The U-M Innocence Clinic
continued
Surprisingly, the prosecutor asks Gholston only a few questions. After all that anxiety, he’s on the stand less than fifteen minutes.
On lunch break, Levine looks visibly relieved. She tells a reporter: “At least I kept my food down.”
Not all challenged convictions, of course, are wrongful. Even DNA tests confirm guilt slightly more often than they establish innocence. As the afternoon session begins, it’s clear that the prosecutor believes that Shannon Gholston was telling the truth when he fingered the Reeds—and is lying now.
Breen calls friends and relatives of the Gholston family to the stand to paint a vivid picture of a family under siege. A coworker of Gholston’s sister Vanessa Isom Jackson testifies that Isom Jackson was often reluctant to go to her Ecorse home for fear of being harassed. Gholston’s sister Sherrie Gholston Truitt says her parents have gotten threatening phone calls, have been followed in their car by Deshawn Reed’s brother Tienail, and have had people ride past their house and shout “Hope you die!”
Another coworker testifies that she was riding with Isom Jackson—with her own autistic child in the back seat—when Tienail Reed’s red Mustang rode menacingly on their rear bumper for several miles.
