ATLANTA — After back and forth about whether an Atlanta police officer was ever subpoenaed in a shooting case that left a woman paralyzed, the Fulton County District Attorney's Office is apologizing to the Atlanta Police Department, saying an APD officer, the sole witness in the case, was never aware he had to come to court.
The mishap caused a judge to drop charges against Keymontay Howell, who is accused of a violent armed robbery that left Danielle Whaley paralyzed in a wheelchair.
11Alive's La'Tasha Givens shared Whaley's story earlier this month, digging to get answers from the DA's office and the police department on what happened. Three days after our report, the district attorney's office presented the case to a grand jury office and indicted Howell on new charges, and police arrested him again.
He is now in the Fulton County jail and charged with aggravated assault, armed robbery, battery, and possession of a firearm during a felony.
Originally, the district attorney's office said it subpoenaed the officer to testify in the case, but the Atlanta Police Department maintained it never received a subpoena in the officer's name.
"We have a Court Liaison Office that is responsible for receiving, documenting and distributing all subpoenas and they have no record of this subpoena," a statement from APD reads.
Now, the district attorney's office is acknowledging that APD's statement is true.
In a letter addressed to APD Chief Darin Schierbaum from the office, District Attorney Fani Willis said she launched an internal investigation to see what went wrong in the process.
"We discovered that the legal assistant who handled the logistics of the preliminary hearing in this matter had marked a date on the attorney calendar that a subpoena was sent to APD to inform your agency of the date and time of the hearing. The further investigation revealed, however, that no subpoena had been sent," the letter reads.
To help remedy the mistake, the office said it fired the legal assistant and has since walked back its initial statement to 11Alive in Given's original reporting of Whaley's case. Attorneys from the office are also now in contact with Whaley to keep her informed on the progress of the prosecution, the letter said.
Finally, the district attorney's office said it has created a new tracking system "to improve the process that tracks whether subpoenas are sent in a timely manner to police departments for officer appearances in court proceedings."
The office's justice liaison is also working with APD's Court Liasion Office to implement a workflow to track cases in which officers do not appear at preliminary hearings.
Willis ended her letter by writing to APD "please accept my apology on behalf of everyone serving in the District Attorney's Office."
"We appreciate APD working with us to resolve the matter and improve the process moving forward," Willis said.
Court records show Howell is scheduled to be back in court in March to be formally arraigned and enter a plea.