Opinion ID: 2827791
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Pre-Arrest Investigation

Text: Defendant Detective Christine Mannina and several other detectives conducted interviews with the four surviving eyewitnesses on November 3 and 4. During these initial interviews, all four witnesses identified the perpetrators as black men wearing dark hooded sweatshirts, but none of the witnesses knew who the men were. The investigation made little progress until November 13, 2008, when there was a breakthrough. Bluiett contacted Detective Mannina and told her that the man who shot Richard looked like a man he had seen on the social media website MySpace.com. He identified the man as Samuel Swavely. Five days later, Duane called Mannina and told her he recognized another man from a video on the internet as the person who shot him. Duane explained that after his mother had learned that Swavely was a possible suspect in Richard’s murder, she looked at Swavely’s MySpace page and came across a hyperlink to a music video. She showed Duane the video, and he recognized the man who shot him (who was not the same man Bluiett had identified as the man who shot and killed Richard). The next day, Detective Mannina visited Duane Miller and watched the video herself. Duane repeated that the man in the video was the man who shot him. Mannina took a picture of the man in the video with the hope of identifying him later. No. 14-1347 5 Three days later, on November 22, 2008, Mannina formally interviewed Duane Miller, Bluiett, Glasscock, and Daniels, each for a second time. Mannina was the only police officer present with the witnesses during the November 22 interviews. All of the interviews were conducted separately; the witnesses did not discuss their interviews with one another either beforehand or afterward. Each witness identified Hart in the photo array as one of the people involved in the home invasion. Bluiett identified Hart as the man who pointed a gun at him and who shot Duane. Glasscock identified Hart as the man who told another attacker to shoot her if she moved while she was held captive. Daniels identified Hart as the man who shot Duane. And Duane himself identified Hart as the man who shot him.