravated assault charges. Charges were dropped in March 2020.
Cornelius Muckle, who pawned several items belonging to the Hubbards two days after their deaths, was indicted in their deaths in 2021, records show. He is charged with felony murder and other crimes; the state’s case against him remains pending.
A spokesperson for the Atlanta Police Department said it doesn’t comment on pending litigation. Atlanta’s law department is handling Barnett’s defense, records show.
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