Philip Barnett

The Crime

On Aug. 8, 2002, a logging crew found the badly decomposed body of a young woman near a barn-like structure in the Hickory Ridge community in Cabell County, West Virginia. Police were able to lift a fingerprint from the body and identified the woman as 21-year-old Deanna Crawford.

Crime-scene technicians searching the area recovered five cigarette butts, as well as a beer can, a snuff can, and a glass mug. They were able to obtain DNA evidence from the butts and fingernail scrapings from one of Ms. Crawford’s hands. 

A medical examiner conducted an autopsy and concluded that Ms. Crawford had been dead for three to five days. The cause of death was strangulation, and there were numerous bruises and abrasions on her body. 

The Investigation

West Virginia State Police focused the initial investigation on Ms. Crawford’s associates. One friend had last seen Ms. Crawford alive at about 9 p.m. on Aug. 4, four days before her body was found. 

More than four years later, on Jan. 11, 2007, Cabell County Sheriff’s Deputy Jim Schiedler told the state police that a man named Greg Bailey had information about the murder. Mr. Bailey, who had a history of addiction and convictions, said that his nephew, Brian Dement, had told him that he and three friends — Justin Black, Nathaniel Barnett, and Philip Barnett — had killed Ms. Crawford. Mr. Bailey said he had first heard Mr. Dement’s account about two years earlier. Mr. Bailey said Mr. Dement told him that the four young men had picked up a girl, raped her, and then killed her after they got scared. 

On Jan. 28, 2007, West Virginia State Police brought Mr. Dement in for questioning. During eight hours of interrogation, Mr. Dement gave three statements, all of which implicated Mr. Dement, Mr. Black, and the Barnetts, although the accounts varied. After the third statement, police charged Mr. Dement with first-degree murder.

After Mr. Dement gave his first statement, state police brought in the Barnetts for questioning. They denied involvement and were released. The police had informally interviewed Philip Barnett in August 2002, when they were canvassing the Hickory Ridge area after hearing that several parties had been held on the same weekend Ms. Crawford went missing. Mr. Barnett had told them about a keg party at Mr. Black’s house on Aug. 5, 2002.

On Jan. 29, 2007, Mr. Black, 23 years old and on parole for a conviction for malicious wounding, voluntarily came to the police station. His interrogation stretched into the night. According to later court filings by Mr. Black, he repeatedly said he was innocent and that he didn’t know Ms. Crawford or who was responsible for her death. Mr. Black said the police threatened to revoke his parole. 

On Jan. 30, 2007, Mr. Black gave a recorded statement saying that he drove Ms. Crawford, Mr. Dement, and the Barnett brothers to Hickory Ridge. Mr. Black said he stayed in the car while the others got out. Only Philip and Nathaniel Barnett returned, and the three of them left together.

Mr. Black was released. He returned a week later and recanted his statement, asserting it was coerced and that he had no knowledge of the crime. The recantation was not recorded. 

Police compared the DNA profiles of the four men with samples recovered from the crime scene. All four were excluded.

On May 16, 2007, police arrested Mr. Black and charged him with murder. Two days later, police charged Philip Barnett, then 27 years old, and Nathaniel Barnett, then 24 years old, with murder.

On Oct. 23, 2007, Mr. Dement pled guilty to second-degree murder. As part of his plea, he agreed to testify for the prosecution against Mr. Black and the Barnetts. 

Two days later, Mr. Dement spoke to a private investigator working on behalf of Nathaniel Barnett and recanted his statement to the police. He said he learned the details of the crime from his uncle, who had already been questioned by the police. 

The Trials

On Feb. 21, 2008, Mr. Black went to trial in Cabell County Circuit Court. On the second day, Judge John Cummings declared a mistrial after a prosecution witness said that Mr. Black had been willing to take a polygraph test. 

Mr. Black went to trial again on Apr. 15, 2008. Mr. Dement was the prosecution’s key witness. He did not testify that he saw the murder; only that while in the woods, Mr. Black and the Barnetts took her down a hill and, after they returned, he checked on Ms. Crawford and she was dead.

Mr. Black’s attorney emphasized inconsistencies in Mr. Dement’s statements, but Mr. Dement insisted he was telling the truth. He said he recanted his statements to the investigator for Nathaniel Barnett after getting into fights over being labeled a “snitch.” 

Mr. Black testified and said he made an inculpatory statement to the police because he feared getting his parole revoked. He said the officers gave him sufficient information to piece together a narrative. He said his later recantation was the truth; he did not know Ms. Crawford, and he did not know who killed her.

The jury convicted Mr. Black of second-degree murder on Apr. 21, 2008. He was sentenced to 40 years in prison. Mr. Dement was sentenced to 30 years in prison. 

On Aug. 25, 2008, Philip and Nathaniel Barnett went to trial together in Cabell County Circuit Court. Mr. Dement was again the prosecution’s key witness. He recounted going to a party at the home of Mr. Black’s mother along Hickory Ridge Road. At some point, he said Mr. Black and Philip Barnett asked Mr. Dement if he wanted to go for a ride. He said Mr. Black drove and Ms. Crawford was in the front seat. They drove along Route 10, smoking marijuana and talking. Suddenly, Mr. Dement said, Philip Barnett hit Ms. Crawford, and Mr. Black stopped the car near an abandoned farm. Mr. Dement said he knew the place as a party spot, near where he lived with his stepfather.

As he had said at Mr. Black’s trial, Mr. Dement told the jury he dragged Ms. Crawford into the woods, then left.

Attorneys for the Barnetts wanted to play the full recording of Mr. Dement’s recantation, but Judge Cummings refused, saying Mr. Dement’s admission was sufficient. Neither brother testified. On Aug. 27, 2008, the jury convicted them of second-degree murder. Nathaniel Barnett was sentenced to 36 years in prison. Philip Barnett received 40 years.

Mr. Black and the Barnetts appealed separately. Mr. Black argued in part that Judge Cummings had erred by allowing the introduction of his statement to the state police, which he had said was coerced, and by excluding the introduction of expert testimony on false confessions. 

The West Virginia Supreme Court affirmed Mr. Black’s conviction in March 2010.

On July 13, 2010, the West Virginia Supreme Court vacated the Barnetts’ convictions on the ground that Judge Cummings had erroneously barred the defense from playing the full recantation recording.

On Jan. 18, 2011, Philip and Nathaniel each entered Alford pleas to voluntary manslaughter in Ms. Crawford’s death. Philip Barnett also entered an Alford plea to malicious wounding. Under an Alford plea, a defendant asserts innocence, but acknowledges the State has sufficient evidence to convict. Philip Barnett was resentenced to seven to 25 years in prison. Nathaniel Barnett received 15 years. 

The Exonerations

In 2011, Mr. Black filed a pro se motion for post-conviction DNA testing and sought appointed counsel. Four years later, in November 2015, the motion was resubmitted after Josh Tepfer of the Exoneration Project, with the University of Chicago School of Law, began representing Mr. Black.

This motion sought new DNA testing of the evidence collected from Ms. Crawford’s body or near where her body was found, including fingernail scrapings, her pants, the beer can and mug, and cigarette butts. In addition, it also sought to retest the sexual-assault kit. The motion noted that technological advancements enabled the detection of DNA in samples that would have previously been unsuitable for testing, either because of degradation or the size of the sample. 

The Barnett brothers then joined Mr. Black’s motion for DNA testing. Nathaniel was represented by the West Virginia Innocence Project and Philip was represented by the Innocence Project.

The motion for DNA testing was granted and in 2017, a male DNA profile from Ms. Crawford’s pants was identified and excluded all four defendants. It was submitted to the FBI DNA database, which reported it was consistent with the profile of a man, identified publicly as T.S., who was then in prison in Ohio. T.S. had lived in Huntington in 2002 and also pled guilty in 2011 to a sex crime involving a 13-year-old girl.

On Feb. 26, 2018, the Barnetts and Mr. Black filed separate petitions to overturn their convictions based on the DNA evidence. By then, Nathaniel Barnett had been released on parole on July 10, 2016. 

On June 14, 2018, Mr. Black was released from prison. Philip Barnett was released on Aug. 9, 2018, after DNA testing revealed that a profile from a cigarette butt from the crime scene was the same as the profile obtained from Ms. Crawford’s pants.

On Aug. 31, 2018, Mr. Dement filed a petition seeking to vacate his conviction. 

On May 1, 2019, without a hearing, Cabell County Circuit Court Judge Alfred Ferguson vacated the convictions of Mr. Black and the Barnetts. Mr. Ferguson denied Mr. Dement’s motion for a new trial because Mr. Dement had not maintained his innocence. 

Mr. Dement appealed to the West Virginia Supreme Court, claiming the judge erred by rejecting his motion for a new trial without holding an evidentiary hearing. 

On June 15, 2021, the West Virginia Supreme Court reversed Judge Ferguson’s order and sent the case back to Cabell County for an evidentiary hearing.

There was no hearing. On Oct. 5, 2021, the prosecution dismissed the charges against Mr. Black and the Barnetts. Mr. Dement accepted a sentence modification for time served on his conviction of second-degree murder and was released.

In April 2022, the Barnett brothers filed a federal lawsuit seeking compensation for their wrongful conviction. In October 2022, they also filed a claim for compensation from the state of West Virginia.