According to NOLA.com six days after a witness recanted testimony identifying rapper Corey “C-Murder” Miller as the gunman in a 2002 Harvey nightclub homicide, the other witness from the trial signed an affidavit saying that he, too, lied when he named Miller as the shooter.
Darnell Jordan, 36, testified in both of Miller’s second-degree murder trials. During the 2009 retrial, he told the court Miller killed Steve Thomas, 16, inside of the now-closed Platinum Club in Harvey where Jordan worked as a bouncer.
But Jordan now says he was scared of Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office detectives who “tricked” him into identifying Miller.
“I am certain that Corey Miller did not shoot Steve Thomas,” Jordan said in a hand-written letter filed with the 24th Judicial District Court on Monday July 2nd.
Neither the Sheriff’s Office nor the Jefferson Parish district attorney’s office has commented about the case.
Kenneth Jordan, the other witness to identify Corey Miller as the shooting at the 2009 retrial, signed a similar affidavit that was filed with the court on June 26.
Kenneth Jordan, no relation to Darnell Jordan, accuses detectives and prosecutors of knowingly forcing him to make false statements by threatening him with criminal charges in another matter.
“Once everything broke last week, Darnell Jordan, the only other alleged eyewitness put on by the state, came forward and said he wanted to break his silence,” said Paul Barker, Miller’s defense attorney.
Barker filed an amended memorandum Monday that included Darnell Jordan’s retraction of his testimony and repeated requests that the court take steps to vacate Miller’s conviction and order a new trial.
“Mr. Miller is indeed innocent of the murder for which he has been convicted, and it is high time that this illegal conviction and sentence be reversed and vacated,” Barker wrote.
Miller is serving a life sentence in the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola after a jury found him guilty of Thomas’s death by a vote of 10-2 to convicted him on Aug. 11, 2009.
Kenneth Jordan and Darnell Jordan recently appeared “Reasonable Doubt,” a true-crime television show that aired Investigation Discovery and featured Miller’s case. Both backed away from testimony given during the murder trial.
Darnell Jordan accused detectives of coercing him into signing a photograph line-up that identified Miller as the suspect.
“I was scared of them,” Darnell Jordan wrote in his affidavit.
During Miller’s first trial in 2003 – for which the conviction was later overturned — and the second trial, Darnell Jordan said he was arrested on a material witness bond and held in isolation at a hotel until he testified. He accused Sheriff’s Office Detective Donald Clogher of handing him a piece of paper with his “statement” regarding the shooting, according to court records.
“I just want to tell the truth and clear my name,” Darnell Jordan wrote.