Savannah homicide detectives regularly withheld evidence from defendants, filing alleges

A man wrongfully imprisoned for nearly two years in a murder case is accusing Savannah Police Department homicide detectives of routinely withholding evidence from defendants.

The claims came from Marquis Parrish and Tyesha Love, a married couple suing the City of Savannah after Parrish was wrongfully accused by former SPD Homicide Detective Ashley Wood as taking part in the 2021 murder of Charles Vinson near Tremont Park. Wood wrote in search warrant affidavits and testified to a grand jury that Parrish was caught on surveillance footage related to the crime, when he was not on the video at all, according to court documents. 

Prosecutors dropped all charges against Parrish, and he filed a civil rights lawsuit in September 2023 against Wood and the City of Savannah, which runs the police department. Wood herself was fired by the department, then reinstated by a separate employment board as a code compliance officer. 

Last May, a Chatham County grand jury indicted Wood on charges related to police misconduct in Parrish’s case and two others. Wood has pleaded not guilty.

Joshua Peacock, a spokesperson for the city, said the city does not comment “on active or pending litigation.”

The 26-page motion filed in the U.S. District of Southern Georgia on Tuesday by Parrish’s attorneys, James Shipley and John Manly, said Wood’s actions reflected a larger pattern by the police department’s homicide unit at the time. 

While Parrish sat in jail, Wood failed to disclose 34 search warrant “returns” with the court with the physical and digital evidence against him, according to the motion. 

Judges sign off on search warrants by police, who testify that they believe a crime has occurred and a warrant is necessary to secure evidence of that crime. 

So-called search warrant returns let a judge, prosecutors and defense attorneys know whether the warrant was executed or not, as well as what evidence was seized or searched. They are required by law. 

“If you haven’t returned a search warrant, the Court has no record of it because, right or wrong, the original warrant is placed back in your hands as a detective,” Chatham County District Attorney’s Office Investigator Alan Sammons said in a deposition about his review of the Wood case.

Because Wood never sent those returns, nobody outside of the police department would know about the problems with the evidence, Parrish’s lawyers contend. 

According to depositions of Savannah police detectives from the homicide unit, it was part of their policy to hold on to that evidence for as long as possible until just before trial. They include depositions of Lt. Zachary Burdette, who oversaw the homicide unit in 2022, and Sgt. Nicole Khaalis, who currently oversees the unit. 

The practice “ultimately result(s) in criminal defendants being jailed for months and years without probable cause and all while evidence which would have required their release remained in the possession of SPD and hidden from review and scrutiny,” Shipley wrote.

The motion also cites how the hidden evidence practices manifested in similar past cases, including that of a 22-year-old man named Trevor Cannon who was accused of driving recklessly in Savannah in 2013 and killing two people in a crash. 

He was convicted, but the discovery of missing evidence by Savannah police during a civil lawsuit led Cannon to receive a new trial and his charges being dismissed. The city paid Cannon $300,000 in 2020 to settle all claims, according to city records. 

The other case involves Malik Khaalis, where missing evidence came up during trial and led Chatham County Judge Timothy Walmsley to declare a mistrial in July 2015. 

Different theory

The City of Savannah tells a different story of what happened with the evidence involving Parrish.

Issues could have been caught earlier if it weren’t for ineffective representation by Parrish’s first lawyer, Solomon Amusan, and early dysfunction in the office of Chatham DA Shalena Cook Jones, according to an attorney representing the city, Taylor Dove.

“For over a year, Parrish’s criminal case remained stagnant based upon what appears to be a combination of ineffective assistance of counsel by Parrish’s criminal counsel, turnover in the DA’s Office and general case mismanagement within the DA’s Office,” Dove wrote last month. 

The city is requesting U.S. District Judge J. Randal Hall to dismiss the lawsuit. 

Its  lawyers state the blame falls on Wood and not on the department.

“There is certainly no evidence that such action was taken in furtherance of an unofficial custom or practice within the SPD,” they wrote. “In fact, the evidence shows that such behavior was not tolerated as Defendant Wood was terminated as a result.”