Man Accused of 5 Kids' Deaths Freed After 15 Years When Case Evidence Deemed Insufficient

A man who served 15 years in prison for the deaths of five children in Detroit was freed after the charges against him were dismissed for insufficient evidence Thursday.

Juwan Deering maintained he was innocent in connection with a fire that killed five children in Royal Oak Township in suburban Detroit in 2000. There was no one that could identify him as being at the house when the fire started. At the time, authorities said the fire was set as revenge for unpaid drug debts.

However, Oakland County prosecutor Karen McDonald said that law enforcement professionals recently looked at the case and they determined that there was insufficient evidence tying Deering to the fire.

McDonald called the investigation, which ran from 2000 to 2006, "totally compromised by misconduct."

"It's been a hard uphill battle," Deering told the Associated Press outside the courthouse as he was surrounded by family members and other men from the area who had been exonerated of crimes. "The sun couldn't shine on not a brighter day."

Deering praised for McDonald for taking another look at the case. "I told her it took a lot of strength to step up against the status quo," he said.

For more reporting from the Associated Press, see below.

McDonald, who was elected in 2020, took a fresh look at Deering's case at the request of the University of Michigan law school's Innocence Clinic.

Favorable evidence, including statements by a fire survivor, was not shared with his defense lawyer before the 2006 trial, and jurors didn't know that jail informants were given significant benefits for their testimony against Deering, McDonald said.

"There is only one ethical and constitutional remedy," she said in dropping the case.

Law students earlier had been trying to get a new trial for Deering, arguing that the fire analysis was based on "junk science." Those requests were unsuccessful in Michigan's appellate courts.

McDonald said that it's possible the fire was not an arson as Deering's legal team has long maintained. She said that state police are investigating it again.

"Once there was a belief that it was intentionally set, it was solve it at all costs. There was an unchecked culture here," Imran Syed, of the university law school, said. "Cutting corners has enormous consequences."

Deering will not face a second trial, McDonald said. A judge granted her request to close the case a week after Deering's convictions were thrown out at her urging.