The Mike Chapel Case-D.A. Danny Porter Speaks

In the fall of this year, I wrote and published a series of articles detailing the efforts of “The Mike Chapel is Innocent Project.” They are a group of passionate supporters that believe Gwinnett County Police officer Michael Chapel was unfairly convicted of the 1993 murder of Emogene Thompson.

In those articles, I asked that anyone from the prosecution or investigation side of the case reach out and offer their side. Recently, former Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter, who tried the Chapel case, did just that. What follows is the first article from our interview, where Mr. Porter addresses the points made by the Chapel supporters. There will be more articles to follow, with other topics addressed.

Danny Porter began his career with the Gwinnett County District Attorney’s Office in 1981 as an Assistant District Attorney. By the time he was elected District Attorney in 1992, he had tried multiple murder cases, including three death penalty cases. As District Attorney, he tried several high-profile cases, some covered by national media. He held the office of District Attorney until 2020.

I have taken some of the major talking points from the Mike Chapel series of articles and asked Mr. Porter to offer his thoughts. Since he no longer holds the office of District Attorney, Porter no longer has access to evidence, files, or court transcripts. His responses, therefore, are from memory.

-How could the DA’s office have been to the point of obtaining an arrest warrant in the murder of Mrs. Thompson, for an individual who was not Mike Chapel, only to have that warrant go away after a meeting with the Gwinnett Police Chief? [The assertion from Chapel’s supporters is that the Gwinnett Police Department and DA’s office were each operating independent investigations.]

Porter-“That’s just simply not true. In 1984, when Tom Lawler was elected District Attorney, the relationship between the police department and the District Attorney’s office was bad. There was a relationship of distance and distrust. That was from the administration that Tom replaced. Tom set out to reestablish a relationship with the police department, with all the police departments.” He continues, “As a result of that relationship, we began doing things like teaching at the police academy, going out on homicide scenes, advising the police about legal matters at homicide scenes, being available to answer their legal questions. We were working really hard to reestablish that relationship with the police department. Tom stayed until 1992, and during the entire time that I was there as District Attorney, we maintained that same attitude, so the whole scenario in the book about when the Herman Day case was tried that it was such a debacle that I ordered an independent investigation into each homicide, that’s just simply not true. We worked collaboratively with the police department, but we did not run independent investigations.” As to the suggestion that Investigator David Baker, on his own, prepared a warrant application for a suspect other than Michael Chapel, Porter says, “That just didn’t happen. The supposition that parallel investigations were run, that’s not true.” Lastly, Porter says, “The idea that the Chief of Police of Gwinnett Count could summon me as the District Attorney, to a meeting, that’s just not the way it happens.”

-Why would the police destroy a pistol that was found near where an early suspect had been staying shortly after the crime? It was the same caliber as the murder weapon, showing two shots having been fired, the same as in the murder. Why was it not tested?

Porter- “This came up in the habeas corpus litigation. There was a gun recovered at the American Inn, but that’s all I remember. Ballistics had determined that the murder weapon was a .38 or .357 by Charter Arms or Rossi. If the weapon recovered wasn’t a Charter Arms or Rossi, It wasn’t the murder weapon.

-The chief detective, John Latty, said early in the investigation that they had reviewed the tapes from the police dispatcher from the night of April 15, 1993, to try and determine Chapel’s whereabouts at the time of the murder. Supporters claim that the tape clearly indicates Chapel taking a call that would have made it impossible for him to have been at the scene at the time of the crime. Why was that recording “lost” only to be found years later, after the trial and appeal, in the DA’s files?

Porter-“I can’t respond to that totally without looking at the record. I can tell you that there were no lost dispatch tapes. We litigated this in the pre-trial hearing. The issue was, could we bring in copies, because there had been a switch in the system, where the original type of tape was corrupted, so we had to use a copy. They were the same, and they were provided to the defense. I’m not sure what they mean about the issue of lost dispatcher tapes that were found later in the DA’s files because anything that was in the DA’s file was also in the defense files.

As to the discovery by amateur investigator Pamela Holcombe, Porter recalls, “She filed an open records request and I gave ger complete access to the file. She sat outside my office for about six to eight weeks and went through the file at her leisure. That’s all I can tell you. She could not have found original dispatcher tapes because they don’t look like audio tapes, they’re on a computer-type tape. They’re not playable on a regular tape player. They look like the old-style computer reels. Everything we did in the trial was off of copies because those were playable on standard machines.

Porter makes another observation about Holcombe’s examination of the files concerns the trial. “Pam never looked at the trial transcripts. She only looked at the police files. I remember that I showed her the 26 boxes that contained the Chapel file, and they were divided up where the first three or four have police reports and that type of stuff in it, and witness statements. The rest of it is transcripts of both the trial and the appeal process, and the habeas corpus process that followed that. I never saw her go into the trial transcript. She was right outside my office, so I saw her a lot. She spent all her time with the police report.” When asked why that matters, Porter responds, “You have to look at how each piece of evidence came into court and was put before the jury for their consideration, and in fact, what didn’t come to court. There were things in the box that was part of the investigation that was never admitted to the jury for their consideration, for one reason or another. It’s important to go back to the trial transcript to see what the witnesses actually said or saw.”

He continues, “The only way to determine how the evidence was received by the jury is to see how it was admitted and how that admission was questioned. For example, the dispatcher tapes were litigated through the course of the trial. The defense objected to the admission of copies and we had to have a hearing on it, but eventually, the copies of the original dispatcher tapes were admitted to the jury and available to them for their consideration, and they don’t support the idea that Chapel couldn’t have been there.

Porter’s successor as District Attorney, Patsy Austin-Gatson, has announced the formation of a Conviction Integrity Unit, to examine cases tried under the previous administration. We asked Mr. Porter for his thoughts about the formation of that unit.

“I think it’s part of the agenda of the so-called progressive prosecutors. Over the years, people bring up what they think is an injustice and there’s nothing in the system that’s built to address those concerns, so DA’s have tremendous discretion. The D.A. in Dallas, TX was the first one who said ‘If I have the discretion, I’m gonna look at these old cases’.” In the case of Austin-Gaston, Porter says, “I think she ran on that platform, so she’s carrying out a promise.” Porter points out that of the cases the Conviction Integrity Unit in Dallas reviewed, which is around 500 prior convictions, they’ve only decided to reinvestigate seven.

Chapel supporters allege that Michael Chapel received an inadequate defense from attorney Johnny Moore, who recently passed away. What is your opinion of how Moore handled the trial for his client?

Porter- “Johnny Moore left the DA office in 1984. He had been the previous administration’s chief assistant. He was one of the attorneys that hired me. He tried a lot of cases, a lot of death penalty cases. We were adversaries in the courtroom and friends outside the courtroom. On a personal level, it bothers me now for Chapel to call his defense feeble. He [Moore] was a fierce advocate for his client.”

In our next article, we’ll look at Danny Porter’s responses to other claims from Chapel supporters.