The U-M Innocence Clinic

continued

In 2005, Gholston gave a deposition to a private investigator. He said that when he was at the hospital after the shooting “I could remember certain different people coming, like, ‘They said D. Reed shot you, man.’”

“So you never saw Deshawn Reed hanging out the [car] window and shooting you?” he was asked.

“No, I lied. . . . I mean, I just was going by what I heard. . . . I didn’t see him, period. . . . I don’t know who shot me.”

Levine and other students have checked out the crime scene, talked to potential witnesses, and dug up reports and evidence. But Gholston’s testimony is the key to their case. This past December Gholston gave another deposition at the U‑M and again recanted his identification of the Reeds. Still, Levine admitted a few days before the April hearing, “I’m not 100 percent sure of what Shannon will say in open court.” As the Reeds’ advocate, she’s feeling the pressure: “Their lives are in our hands.”

April 1, the courtroom benches fill with dozens of relatives and friends of the Reeds and the Gholstons: the victim’s supporters in the back row, the Reeds’ in front of them. Half of Ecorse, it seems, has a rooting interest in the outcome—it’s the downriver Detroit version of the Hatfields and the McCoys.