On the evening of April 12, 1998—Easter Sunday—21-year-old Duane Harris and his two-year-old daughter paid a visit to Nancy Ellis, a friend who lived in the 14700 block of Woodmont Avenue in Detroit Michigan. While he was there, Ellis’s former boyfriend, Kenyatta Simons, came to the house.
According to trial testimony, Simons and Ellis exchanged words regarding Harris’s presence. At one point, Simons pushed Ellis in the face and threatened to shoot Harris. Not long after, shortly after 8 p.m., Harris and his daughter left and got into a car that pulled up. Harris left behind the green Pontiac Grand Prix that he used to come to Ellis’s home.
Witness accounts differed. Some said that a burgundy Chevrolet Impala pulled up and Harris and his daughter got in and the car left. Others said that a man with a red shirt, jeans, and a red hat got out of the front passenger seat of the Impala and began firing a gun.
Eighteen-year-old Kenneth Tinsley was shot in the chest and died on the street. Two others were wounded. Twenty-one-year-old Michael Hearn was shot in the neck and the arm. Nine-year-old Tiffany Smith was shot in the hip while she was on her bike. Both survived.
Nancy Ellis and her sister, Adrienne, who lived with Nancy, were taken to the Detroit police station where they were questioned. In their initial statements, neither was able to identify the gunman. However, after being interrogated all night, they gave subsequent statements implicating 21-year-old Roy Blackman in the shooting. Both would later testify that police officers, including Detective Barbara Simon, coerced them into changing their statements by threatening to charge them with being an accessory to murder. Nancy Ellis said that Detective Dale Collins threatened to take away her children unless she implicated Blackman.
Hearn, who knew Blackman, was questioned by police at the hospital. He gave a description of the shooter, but gave no indication that the shooter was familiar to him.
However, on April 20, 1998, police brought Hearn, who had been released from the hospital with the bullet still lodged in his neck, to the police station. Arthur Anderson, a friend who had been on the street at the time of the shooting but escaped unharmed, was brought in as well. There, they viewed a live lineup. Both separately identified Blackman as the shooter.
On April 21, 1998, the police arrested Blackman. He was charged under the name Roy Blackmon with second-degree murder, two counts of assault with intent to do great bodily harm, and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. The police also charged Harris, but after nearly three weeks in jail, the case against Harris was dismissed at a preliminary hearing for lack of evidence, and he was released.
Blackman’s trial was scheduled for August 1998, but when prosecution witnesses failed to show up, the trial was postponed and Blackman was released on bond.
On March 24, 1999, Blackman went to trial before a jury in Wayne County, Michigan. Third Judicial Circuit Judge Daniel Ryan presided.
The prosecutor, Robert Stevens, contended that Blackman was a member of the Schoolcraft Boys, a street gang, and that he had been summoned to help Harris after Harris had been threatened by Simons. Stevens predicted, accurately, that some of the prosecution witnesses would change their accounts at trial.
Blackman’s attorney, Steven Fishman, told the jury that the case would rely on the credibility of the witnesses. In fact, no police officers were called to testify at the trial.
Hearn testified and said that he had identified Blackman in the lineup. He admitted that he first told police he didn’t know who the shooter was, even though he knew Blackman prior to the shooting. In response to a question by the prosecutor, Hearn also said that he “would put” Blackman with the Schoolcraft gang.
Fishman made the first of what would be repeated objections to references to the Schoolcraft gang as prejudicial. Outside the presence of the jury, Fishman said, “The existence or non-existence of a gang or group called the Schoolcraft Boys or the membership or non-membership in a group called the Schoolcraft Boys has absolutely nothing to do with this case.”
Judge Ryan overruled the objection, saying, “I don't find that the reference so far has been unduly prejudicial, and, in fact, I believe it is relevant for purposes of identification and how this witness knew Mr. Blackm[a]n.”
During cross-examination, Fishman asked, “[W]hy is it that when you talked to the police officers at length the day after the shooting that you didn't tell [the police] the person who did the shooting is Roy, a guy I’ve known for a long time, why?”
“Why?” Hearn replied. “I’m not sure. I think I had to make sure that it was the right person.”
Arthur Anderson testified that he identified Blackman in the lineup. He also said that he felt “intimidated” by the police. Anderson said that he was at Hearn’s home when the lead detective in the case, Ernest Wilson, called to tell Hearn to come in to view a lineup. Anderson said that Hearn handed him the phone. Anderson quoted Wilson as saying, “I heard you went to high [school] with Roy or something like that, like you knew him.’”
“And I said yeah,” Anderson continued. “And he asked, ‘Do you know… how he look[s], no matter what?’ And I said, yeah, I know how he look[s]. And then he said, ‘Well, would you be able…to tell me who he is and pick him up out of a line-up?’ I said, yeah, I probably would. And he said, ‘Well, I (will) be there to get you.’”
After the lineup, Anderson said Wilson told him that unless he gave a statement implicating Blackman, he would be charged in the crime. Afterward, Anderson was arrested and held on a detainer until the trial.
Tiffany Smith testified about being shot while on her bike. She said that in the days after the shooting, someone had scrawled “R.I.P. Tiffany” on the slide at the playground of her school. She said that underneath was written “Schoolcraft gang.”
Nancy Ellis, who was 20 years old at the time of the shooting, testified that she and Simons had recently broken up. She said that Harris was just a friend. She said that during the confrontation in front of the house with Simons, Simons said “to tell [Harris] when he come outside, he getting bust at.” She said she understood that to mean Harris would get shot at.
Ellis said that in her first statement she did not identify the shooter. However, several hours later, after the police threatened to take her children from her, she signed a second statement. In this statement, she said that after the shooting, someone called to ask about the car Harris left in. Ellis said she told the caller about the shooting and the caller said, “You don’t know me,” and “I wasn’t there.” In the statement, she said she recognized the voice as Blackman. On the witness stand, she denied saying the caller was Blackman, and said she didn’t know who the caller was.
She said she gave the second statement after Detective Dale Collins “said I wasn’t going to be able to see my children, I was going to be charged with accessory to murder and [I] wasn't going home until [I] told them what they wanted to hear.”
She said that Collins told her that her sister, Adrienne, had identified Blackman as the shooter.
“I said if she said it, then okay,” Ellis testified. She added that Collins said that even if she denied that Blackman was the shooter, the police were going to report that she had identified him.
Adrienne Ellis, who was 22 at the time of the shooting, testified that in her initial statement she had described the shooter, but had said she did not know who he was. However, after Detective Simon told her that Nancy had identified Blackman as the shooter, and after Simon threatened to charge her with being an accessory to murder, she signed a second statement falsely implicating Blackman.
Prosecutor Stevens asked, “So, if you’re lying to the police, then you basically (were) pinning a murder on someone named Roy Blackman…?”
“Yeah,” Adrienne Ellis said.
“You had no problem pinning Roy in your statement?” the prosecutor asked.
“I did have a problem with it,” Adrienne Ellis replied. “But I did what I had to do to go home. I wasn’t going to jail.”
For each of the witnesses, the prosecutor was allowed to impeach their trial testimony with their prior statements identifying Blackman.
Blackman testified and denied he was involved in the shooting. He said he was at home by himself at the time of the crime.
On March 31, 1999, the jury convicted Blackman of second-degree murder, two counts of assault with intent to commit bodily harm, and use of a firearm in the commission of a felony. He was sentenced to 42 years to 62 years in prison.
On September 14, 2001, the Michigan Court of Appeals affirmed the conviction. On July 29, 2002, the Michigan Supreme Court denied Blackman's application for leave to appeal.
Later that year, Blackman filed a federal petition for a writ of habeas corpus. On March 19, 2004, the petition was conditionally granted based on the prosecution’s prejudicial injection of the Schoolcraft gang into the trial.
On December 29, 2004, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit reversed and ruled that certain claims had not been correctly presented in the state court prior to filing in federal court.
On May 3, 2005, Blackman filed a motion for relief from judgment in Wayne County Circuit court. On February 2, 2006, the motion was denied. Blackman applied for leave to appeal and on September 15, 2006, the Michigan Court of Appeals denied the application.
On May 4, 2007, the Michigan Supreme Court remanded the case to the Michigan Court of Appeals to hear the appeal. On August 19, 2008, the Michigan Court of Appeals denied it.
On June 24, 2009, Blackman moved to reopen his federal habeas corpus petition. On December 22, 2010, Blackman's petition was conditionally granted, and on March 24, 2011, he was released from prison on bond.
The prosecution appealed and on October 19, 2012, the Sixth Circuit reversed and directed that the habeas petition be dismissed. As a result on November 23, 2012, Blackman self-reported back to prison.
On March 4, 2013, the U.S. Supreme Court denied Blackman’s petition for a writ of certiorari.
In 2021, the Michigan Innocence Clinic (MIC) at the University of Michigan law school began investigating Blackman’s case and uncovered the evidence of the threats and coercion by the detectives, in particular, Barbara Simon.
That same year, in the case of Mark Craighead, the Michigan Court of Appeals had ruled that newly discovered evidence of Simon’s prior possible misconduct was admissible “to establish a scheme, plan, or system to obtain false confessions,” and that the evidence could be used to establish her character for untruthfulness.
MIC attorney Olivia Vigiletti presented evidence to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU), contending that the police had orchestrated a false narrative to falsely convict Blackman.
During the CIU’s examination of the case, investigators identified the owner of the green Grand Prix that Harris had left behind on the day of the shooting as Ron Anderson. During an interview, Anderson confirmed that he was the person who had called Nancy Ellis after the shooting. The MIC had discovered a police report showing that in 1998, Anderson had told Detective Wilson that he was the one who had made that call. Blackman’s trial attorney, Steven Fishman, said in 2026 that he never received the report at the trial and that if he had received it, he would have used it to cross-examine Nancy Ellis and would have sought to call Anderson as a witness.
As a result, the MIC and the CIU filed a joint order to vacate Blackman’s conviction and sentence. By that time, six men had been exonerated after they were wrongly convicted based in part on misconduct by Simon, including Gregory Berry, George Calicut Jr., Mark Craighead, Justly Johnson, Lamarr Monson, and Kendrick Scott.
The order said that the police charged Blackman even though “[m]ultiple witnesses” told the police that the shooter had emerged from the Ellis residence, walked one house down the street and opened fire with a gun, aiming for Kenyatta Simons, who was not struck. “However, none of these witnesses testified at the trial,” the order said.
On March 31, 2026, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Bridget Hathaway signed the order and Blackman’s case was dismissed. Blackman was released 27 years to the day from his conviction.
In 2025, while in prison, Blackman earned an associate’s degree in faith and community leadership from Calvin University in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Upon his release, he said he intended to complete a bachelor’s degree in applied leadership at Calvin.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 04-21-2026
