 Domonique Moore (Photo: Midwest Innocence Project) Just before midnight on February 13, 2009, police in Kansas City, Kansas, were dispatched to a house on the city’s northwest side after receiving a call about shots being fired.
Officer Shawn Magee, one of the first officers to respond, found 28-year-old Brandon Ford in the street. Ford initially told the officers his name was Joe Ford and said that a friend had taken him to McDonald’s and was dropping him off at a house on Webster Avenue. When he approached the house, Ford said, people started shooting at him, and he ran to another house to get help. He provided no description of the assailants.
Inside the house, police found the bodies of 21-year-old Charles Ford, who was Brandon’s other brother, and 26-year-old Larry LeDoux. Both men had been shot to death.
Ford quickly gave a second statement to Office Ryan Parker, who wrote in a report, “They [Brandon, Charles Ford, Larry LeDoux] came here and he [Brandon] used the bathroom when he heard gunshots and ran out not seeing who the shooter was or where the two he came with were located. I asked if he had a gun, which he said he didn’t. I asked if there was any reason his fingerprints would be on the guns. He said possibly a handgun and AK-47 that were in the home, only because he has been there before and been shown the guns.”
Ford gave a third statement during the early morning of February 14. According to Detective Darren Koberlein’s summary:
“Brandon said that he was inside the house with the victims. A black SUV pulled up in front of the residence, and a couple of people got out. He got up to go to the restroom and he heard a knock on the door. Charles went to answer the door. There was a guy with short hair and dark complexion, and there was another guy with brownish complexion wearing braids. When Charles opened the door he was going to the bathroom and somebody said, ‘Where is the shit!’” The next thing he knew there were shots fired. Brandon said there was shooting from outside the residence also. He ran from the bathroom to the bedroom at the northwest corner of the house.”
Ford gave a fourth statement to Detective Bryan Block at 1:52 p.m. on February 14. According to the officer’s summary, Ford said he was going to the bathroom when he heard someone yell, “Where’s the stuff,” and then shots were fired. The summary said: “When [Ford] exited the bathroom, he saw a black male with a short fade, a goatee. He was brown skinned, short, wearing a red shirt, blue jeans, and a red jacket, and he was holding a gun coming toward him. He also saw a second suspect further away in the room wearing a striped jacket and braids. He was also holding a handgun.”
Ford said he recognized the man in the striped jacket from his neighborhood. He didn’t know his name but thought it might be Ced.
This was the first documented reference by Ford to “Ced” or a second suspect with a red shirt. But other records said that by 11:30 a.m. police were already looking for 18-year-old Cedric Warren and the second man, described as a “Black male wearing a red shirt, medium dark skin, close cropped hair on his head and hair on his chin.”
Later that day, police located Warren at a house on Lawn Avenue in Kansas City, Missouri, where he was arrested. Police also found 24-year-old Domonique Moore at the residence. He was wearing a red shirt and was arrested.
During a search of the Lawn Avenue house, the police found drugs and several weapons, including a Glock 9 mm handgun, hidden in an air duct. Although the returned search warrant said that Ford had selected Warren from a photo array prior to the arrest, the first documented photo array took place after the arrests.
At that viewing, which took place at 7:02 p.m. on February 14, Ford selected Warren as one of the men at the house. He also selected Moore from a separate photo array. During the initial viewing for Moore, Ford said he recognized Moore and three other men in the array. He asked the police whether they had a more recent picture of Moore. The officers then replaced his black-and-white photo with a color photo, one that showed Moore wearing a red shirt. Later, after Ford selected Moore, he would see this picture of Moore on a detective’s computer screen.
Separately, police had collected evidence at the house where the men were shot, finding a 9 mm shell casing underneath Charles Ford, another one in his clothes, and a .40-caliber casing near his hand. Other .40-caliber casings were found throughout the house. The only weapon they found was a shotgun. Police also found a wide range of ammunition and a backpack in the laundry room with six bags containing 187 grams of drugs.
Moore and Warren were charged with two counts of first-degree murder; a count of attempted murder was added later.
Warren did not make a statement. Moore told police that he had been with his girlfriend, Brianna Mays, on February 13, and that they had hung out in the afternoon, then gone to see Friday the 13th, at about 10 p.m. After the movie ended, Moore said, he and Mays were together the rest of the night. He said he already knew about the murders through a relative.
Police interviewed Mays. She said she had been with Moore on February 13 but gave a different account of how they spent the day and didn’t mention seeing a movie. An officer would write: “Her statement obviously conflicts with the statement given by Dominic Moore. She had not been able to make contact with Dominic by phone, and they had not had time to get a story together.”
During a preliminary hearing for Warren on May 10, 2009, Ford testified about what he saw. He said he was hanging out with Charles and LeDoux when a black SUV pulled up. Charles, who was carrying a Glock, opened the door. LeDoux was in the kitchen, with an AK-47. Ford said he went up to the bathroom and saw Warren walk up the stairs. Ford said that hearing the shots caused him to urinate on the bathroom floor. (A crime-scene technician did not note any disarray in the bathroom.) Ford said he ran from the bathroom to a bedroom, seized a rifle, and barricaded himself inside. Later, he saw the men leave and run to the black SUV.
On cross-examination, Ford’s account changed. He said he had just finished using the bathroom and washed his hands when he heard the shooting, which occurred 30-40 minutes after the two men showed up. He left the bathroom and saw the two assailants in the hallway.
Detective Bryan Block testified that contrary to reports prepared by him and the other officers, Ford mentioned a shooter named “Cedric” in his “first interview.” Block testified that the police used that information to create a photo array that was shown to Ford within an hour of him leaving the crime scene on the morning of February 14.
At Moore’s preliminary hearing on August 21, 2009, Ford testified that he never actually saw Warren; he just heard his voice while in the bathroom.
Analysts with the Kansas Bureau of Investigation (KBI) conducted testing on the firearm evidence at the crime scene and the Lawn Avenue house. The agency said that the shell casings found near Ford were fired by the Glock seized in Missouri. They also said that genetic material left on that weapon was consistent with Moore’s DNA.
Prior to trial, both Moore and Warren moved to sever their trials. Moore then withdrew his motion. Warren argued that he and Moore had “antagonistic defenses” and that Moore would try to blame him for the murders. Judge Robert Burns of Wyandotte County District Court denied Warren’s motion, and the joint trial began on October 12, 2010. Warren was represented by Joshua Allen; Moore by Frederick Zimmerman.
The state’s theory was that Charles Ford and LeDoux had been killed in a drug-related robbery.
Parker, the state’s first witness, testified that Ford mentioned no specific names in his initial statement to police and “was not able to give any description of anybody in the house that night.”
Magee, one of the first responders, testified that he and the other officer who first entered the house didn’t see any weapons other than a shotgun. He said that Ford told him that the shooting started as Ford approached the house and that Ford never said he was inside.
The house was owned by DeShawn Bryant, Ford’s cousin, and Ford testified he had seen “Ced” a few times at the house with another cousin, Joe Freeman. He said Charles and LeDoux were dealing “coke,” and people were in and out buying drugs on the day of the murder. Freeman came by around 5 p.m.
Ford testified that he, Charles, and LeDoux stepped out to get some food and returned to the house around 10:30 p.m.
Around 11 p.m., a black SUV that they didn’t recognize showed up. Ford said that he sat on the couch while Charles opened the door. He said he remained on the couch when he saw Warren walk up the stairs and then start shooting. He said he ran past the stairs leading downstairs and saw his brother talking to another man. He then ran to a bedroom and left the door slightly ajar, which enabled him to see Moore at the top of the stairs. He then locked the door and began firing a weapon.
Ford said he didn’t immediately give the police any names because he “still couldn’t remember what the person’s name was right then and there.” He said that at the police station, when he mentioned the name “Ced,” officers showed him a picture of Warren.
After he gave his statements, Ford said he had the police take him to Rainbow Services, a mental-health facility, “because I really didn’t know how to actually deal with all that ... and actually be able to help me with whatever little mental issues that I may have from the whole situation.”
During cross-examination, Ford denied that he had told his other brother, Joe Ford, that he recognized the SUV as belonging to Freeman and that he was scared of Freeman. (Joe Ford would later testify that he told the police that Brandon had told him that a week before the murders, Freeman had said “I’ll kill all your brothers.”)
Also during cross-examination, Ford said that some of his testimony at the preliminary hearing was not true. He said he had been in the bathroom, then said he wasn’t, then said again that he was. Later, he said he never fired any shots.
Ford testified that he came to realize his previous statements were wrong in February 2010 and told Assistant District Attorney Sheryl Lidtke. Allen and Zimmerman moved for a mistrial, arguing that they had been given no notice of this inconsistent statement. Lidtke said no such conversation took place, and Judge Burns denied the motion.
Bryant testified and said he was not involved in dealing drugs. He said he asked Charles Ford and LeDoux to “watch the house” while he was out of town at a sporting event. He also testified that he had seen Warren a few times but knew him by the nickname, “Bobo.” Joe Ford also testified that everybody knew Warren by the name “Bobo.”
Block testified that after Brandon Ford mentioned the name “Ced,” he created a photo array with Warren, because he was familiar with Warren. He also testified that Warren had a large and obvious wound on his forehead at the time of his arrest, the result of an injury a few days earlier, and that Ford didn’t mention this in any of his statements.
Jennifer Solado, a KBI forensic analyst, testified that she had swabbed all the firearms for genetic material and then compared these samples against swabs taken from Moore and Warren as well as the victims.
She said that the Glock handgun had a very small amount of genetic material, allowing comparisons for only four loci out of a possible nine. Warren was excluded as a contributor, but the partial profile was consistent with Moore’s profile as well as one in 43 people in the Black population. She described this as a “pretty common [DNA] profile.”
Warren’s DNA was found on a Bushmaster rifle seized at the Lawn Avenue house. A firearms examiner said the weapon had no connection to any evidence found at the crime scene.
That KBI examiner, David Wright, testified that based on microscopic analysis and comparison, the 9 mm shell casings found near Charles Ford were fired from the Glock. “They can be identified as having been fired from this particular firearm,” he said.
The Glock was the only weapon found to have any connection to the shooting, but Wright’s testimony covered all the weapons found at the Lawn Avenue house, allowing the jury to see what Warren’s appellate attorneys would later call an “unnecessary and theatrical display of these irrelevant and excluded firearms.”
Moore did not testify and did not present a defense. Warren did not testify, but his father, Cedric Toney, and stepmother, Nicole Carter, testified that Warren was with them until a little before midnight on February 13. Toney said he remembered the day because a song he helped produce was going to play on a local radio station at midnight. Toney lived in the southern suburbs, and he said he drove his son to the Lawn Avenue neighborhood around midnight.
During cross-examination, Lidtke suggested to Toney that this was the first time he provided an alibi for his son. Toney said he had told Warren’s attorney. In addition, the attorney had provided notice of Toney as an alibi witness at least two months prior to the trial.
During her closing argument, Lidtke said that Ford was a credible witness, despite his shifting testimony.
“What are the odds that that night he describes two people who the police later find on the 14th, and at whose house—these people are not only together, but we find them in a house in which one of the weapons that is used at this crime scene is also in this house,” she said. “That nine millimeter Glock fired the two nine millimeters that you see down by Charles’ body. That Glock was inside the house that these two men were arrested in. What are the odds that Brandon Ford is going to be able to tell police and identify these two people as being the shooters and then all of a sudden this weapon that is fired inside our crime scene just happens to be in the house that the two of them coincidentally are also in? What are the odds of him describing the person who happens to match the DNA that’s on that Glock?”
On October 13, 2010, the jury convicted Moore and Warren of one count each of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree murder, and one count of attempted murder.
Prior to sentencing, Warren and Moore moved for new trials. Warren argued that Allen had been ineffective, speaking to him only once before trial. In addition, Zimmerman had received two letters from inmates at the Wyandotte County Jail who said that Ford had told them that Moore and Warren weren’t involved in the shooting. Craig McKinnis said his conversation with Ford took place in February 2010. Larry Marshall said he spoke with Ford in August 2010. The state said this new information was hearsay and could have been obtained prior to trial.
Judge Burns denied the motion for a new trial on July 14, 2011, and sentenced both men to a “hard 50” sentence on the first-degree murder conviction, meaning they had to serve at least 50 years before eligibility for release. Moore received sentences of 195 months and 155 months on the two other convictions, to run concurrently. Warren, who had no prior convictions, received two 155-month sentences, also to run concurrently.
Moore and Warren appealed. Warren’s appeal also said that Judge Burns erred in not severing the trials and that he should have declared a mistrial after a potential juror said during jury selection that he was scared of serving because of the potential for retribution from the defendants.
Moore’s appeal included the juror issue but also said that Judge Burns had improperly denied his motion to suppress Ford’s identification and that the state had failed to turn over exculpatory evidence related to Ford’s inconsistent statements.
The Kansas Supreme Court affirmed the convictions for Moore and Warren in separate opinions on August 28, 2015. But it also said that the “hard 50” sentences on the first-degree murder convictions were unconstitutional, based on a 2013 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said enhancements used to justify prison sentences must be decided by a jury, not a judge.
Both men were resentenced to a “hard 25” life sentence on the first-degree murder convictions, but the judge changed the sentences on the lesser convictions to run consecutively. Moore and Warren again appealed, arguing the judge lacked the discretion to change the other sentences from concurrent to consecutive.
In separate opinions, the Kansas Supreme Court agreed with Moore and Warren and ordered the lesser sentences to run concurrently to the sentences for the first-degree murder conviction.
On October 7, 2019, Warren moved for a new trial. He was now represented by attorneys Cheryl Pilate and Lindsay Runnels, retained through the Midwest Innocence Project. The motion reasserted many of Warren’s earlier claims but also said that the state had failed to disclose evidence of Brandon Ford’s extensive history of mental illness, which undermined his credibility, and failed to correct Ford’s false testimony and the false testimony of the police on the inconsistencies between their account of the investigation and the written reports.
The motion also said prosecutors failed to disclose misconduct by Roger Golubski, the supervising detective, who was known for cultivating informants, many of them prostitutes, through improper and coercive means. Golubski’s misconduct contributed to the wrongful conviction of Lamonte McIntyre in 2017, and he was indicted on federal civil-rights violations in 2022.
Warren’s motion also said he was innocent. There was no physical evidence that placed him at the crime scene, and the police failed to follow leads that pointed to either Freeman or another man as the likely suspects.
Moore, represented by Robert Hoffman with the Bryan Cave law firm, filed his own motion for a new trial on February 26, 2024. Many of Moore’s claims piggybacked on Warren’s motion.
Moore asserted his innocence, noting that at the time of the murder he was recovering from a gunshot wound and was unable to run, contradicting one of Ford’s statements about the killers running to an SUV. The motion also said Zimmerman provided ineffective representation, failing to properly investigate Moore’s alibi, to challenge Ford’s identification of Moore, and to adequately investigate the inconsistencies in the state’s case.
In addition, the motion said that Cedric Toney was having an affair with Golubski’s wife, and “Golubski had the motivation, power, and ability to wrongfully pin the homicides on Moore.” (Toney would later tell the Associated Press that Golubski stalked his daughter and Warren’s mother.)
After Warren’s 2019 filing, his attorneys and prosecutors spent several years litigating the scope of discovery on Ford’s medical records. In late 2023, Judge Aaron Roberts ordered the release of these records and then scheduled an evidentiary hearing, focused solely on the Ford evidence.
The three-day hearing began on July 2, 2024. Dr. George Woods, a neuropsychiatrist, testified as an expert witness about Ford’s mental health, his extensive treatment history, and how that might have impaired Ford’s ability to recall what happened on the night his brother and Larry LeDoux were shot to death. He noted that a judge in 2005 found Ford incompetent to stand trial on passing a worthless check.
A police officer had taken Ford to the Rainbow treatment center on February 14, just after he viewed the photo arrays. During the intake process, Woods said, Ford “was asked to do a very common test where you are given three objects and then you’re asked to remember those five minutes later. He was not able to do that. So we see during this period that even when he’s voluntarily being hospitalized, his working memory is impaired.”
Dr. Nancy Franklin, an eyewitness identification expert from Stony Brook University, testified that Ford’s identification of Warren was “highly unreliable.” She said the lighting was bad and Ford was under intense stress. These factors would have impaired his ability to see the events and then accurately remember the details.
Ford knew Warren, but according to police records didn’t mention his name until much later. “I’ll say that the early record, applying what we know from the research, actually was diagnostic of Mr. Warren’s non-involvement in that incident of February 13th,” Franklin said.
After the hearing, the state said in a response that it had not failed to disclose Ford’s records because the records were not in the district attorney’s possession. It also said that several of the records fell outside the time limits for admissibility. Warren’s attorneys said the state incorrectly interpreted disclosure laws. The police department knew about Ford’s mental-health issues, and this information was imputed to be in the state’s possession.
Golubski died by suicide on December 2, 2024.
A week later, on December 10, 2024, Judge Roberts vacated Warren’s conviction, ruling that the state had violated due process by failing to disclose Ford’s mental-health issues. Separately, Judge Roberts vacated Moore’s conviction for the same reason. Both men were released from custody on December 11.
The state dismissed the charges against Moore and Warren on December 13, 2024.
– Ken Otterbourg
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