By P.D. Lesko
If Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Deputy and alleged rapist D’Angelo McWilliams were a vegetable, he’d be a potato–a very, very hot potato. McWilliams’s hiring and trial are not only a problem for the current County Sheriff, but also the Sheriff’s Dir. of Community Engagement Derrick Jackson. Jackson is presently running for Sheriff. McWilliams was investigated while a student at Eastern Michigan University over allegations of rapes/gang rapes perpetrated between 2015-2018.
A police detective involved in the McWilliams investigation says Derrick Jackson was made aware of the troubling contents of McWilliams’s background check.
The Ann Arbor Independent filed a Freedom of Information Act request to obtain Billig’s background check of McWilliams. Sheriff Jerry Clayton in refusing to release the public record said McWilliams’s privacy outweighed the public’s need to know.
The detective says despite the red flags in McWilliams’s background check, Derrick Jackson and Sheriff Clayton greenlit McWilliams’s hiring in May 2019.
Fourteen months later, when the McWilliams’s arraignment on a dozen charges, including multiple CSC First Degree charges blew up in the media, the Sheriff and his Dir. of Community Engagement covered up the fact they had ignored the man’s background check.
The Detroit News reported on Aug. 5, 2020, “The department was ‘just finding out about the allegations,’ and when it did, it suspended D’Angelo McWilliams immediately, said Derrick Jackson, community engagement director for the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office.”
Clayton, through a public statement delivered by Jackson, purported to have known nothing about the EMU Police Dept./Ypsilanti Police Dept. investigations of McWilliams prior to his hiring. The truth is inconvenient: when D’Angelo McWilliams had applied for a job at the Sheriff’s Dept. in May 2019, he was under investigation by the Ypsilanti Police Dept. for involvement in campus rapes that occurred between 2015-2018.
One of the detectives who investigated McWilliams’s alleged involvement in raping/gang raping four co-eds says Derrick Jackson was told in May 2019 about McWilliams’s troubling background check, which included information about criminal acts and criminal investigations.
Yet, Jackson told The Detroit News on Aug. 5, 2020, “We’re taking the allegations very seriously.”
“Not seriously enough,” said a Sheriff’s Deputy who asked to remain anonymous. “to not give McWilliams a uniform, a badge and a gun until the YPD investigation was complete.”
The timing of McWilliams’s arraignment by the former Washtenaw County Prosecutor Brian Mackie is also suspect. The alleged rapist’s arraignment took place one day after the Sheriff’s Aug. 4, 2020 contested primary election.
Ken Magee, who ran against Clayton in the Aug. 4, 2020 primary election, said when asked if he’d realized the timing of the primary election and McWilliams’s arraignment, “That had to have been planned. That’s so unbelievable, [or rather] I should have said believable.”
Magee is running in the 2024 Democratic primary election for Sheriff, as are Alyshia Dyer and Derrick Jackson.
Magee and Dyer have both spoken in public about what they allege is pervasive corruption within the Sheriff’s Dept.
On Aug. 5, 2020, fourteen months after he hired an alleged serial rapist under investigation by the Ypsilanti Police Dept., the Sheriff publicly put Deputy D’Angelo McWilliams on unpaid leave.
A Prosecutorial Dumpster Fire
The McWilliams case file 20-000433-FC is a page-turner.
McWilliams was arraigned in Aug. 2020. It’s 2024, and D’Angelo LaDonn McWilliams is still awaiting trial. The alleged victims are still waiting for their day in court, as well. Two of the alleged rape victims are slated to testify at the trial.
On Mar. 22, 2024, D’Angelo McWilliams’s attorney submitted a “Brief Regarding Evidentiary Hearing” to 39th Circuit Court Judge Michael R. Olsaver in which Douglas Gutscher argues the charges against McWilliams should be dropped due to prosecutorial misconduct.
Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Deputy D’Angelo McWilliams’s case file reveals the details of the prosecutorial dumpster fire. If the defense attorney’s Mar. 22, 2024 “Brief Regarding Evidentiary Hearing” is accurate, this dumpster fire wasn’t an accident, but rather arson. A dumpster fire that involves the offices of County Prosecutors Brian Mackie and Eli Savit, a cover-up by the former Chief of the Eastern Michigan University Police Dept. and allegations of systematic destruction of evidence by the investigating detective then employed by the Ypsilanti Police Dept,’s Detective Bureau.
In Feb. 2024, EMU paid a $6.8 million settlement to 23 women and one man named in federal lawsuits. University officials were accused of mishandling sexual assault complaints.
The McWilliams case file suggests the first person accused of starting the dumpster fire is former Asst. County Prosecutor John P. Vella. Vella is now in private practice; state records show his business (The Vella Lawfirm, PLLC, was registered in July 2021). Since Oct. 2021, court records show Vella has handled 25 cases in the Washtenaw County Trial Court, primarily divorces.
Vella, the McWilliams case file reveals, stands accused of failing to turn over evidence in response to two requests for Discovery by Gutscher. This evidence includes recordings of victim interviews which EMU Det. Sgt. Susan McLennan told Judge Darlene O’Brien were never made, in response to questions from Gutscher during a hearing. Then, YPD Det. Jessica Lowry said while being questioned during a different hearing before O’Brien that Lowry had recorded the victim interviews, but that the recorded interviews had not been “retained.”
Court transcripts show Lowry, facing questions about why she had not “retained” the evidence, went on to say that she had followed protocol put into place by the YPD’s head of the Detective Bureau, former Det. Annette Coppock. Victim interviews were recorded only to help with accurately filling out paper reports. After the paper reports were filed, recordings were then destroyed, as per policy instituted by Coppock.
Annette Coppock, who is retired, when told of Lowry’s claim said the accusation was “total bullshit.”
Prior to Susan McLennan’s testimony in which she had told Judge O’Brien and Gutscher that no victim recordings existed, Coppock and McLennan had discussed the victim recordings in a conversation which Coppock had recorded.
Through Discovery, Gutscher had asked for Coppock’s recording of her conversation with McLennan, but according to Gutscher’s Mar. 22, 2024 “Brief Regarding Evidentiary Hearing,” the prosecution never turned over that recording.
Dr. Kimberly A. Lonsway has served as the Director of Research for the organization End Violence Against Women since 2004. Her research focuses on sexual violence and the criminal justice and community response system. She says, “Clearly, best practice is to document all of the information from the victim interview, and the only way to do so is to record it. Any problems that this may pose for the
investigation and prosecution must simply be dealt with, as investigators uncover the details of the sexual assault.”
The McWilliams case file shows Vella told McWilliams’s attorney he would turn over the requested recordings that had inadvertently left out of the first Discovery response. According to Gutscher’s Mar. 22, 2024 Brief, Vella did not do so.
It’s unclear whether John Vella knew the evidence Gutscher had requested had allegedly been destroyed by the investigating detective Jessica Lowry.
Vella did not respond to multiple emails and phone messages.
Jessica Lowry is no longer with the Ypsilanti Police Dept.
Then, in 2022, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel took over the prosecution of McWilliams from County Prosecutor Eli Savit.
Politics and Postponements
In August 2020, Trial Court Judge Darlene O’Brien (the first of three County judges assigned to the case) set McWilliams’s bond at $50,000/10%. McWilliams paid his $5,000 and has been free in his community since being charged with, and arraigned on 12 crimes, including CSC 1st degree. In Nov. 2022, after Asst. AG Kelly A. Carter was appointed by AG Dana Nessel to take over the prosecution of McWilliams, court records show Carter dropped four charges: one CSC First Degree, two counts of Indecent Exposure and one count of Assault or Assault and Battery.
- D’Angelo McWilliams’s attorney has alleged years of unconstitutional delays.
- While the alleged victims and McWilliams await justice, there have been four years of postponed hearings, legal wrangling and more than 50 prosecutorial rescheduled court dates.
- Court records show McWilliams’s Aug. 5, 2021 Pre-Trial Hearing was postponed nine times and the date and time reset by the Court four times.
- McWilliams’s Pre-Trial hearing was finally held in Oct. 2022. McWilliams’s Jury Trial was scheduled and canceled three times by three different judges.
- In May 2023, while urging Judge O’Brien to stick to a May 2023 trial date, a court hearing transcript reveals defense attorney Douglas Gutscher told O’Brien that the defendant is “entitled to a speedy trial.” The Prosecutor assigned by AG Dana Nessel, Kelly A. Carter, asked Judge O’Brien to postpone the scheduled May 8, 2023 jury trial. Carter’s request was granted.
- Court records show Asst. County Prosecutor John Vella filed over a dozen requests for postponements.
- The McWilliams case file includes over a dozen Motions, over half a dozen Briefs, nine Orders and documents dozens of postponements and rescheduled hearings.
The Deputy’s case has been dragged out so long that the Sheriff was re-elected in Nov. 2020, will finish out his term and announced in 2023 that he wasn’t running for re-election in 2024. County Prosecutor Savit’s foot-dragging in the McWilliams stands in stark contrast to his concierge service provided in 2022 to a college basketball start. Savit got basketball star Emoni Bates through the Trial Court in one month, when the young man was charged in Sept. 2022 with:
- Carrying a concealed weapon (felony)
- Carrying a weapon with a filed/altered serial number (felony and a federal offense)
- Carrying a loaded firearm (misdemeanor)
On Oct. 6, 2022, the player was arraigned then released on a $5,000 PR bond.
On Oct. 13, 2022 the player was reinstated to the basketball team just in time for the season opener: case closed.
In 2022, an External Review of Eastern Michigan University’s investigation and handling of an investigation into three students accused of being serial rapists was published online by law firm Cozen O’Connor. The report exculpated university officials accused of repeatedly mishandling sexual assault allegations, including allegations against D’Angelo McWilliams.
Both Sheriff Clayton and Derrick Jackson were asked via to comment on their decision to hire D’Angelo McWilliams despite the red flags that popped up during his background check. Neither responded.
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