 Elon Wilson
Freitag would later say in his report that the car had crossed the road’s yellow line and that its windows were heavily tinted. In addition, according to his report, the vehicle did not immediately respond to Freitag’s request to pull over, requiring Freitag to activate his siren.
Elon Wilson, a 23-year-old firefighter from the District of Columbia, was driving the car. His 17-year-old nephew was a passenger. Freitag said he smelled marijuana smoke and radioed for backup. Two other officers arrived. During a search of the vehicle, officers found two 9 mm handguns and 450 Oxycodone pills in the glove box. During a pat down of Wilson’s nephew, officers said they found a small amount of marijuana and about $1,000 in cash. Wilson said the drugs and weapons in the glove box were his nephew’s.
Wilson was charged with possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute, possession of a handgun, contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and two traffic violations. The nephew was charged under juvenile petitions with weapons possession and possession of a controlled substance. His charges were later dismissed.
Wilson’s attorney filed a motion to suppress the evidence on August 1, 2018, but withdrew the motion two months later with leave to refile. During negotiations, according to a later filing, prosecutors with the Fairfax County Commonwealth’s Attorney Office told Wilson’s attorney that if he pursued the motion to suppress, the state would charge Wilson under a more severe section of the criminal statutes that could result in a sentence of 10 years in prison if he were convicted.
On April 17, 2019, Wilson entered an Alford plea to both possession charges. Under an Alford plea, a defendant does not admit guilt but acknowledges the state has sufficient evidence to convict. Three months later, Wilson was sentenced to seven years in prison, with three years and 11 months suspended. He remained in the Fairfax County Jail until November 13, 2019, when he was transferred to a state prison.
In July 2019, around the time that Wilson received his sentence, the Fairfax County Police Department opened an internal investigation into Freitag’s actions after receiving outside complaints. As part of that investigation, the department’s Internal Affairs Bureau began reviewing his reports and his dash-cam footage.
In Wilson’s case, the footage showed that the Cherokee never crossed the yellow line and that Wilson had pulled over promptly, at the first safe place. In addition, Freitag never tested Wilson’s windows for excessive tinting.
As part of the department’s investigation, it reviewed 40 traffic stops randomly selected from nearly 1,400 stops conducted by Freitag. In each of the stops, according to the review, Freitag’s basis for the stop was found to be untruthful. In addition, there was a racial component to the unlawful stops. Freitag is white. Wilson is Black.
On September 6, 2019, an IAB officer interviewed Freitag, who acknowledged engaging in pretextual traffic stops and falsifying information in his police reports.
The IAB officer said: “This is a pretextual stop, let’s make it clear.”
Freitag said, “Yeah, 100 percent.”
“You don’t admit to that in the report.”
“Yeah, I don’t admit to that in any of my reports. I was told not to. Just like if I see a car doing something shady in front of a house or something, I’m going to find a reason to pull them over. So I put in my report I observed this vehicle make this traffic violation.”
Freitag was suspended with pay that day.
In December 2019, Wilson’s attorney, Marvin Miller, was told that Freitag was under investigation. According to a motion later filed by Miller, neither he nor the prosecutor who informed him about the matter knew the reason for the investigation.
Months later, on February 25, 2020, after Miller still hadn’t received any additional information, he filed a request for disclosure. The state filed a response in April and agreed to provide the information. A judge granted the motion in August 2020.
On March 3, 2021, Miller moved to vacate Wilson’s conviction.
“But for the false, fraudulent, misleading information provided by the principal officer in the case, there would have been no guilty plea, no sentence, and no prosecution,” the motion said, adding that prosecutors also didn’t know the traffic stop was invalid at the time Wilson entered his plea. “There had been a claim that the vehicle’s windows were wrongly tinted, but the defense could show otherwise,” the motion said. “It was the false claiming of crossing the yellow line which drove the case and was critical to the plea agreement and judgment.”
In its response, filed March 24, 2021, the district attorney’s office supported vacating Wilson’s conviction. “Justice requires that the judgment in this matter be vacated,” the response said. “What occurred in this case is a disgrace of monumental proportions and a stain on the good work of many honest police officers and prosecutors.”
The discovery of Freitag’s misconduct occurred during the tail end of a heated election for district attorney, where Steven Descano beat the long-time incumbent, Raymond Morrogh.
Descano’s term started in January 2020, and his office’s response said that Morrogh’s staff had been aware of the Freitag investigation and his suspension on September 7, 2019, but had failed to move quickly to take substantive action on assessing how his misconduct impacted pending and past cases.
This was important, the response said, because Wilson was still in the county jail, rather than state custody, for two months after his sentencing, and during that period it would have been easier to undo the wrongful conviction. Descano said he didn’t know there was a problem until his office received Miller’s request for disclosure in February 2020.
On April 20, 2021, Judge Daniel Ortiz of Fairfax County Circuit Court granted Wilson’s motion for a new trial, dismissed his charges, and ordered his release from prison.
Judge Ortiz wrote: “Freitag’s misrepresentations tainted every part of the judicial mechanism, from the charges against Wilson, to the magistrate’s probable cause determination, to the Commonwealth’s plea bargaining tactics. His false grounds for stopping Wilson contravened a key aspect of the federal Constitution, from which all states derive their power and legitimacy.”
On July 8, 2021, Wilson filed a federal civil-rights lawsuit against Fairfax County, Freitag, and his supervisor, whom Freitag had said knew of his practice of making pretextual traffic stops.
Wilson, who has recently changed his name to Elon Royster, settled the lawsuit in October 2021 for $390,000. He recently graduated from a paralegal program offered through Georgetown University.
Freitag had resigned under pressure from the police department in May 2020. As part of his separation, the county agreed to provide him with a letter saying he had resigned in good standing and was eligible for rehire.
The Brevard County Sheriff’s Office in Florida hired Freitag in July 2020 and fired him in April 2021. The sheriff there said Fairfax County had provided “misleading representations” about Freitag’s work history.
Separately, the Fairfax County District Attorney dismissed 21 pending cases involving Freitag’s traffic stops. The office initially sought to undo about 400 past convictions where Freitag was the principal arresting officer. But that didn’t happen. A spokeswoman said Royster was the only defendant serving an active sentence and other defendants either weren’t interested in or able to file post-conviction motions for relief.
– Ken Otterbourg
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