After spending 15 years in prison, Cedric Warren walked out of the Wyandotte County jail in Kansas on Wednesday a free man and into the arms of his family.

At the state prison in El Dorado, nearly 170 miles away, Dominic Moore, 40, was released to his attorneys and on his way back to Kansas City, Kansas.

Both men saw their convictions in a double murder tossed out this week after Wyandotte County District Court Judge Aaron Roberts found evidence of prosecutorial misconduct in their criminal cases.

Neither received a fair trial because of a failure by the District Attorney’s Office to disclose discrediting information about a witness essential to the state’s case.

Friends, family members and lawyers for the men celebrated the outcome on Wednesday as Moore and Warren were released from state custody one after the other. Both have maintained their innocence.

“I’m just glad that this is all over with now,” said Cedric Toney, Warren’s father, standing beside attorney Cheryl Pilate, who represented Warren alongside the nonprofit Midwest Innocence Project.

Warren, 34, declined to speak with reporters awaiting his release as he left jail carrying a large plastic bag filled with his things. Toney said his son was overwhelmed and wanted to make his first stop at the cemetery to visit his mother and sister’s graves. Both died while Warren was in prison.

“We’ve been waiting 15 years,” Toney said. “Christmas is going to be beautiful. Sad that his mom and his sister’s not going to be here to enjoy it with us.”

Reached briefly by phone, Moore thanked his attorneys for working “to help me out, to get me out of here, to prove my innocence.”

Moore and Warren have been incarcerated since 2009. The two were convicted of a double murder during a robbery at a Kansas City, Kansas, drug house.

During a press conference Wednesday, Wyandotte County District Attorney Mark Dupree said his office was preparing a motion to dismiss the charges against Moore and Warren. The decision came after the office tried unsuccessfully to preserve the convictions in court.

Judge Roberts made his findings solely on what is known as a Brady violation, a serious misstep by prosecutors that can lead to convictions being undone. Prosecutors are required under the law to disclose information about a criminal case that may benefit the defendant.

In the cases of Warren and Moore, that violation centered on witness Brandon Ford, who testified to being present in the home at the time the killings unfolded. Ford gave a series of inconsistent statements to police about what he saw that night.

Prosecutors failed to disclose that Ford had a history of paranoid schizophrenia, a known fact as a Kansas City, Kansas, detective dropped him off for psychiatric care after questioning. Also, five years earlier, a Wyandotte County criminal case against Ford was thrown out because of his inability to comprehend the charges against him.

“Our system can be harsh and it is tough, but it is made to be fair,” Dupree, first elected in 2016, said in prepared remarks Wednesday. “Warren and Moore did not, under the previous administration, receive a fair trial.”

Dupree added that both “have served a significant amount of time for the crimes” and “we do not believe it is in the interest of justice to retry these cases.”

Dupree said his office’s Conviction Integrity Unit, which reviews claims of wrongful convictions, had investigated the cases earlier. But he said other evidence of the Brady violation came to light through the work of the men’s attorneys and in court.

“That’s when this office became aware of many of the issues that ultimately we are relying on to not retry this case,” the district attorney said.

The shootings

On the night of Feb. 13, 2009, gunmen entered a Kansas City, Kansas, drug den and killed two occupants in an ensuing shootout, leaving with an estimated $20,000 and a bag of cocaine.

The following year, Warren and Moore were convicted on two counts of murder and one count of attempted murder in the slayings of homicide victims Larry LeDoux and Charles Ford. Both victims were related to witness Brandon Ford.

Brandon Ford was inside the house, used to stash large sums of money and drugs, as his brother and brother-in-law were armed with a pistol and an AK-47 assault rifle, according to court testimony and official reports.

Brandon Ford would later tell the district attorney’s office, and say on the witness stand, that all three were in the living room when an unfamiliar SUV pulled up front. Then there was a knock at the door as Charles Ford went to check and LeDoux was inside the kitchen.

He testified to seeing a man known to him as “Ced” as well as Moore carrying out the shooting.

But that differed greatly from his original statements to police taken minutes after the shooting and the following day.

Brandon Ford initially said he did not know who the shooters were, according to court records, saying he was walking toward the bathroom and heard someone say “where’s the (expletive),” followed by gunshots.

Roughly 12 hours after the double slaying, police arrested Warren and Moore at a house across the state line in Kansas City, Missouri.

Both were picked up as suspects before Brandon Ford had changed his statement to identify one of the shooters as “Ced” or pick them out of a photo lineup, according to court filings.

Inside the house, where Warren was visiting when he was arrested, police officers discovered several weapons and drugs stashed in an air duct.

A Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent later testified that a Glock pistol found in the air duct matched two shell casings police discovered at the shooting scene. A lab analysis of that gun found a DNA link to Moore.

At trial, Brandon Ford acknowledged providing inconsistent statements to authorities. But he testified that he had seen both men enter the house, a new statement defense attorneys learned in real time in court, and had actually been inside the living room when they came in.

Dupree, the district attorney, said Wednesday the judge’s decision did not reach the mark of a proof of innocence for Moore or Warren. He said there was other evidence in the case, apparently referencing the DNA on the gun, which prosecutors also brought up at trial in 2009.

Bob Hoffman, an attorney representing Moore, said the DNA link was a “tenuous” one unlike what people generally think about modern forensic science. He said the match forwarded as state evidence provided a 1 in 40 ratio to the general population.

“Typically people think of DNA as linking it directly to someone’s actual DNA, and you can identify the person or a very near relative,” Hoffman said. “And that was not anywhere like what the DNA was here.”

“If they thought they had evidence that actually linked Mr. Moore to the crime, I expect they would be recharging. And they are not,” Hoffman added.

No physical evidence tied Warren to the crimes, according to his attorneys.

Homecoming

For the better part of Wednesday afternoon, Warren’s family and lawyers waited in a lobby area of the Wyandotte County Jail for him to be processed.

The undertaking required a sift through red tape as the county awaited clearance from the Kansas Department of Corrections, where Warren has been in custody in Hutchinson. He was moved to Wyandotte County for hearings on his civil case.

“We knew he was innocent all along,” said Brittany Robinson, Warren’s cousin. “The trial was not fair. We’ve been saying that since day one.”

She added: “A lot of times people lose hope. But we’ve been fighting. We knew he was gonna come home. … On his mama’s deathbed, she said, ‘Don’t quit fighting ‘til my baby come home.’”

The vacated convictions come at a time of heightened scrutiny over long-closed cases investigated by Kansas City, Kansas, police, especially those with a connection to disgraced former Detective Roger Golubski.

Golubski, a homicide captain at the time of the double murder investigation, faced two federal indictments related to misconduct as a police officer. He is accused of raping or harassing several Black women in the city, sometimes threatening death or the cudgel of the law against those who rejected his advances.

Golubski died of apparent suicide Dec. 2, the day he was supposed to stand trial. His death drew outrage and disappointment from alleged victims and community activists who had hoped the trial would have further exposed other instances of corruption and wrongdoing in the police department over the 35 years Golubski spent on the force.

Lucreatia Warren, 66, Cedric Warren’s aunt, said corrupt justice practices in Wyandotte County have been known since she was in her 20s.

“Make no mistake, this is not a new issue,” she said.

Winter Warren, Cedric Warren’s older sister, said the family was extremely blessed to have the help of Pilate, the attorney, as well as lawyers with the Midwest Innocence Project.

She said her mother, Kathy Warren, who died in 2018, always wanted to see her son come home.

“I know she’s looking down, and (is) just as joyful as we are,” Winter Warren said.

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