Black man from Atlanta wrongfully imprisoned for murder after a detective withheld crucial evidence – now he is free, but the corrupt cop faces no punishment

Keith Sylvester, a black man from Atlanta, spent more than a year in prison for the murder of his mother and stepfather – despite video and cellphone evidence proving his innocence that was intentionally withheld by the detective investigating the murders.

According to WSB-TV, Sylvester is now entitled to $1.5 million in compensation after an appeals court overturned the conviction.

However, it does not appear that the officer investigating the case, Detective James Barnett of the Atlanta Police, was ever punished for withholding evidence that would have proven that Sylvester did not murder his parents or set fire to their house after strangling them.

Nor does it appear that he will be charged with perjury, although that would be the appropriate charge in a case such as this.

“The argument is that a jury could conclude that Detective Barnett either intentionally lied to the district judge or was so careless with the truth that he misled the district judge into believing there was a reasonable suspicion that he committed the crime,” the appeals court said in its decision overturning his conviction.

Atlanta police eventually arrested another black man, Cornelius Muckle, for the murder of Deborah and Harry Hubbard after cell phone records revealed that his phone was in their home before they were murdered and their house was set on fire. Muckle, who had no connection to the Hubbards, also attempted to sell items stolen from the home to a local pawn shop two days after the murders.

Barnett, however, claimed Sylvester murdered his parents to collect the insurance money. However, Sylvester's attorney at the time said he was not even listed as a beneficiary, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

“His name is nowhere in the insurance policy,” said

Zack Greenamyre at the time. “And he would be one of six children and stepchildren who would benefit from the policy.”

Sylvester, who helped investigators with the case for nearly six months in hopes of finding the killer, said he was shocked when he was finally arrested.

“When (the detective) handed me a subpoena and told me I was under arrest for the murder of my parents, I thought it was a ploy on his part to get more information,” Sylvester told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in a May 2024 article.

“I thought this was a mistake. They would notice something and I would be out of there pretty soon. I thought I would be out in a few days.”

Instead, he spent 14 months behind bars for murder, arson and insurance fraud.

The murder

It was June 2, 2018, and Sylvester visited his mother and stepfather at their home in Atlanta, which he did almost daily, according to WBS-TV.

However, according to the court ruling, he left the house before 9 p.m., based on evidence from his dashboard camera, his cell phone provider and surveillance cameras that had recorded him at gambling establishments.

Phone records also showed that Harry Hubbard called his niece, Nyaira Walton, at 9:30 p.m. She told investigators that her uncle showed no signs of distress during the call.

At 3:56 a.m., the Atlanta Fire Department received a call about a house fire. When they arrived at the scene, they discovered bodies inside with signs of strangulation.

Firefighters also concluded that the fire had been deliberately set “just before” the call, which would have made it impossible for Sylvester to start the fire, as evidence cited above, but never presented at trial. An autopsy also found that the couple were still alive when the fire started, as there was ash and soot in the couple's windpipes, suggesting they were still breathing when the fire started.

However, Barnett seemed to have had no luck in finding the real killer and therefore focused his efforts on Sylvester.

According to the appeal judgment:

“The bulk of Detective Barnett's investigative work took place in the first few weeks after the fire. Over the next four months, the flow of information slowed. Eventually, Detective Barnett concluded that he had gathered as much evidence as possible and decided to seek an arrest warrant for his only suspect, Keith Sylvester – Deborah's son and Harry's stepson.”

Nearly six months after the murders, in December 2018, Barnett arrested Sylvester, much to his shock as he had worked tirelessly with police to help solve the crime.

This is how Sylvester described his arrest to WGRZ in February 2019 after being detained for two months:

“I had been working with the lead investigator for the Atlanta Police Department, James Barnett. I had been giving him as much information as I could so he could figure out exactly what had happened or get any leads. All I know is that he called me on December 28th. I was at work and he told me he wanted to bring me in the next day for one final interview. He said it was the end of the year and he just wanted to recap or see if I had any more information. I said if it's that important I can come by tonight but he said no, just come by tomorrow. So I went to police headquarters that Saturday around 5 o'clock when he asked and basically he asked if I had any more information for him and I told him I didn't know anything else and then he said 'that's unfortunate for you' and then he charged me with both murders.”

Barnett spent the next year trying to prove his innocence by writing letters to judges, prosecutors and civil rights organizations in the hopes they would review his case.

The Fulton County District Attorney's Office launched an investigation and determined that Muckle was the real killer.

But prosecutors tried to pin the blame for detaining the wrong man on Google, accusing the tech company of taking nine months to respond to a request for a geofence search warrant. According to the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers, a geofence search warrant would have allowed investigators to “cast a wide net by gathering information about all devices located in a specific area.”

That's how they discovered that the Muckles' phone had been in the Hubbards' house shortly before the fire broke out and they were murdered, according to 11 Alive news. That's how they discovered that two days later, Muckle tried to sell items stolen from the house at a local pawn shop.

“The result of this investigation shows that an assailant, who was not named in the original police investigation, was in fact in the home of Deborah and Harry Hubbard 20 minutes before the 911 call was made about the fire that resulted in their deaths,” District Attorney Paul Howard said in a statement to 11Alive News at the time.