Arthur Brantley testifies in court Monday.
When was he lying — and when was he telling the truth?
With palpable reluctance, Arthur Brantley walked to the witness stand at the front of the courtroom to try to answer that question, a key question in a civil trial aimed at deciding whether to revisit who shot dead a 7‑month-old baby.
Brantley faced that question in Courtroom 5A on Church Street Monday. It was posed by the legal team representing Adam Carmon, the man convicted for the 1994 murder of 7‑month-old Danielle Taft and the paralysis by bullet of Danielle’s grandmother, Charlene Troutman. For 28 years, Carmon has said that he’s innocent of the murder. He is currently arguing his fourth habeas petition, a lawsuit against the state that could win him a new trial.
Brantley was, at one point, a primary suspect for Danielle’s murder on Feb. 3, 1994, in the family’s apartment at 810 Orchard St. On Tuesday, Carmon’s lawyers tried to show that Brantley or another man, rather than Carmon, may have been the person who pulled the trigger.
Brantley had known Danielle’s uncle, Richard Troutman. While testifying on Friday and Monday, Brantley confirmed a police narrative that Troutman owed him under $200 for narcotics. Brantley arrived at 810 Orchard St. with a friend on the morning of the shooting to try to collect that debt, but Troutman said he didn’t have the money.
“Were you angry because you hadn’t been paid again?” asked David Keenan, Carmon’s lead attorney.
“Yeah, I was pretty mad about it,” Brantley murmured. He spoke softly throughout his testimony, and Judge Jon Alander asked him to raise his voice.
Baby Danielle.
After leaving the apartment, Brantley and his friend got “jumped,” as Brantley originally described to detectives, by a number of Troutman’s friends around the corner from 810 Orchard St.
“Did you seek back-up after the fight?” Keenan asked on Monday.
“I don’t believe I did,” Brantley said.
“Did you want revenge?” Keenan asked.
“I mean if I was fought again,” Brantley said, “but I don’t know that I was looking for revenge.”
The morning after the murder, police questioned Brantley, who denied any involvement in the murder at that time. As he told police that he did not have information about Danielle’s killer, Brantley failed a polygraph test.
The next day, based on police notes, detectives spoke with Brantley’s mother about their interview. They informed her of the polygraph test. Carmon’s lawyers argued that police records suggest that Brantley’s mother confronted her son and encouraged him to be forthright with officers.
Subsequently, Brantley voluntarily gave two police statements confessing his involvement in the murder. One narrative of events that led to Danielle Taft’s death and Charlene Troutman’s paralysis on February 3, 1994 emerged from his statements. Brantley had said that he stayed in the backseat of a car with Anthony Little, a man who was either currently or previously a superior of Brantley in the drug trade (depending on which of Brantley’s statements is trusted), and a man named Demetrius Bates. Brantley said that Bates was the one who shot up 810 Orchard St.
Brantley later recanted that narrative when police approached him saying they had “caught the kid that killed the kid,” as Brantley phrased it on Monday.
Brantley gave another police interview saying that he had previously lied when admitting to any involvement in the murder. He said he’d been at home that night, and that he’d fabricated the statements under police pressure, out of fear for retaliation against his family, and out of a desire to “get off the streets,” he again stated during his court testimony on Monday.
Carmon’s attorneys argue that Brantley’s confessions constituted the true events of Feb. 3, 1994. The state has maintained that Brantley’s recantation of those confessions reflects the truth.
Brantley himself stands by his recantation.
When Senior Assistant State’s Attorney Craig Nowak had an opportunity to cross-examine Brantley on Monday afternoon, he asked Brantley why he had made up the confessions.
“I was being pressured … by police,” who told him that his family would be in danger from retaliation if he did not admit involvement.
“I wanted to get off the streets,” Brantley added.
“How old were you when you gave that statement?” Nowak asked.
“Eighteen,” Brantley said.
“Where were you at 10:30 at night on Feb. 3?” Nowak asked.
“Home,” Brantley replied.
In order to garner a new trial, Keenan and his team have to prove that new evidence undisclosed by prosecutors at the time of the trial could have helped acquit Carmon of the murder. They are arguing that Carmon’s original defense attorney could have pursued a stronger “third-party culpability” defense blaming Brantley or Little for the murder if he had known a handful of details about Brantley’s police statements. They claim that prosecutors suppressed the fact that Brantley’s confessions had been voluntary — as well as information about police interactions with Brantley’s mother, which could explain why Brantley was motivated to return to police.
Brantley denied on the stand that his mother had convinced him to approach police again about the investigation.
“Did she encourage you to come forward to police and share what you knew?” asked Keenan.
“I didn’t know anything, so I don’t believe she told me that,” Brantley said.
"A Person I Made Up"
David Keenan questions Brantley.
Other parts of Brantley’s testimony touched on the people he had, at one point, claimed were also involved in Danielle’s murder.
“Do you recall telling detectives that you had met up with Little and Bates on the night of the murder?” Keenan asked.
“I don’t remember,” Brantley responded — a phrase he used again and again throughout his testimony on the 1994 events.
“Do you remember who Demetrius Bates is?”
“No — I think it was somebody I made up,” Brantley said.
Keenan pointed to a moment in a deposition that Brantley had given ahead of the 2022 civil trial.
“Who’s Anthony Little?” the questioner had asked.
“He was a guy I made up,” Brantley had said.
But Anthony Little is a real person — a man whom Carmon’s legal team had tried to subpoena, but who had promised to invoke the 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination if asked to testify.
“Are you aware that Anthony Little’s attorney is actually on the Zoom call?” the lawyer had asked incredulously during the deposition.
Judge Alander.
Back in the courtroom, Keenan paced while posing to Brantley, “You had no vendetta against Mr. Little.”
“No,” replied Brantley.
“You had no motive to frame Anthony Little for a murder he didn’t commit?” Keenan asked.
“No,” Brantley said again.
Brantley’s courtroom appearance on Monday marked the first time Shirley Troutman, Danielle’s mother and Charlene’s daughter, had seen him since 1994. During a recess, she said Brantley’s testimony didn’t sway her theory of what happened the day her daughter was killed and mother was paralyzed in their living room: that both Adam Carmon and Arthur Brantley were somehow involved.
“It was hard seeing Arthur,” she said. She and her family left the courtroom early that afternoon.
Click here to read articles published at the time of Danielle’s murder about the circumstances both in the case and the surrounding neighborhood, as well as an interview with the man who owned the gun stolen to commit the killing. Click here for a story about how the family and neighborhood were faring 20 years after the murder, and here for an account of Danielle’s posthumous 21st birthday.
Previous coverage of Adam Carmon habeas trial: