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STATE OF MICHIGAN 

COURT OF APPEALS 

PEOPLE OF THE STATE OF MICHIGAN, 

 Plaintiff-Appellee, 

UNPUBLISHED 

July 14, 2016 

v No. 326391 

Wayne Circuit Court 

TAMBOURA KENYATTA JACKSON, LC No. 14-004254-FH 

 Defendant-Appellant. 

Before: RIORDAN, P.J., and SAAD and M. J. KELLY, JJ. 

PER CURIAM. 

 At a second trial, a jury convicted defendant, Tamboura Kenyatta Jackson, of conducting 

a criminal enterprise, MCL 750.159i(1), forgery, MCL 750.248, and accepting a bribe as a public 

officer, MCL 750.118. The trial court sentenced Jackson to concurrent prison terms of 2-1/2 to 

20 years for conducting a criminal enterprise, 11 to 168 months for forgery, and 1 to 12 years for 

accepting a bribe as a public officer. Jackson appeals by right his convictions and argues that the 

lengthy delay in his arrest deprived him of due process. We conclude that he has not established 

any error warranting relief. Accordingly, we affirm. 

 Jackson was an officer with the Detroit Police Department. Testimony established that 

he created false police reports and sold them to Lisa Curtis from May to September 2009. Curtis 

testified that she ran a credit repair and loan modification business. She admitted that she paid 

Jackson for false police reports, which alleged identify theft, to remove negative entries from 

several of her clients’ credit history reports. After a credit bureau director noticed “red flags” in 

the police reports and submission letters, he contacted the Detroit Police Department. 

 At the request of the Detroit Police Internal Affairs Department, the FBI investigated the 

allegations in January 2010. According to two FBI special agents, Jackson admitted generating 

false police reports for Curtis during an interview. In 2012, the FBI sent the case to the 

Michigan Attorney General’s Office, which investigated further. On March 26, 2014, officers 

arrested Jackson. Jackson had a trial in September 2014, which ended in a mistrial. The trial 

court held a second trial in December 2014, and the jury convicted Jackson as already noted. 

 In his sole issue on appeal, Jackson argues that the five-year delay between the time of 

his alleged offenses in 2009 and his arrest in 2014 caused substantial prejudice to his ability to 

defend himself, which amounts to a violation of his right to due process. Contrary to Jackson’s 

contention on appeal, he did not preserve this issue by moving for dismissal of the charges 
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against him before the first trial. Rather, only codefendant Curtis moved for dismissal, arguing 

that the prearrest delay prejudiced her ability to develop her duress defense. Therefore, this issue 

is unpreserved. We review unpreserved constitutional claims for plain error. People v Carines, 

460 Mich 750, 763-764; 597 NW2d 130 (1999). 

 “A prearrest delay that causes substantial prejudice to a defendant’s right to a fair trial 

and that was used to gain tactical advantage violates the constitutional right to due process.” 

People v Woolfolk, 304 Mich App 450, 454; 848 NW2d 169 (2014). “Defendant must present 

evidence of actual and substantial prejudice, not mere speculation.” Id. To be substantial, the 

prejudice to the defendant must have meaningfully impaired his ability to defend against the 

charges such that the outcome of the proceeding was likely affected. People v Patton, 285 Mich 

App 229, 237; 775 NW2d 610 (2009). Mere speculation that the delay caused lost memories, 

witnesses, or evidence does not establish actual and substantial prejudice. Woolfolk, 304 Mich 

App at 454. If a defendant establishes actual and substantial prejudice, the prosecution then 

bears the burden of establishing that the reason for the delay was sufficient to justify that 

prejudice. Patton, 285 Mich App at 237. 

 Jackson claims that he suffered prejudice because Curtis’s cell phone records and emails 

could not be retrieved after the long delay. Although officers did not arrest Jackson until March 

2014, investigators made an effort to retrieve the emails and cell phone records as early as 2010. 

Curtis testified that at the behest of her lawyer, she attempted to retrieve her emails in October 

2010, but the email account had been deactivated, and an FBI special agent testified that he sent 

preservation letters, but too much time had already passed. In addition, Curtis’s laptop that she 

used to communicate with Jackson was stolen from her vehicle in approximately August 2009, 

and a special agent obtained the police report and determined that the laptop was never 

recovered. Thus, Jackson’s claim that the five-year delay prevented the retrieval of the emails 

and phone records is disingenuous. 

 More significantly, Jackson has not demonstrated substantial prejudice. The 

unavailability of evidence alone is insufficient to show that Jackson suffered actual and 

substantial prejudice, Woolfolk, 304 Mich App at 454, and Jackson has not shown that any of 

records would have been helpful to his defense. He asserts that, without the records, there is 

nothing to support Curtis’s accomplice testimony. However, the actual police reports created 

and signed by Jackson were admitted in evidence. A Detroit police captain explained that each 

Detroit police officer has a unique password in order to enter the system to generate police 

reports and that Jackson’s unique password was used to generate the false reports. Two FBI 

special agents testified that Jackson confessed to creating and selling the false police reports to 

Curtis. There is no basis for believing that the existence or nonexistence of evidence that Curtis 

communicated with Jackson by text messaging or email would have exonerated him. Jackson’s 

mere assertion that the evidence could have assisted his defense is too speculative to satisfy the 

threshold requirement of actual and substantial prejudice. Therefore, Jackson has not established 

plain error. 
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 Additionally, even if the missing communications might have aided Jackson’s defense, 

the record amply demonstrates that the delay resulted from the need for additional investigation. 

United States v Lovasco, 431 US 783, 790; 97 S Ct 2044; 52 L Ed 2d 752 (1977). And there is 

nothing in the record to indicate that the prearrest delay was intended to gain a tactical advantage 

for the prosecution. People v Adams, 232 Mich App 128, 144; 591 NW2d 44 (1998). 

 Jackson has not established that any delay in his arrest violated his right to due process. 

 Affirmed. 

/s/ Michael J. Riordan 

/s/ Henry William Saad 

/s/ Michael J. Kelly