Oakland prosecutor's review of murder conviction coincided with campaign donations from man's family

Kara Berg The Detroit News Published: May 23, 2023 Oakland County prosecutors will ask a judge at a Wednesday hearing to vacate a Farmington Hills man's first-degree murder conviction in the shooting death of his nephew and resentence him with a second-degree murder conviction after two key witnesses recanted trial testimony.

But the widow of the victim said she is troubled that Hayes Bacall's relatives and others with ties to his family have made political donations to Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald's campaign as the prosecutor's office reviewed the case. Assistant Prosecutor David Williams said those contributions were unrelated to reconsidering Bacall's life sentence and said McDonald was unaware of any connection between Bacall and the donors until The Detroit News contacted her.

Bacall, 63, was sentenced to life in prison for killing his nephew, 33-year-old Saif Jameel, following the 2011 trial. Each of his four appeals — to the Michigan Court of Appeals, the Michigan Supreme Court, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan and the U.S. 6th Circuit Court of Appeals — was denied or not heard by the court.

The Oakland County Conviction Integrity Unit reviewed the case in 2022 and determined that prosecutorial misconduct related to lies the prosecutor told during closing arguments, as well as witnesses recanting their testimony, resulted in a weak conviction. The prosecutor said several times during closing arguments that Bacall had never brought up a self-defense case before the trial began, even though it was not true.

"The lawfulness of Hayes Bacall's first-degree murder conviction has been questioned for more than a decade," Oakland County Prosecutor Karen McDonald's office wrote in a statement. "Upon review, it became clear that the meager evidence in support of a deeply flawed conviction had been undermined, and that the conviction of first-degree murder could no longer stand. Instead, the CIU determined that the remaining evidence was only sufficient to support a conviction for second-degree murder."

The review of Bacall's conviction began in November 2021, McDonald's office said.

Six months later, while the prosecutor's office was preparing to interview the recanting witnesses, Hayes Bacall's three brothers, his son, the Chaldean Chamber of Commerce's political action committee, 15 other people connected to the chamber and three others donated $86,000 to McDonald's reelection campaign over a two-day period, May 17-18, 2022. The influx of donations represented 94% of McDonald's total fundraising in the first seven months of 2022, a Detroit News analysis of campaign finance reports shows.

Hayes Bacall's son, Maher Bacall, said his political donation of $2,000 was "totally irrelevant" to the review of his father's case. He said he's made political contributions throughout the years to various campaigns and fundraisers.

Basil and Eddie Bacall, Hayes' brothers and partners in the West Bloomfield-based real estate development firm Bacall Group, each donated $2,000 to McDonald's campaign. A third Bacall brother, Jacob Bacall, CEO of Bacall Development, a commercial real estate firm in Farmington Hills, also donated $2,000 to the prosecutor's campaign, records show. Basil and Jacob Bacall did not respond for comment, and Eddie Bacall said he did not remember the donation.

Genniver Jameel, Saif Jameel's widow, said the donations to McDonald's campaign while the prosecutor's office was reconsidering Hayes Bacall's conviction for murdering her husband are concerning.

"They're all close family," Jameel told The Detroit News. "They want to get Hayes Bacall out of prison. They know very well it was premeditated murder."

Political donations explained

McDonald's campaign finance report from spring 2022 contains no record of a fundraiser for the first-term Democrat. The donations from the Bacall family members, the Chaldean Chamber of Commerce and businessmen who are chamber members are all marked "direct," records show.

Oakland County Prosecutor's Office Community Liaison Gabby Klos said McDonald held a campaign event May 17, 2022, in Birmingham, but the donations on the campaign finance report were not coded correctly. Klos said Tuesday the campaign will file an amended report.

Businessman Kevin Denha, who hosted the May 2022 campaign event, as well as one in March 2020 and earlier this month, said these events had nothing to do with the Bacalls. He noted the Bacalls are a large family. Denha said he did not know Hayes Bacall or Saif Jameel.

Martin Manna, president of the Chaldean Chamber of Commerce, also said he did not know who Hayes Bacall or Saif Jameel were, and said the chamber's donations to McDonald had no connection to a review of Bacall's life prison sentence.

In an email, McDonald said she did not speak to anyone about the Bacall case aside from her staff. She declined a phone interview. McDonald said the May 2022 donations corresponded with an annual campaign fundraiser.

"Our office strictly abided by the protocol and best practices of the Conviction Integrity Unit. The CIU conducted a thorough, independent investigation and reached its recommendation without any influence or interference of any kind," McDonald said in a statement. "The Oakland County Prosecutor's Office's top priorities are public safety and fair and just prosecution. Politics will never influence the decisions of my office.”

Assistant Prosecutor David Williams said the head of the Conviction Integrity Unit reports directly to McDonald and doesn’t interact with the other assistant prosecutors.

"The Conviction Integrity Unit is independent and bases its decision on the evidence," the prosecutor's office said in a statement. "Any suggestion that the Conviction Integrity Unit’s review of this case and subsequent conclusion was based on anything other than the facts is absolutely false and deeply offensive."

Hayes Bacall's attorney, David Gorcyca, declined to comment beyond what was in the motions submitted to the court. Gorcyca, a former prosecutor of Oakland County for 12 years, did not respond when asked about the donations.

On Wednesday, Oakland County Circuit Judge Mary Ellen Brennan is scheduled to hear Bacall and Oakland County prosecutor's case for granting the joint motion to set aside the first-degree murder conviction, replace it with a second-degree murder conviction and resentence Bacall.

A jury found Bacall guilty of first-degree murder in the killing of his nephew, Saif Jameel, in August 2011. When police asked him what happened immediately after the shooting, Bacall said: "I shot my nephew, he owes me $400,000," according to a Michigan Court of Appeals summary of the case.

While none of the appeals courts granted Bacall's request for relief, judges on the Michigan Court of Appeals, the Detroit U.S. District Court and the Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals all concluded there had been prosecutorial misconduct. The Supreme Court declined to hear the case.

So Bacall turned back to the Oakland County courts and filed a motion for relief from judgment. Brennan noted in her March 3 order denying Bacall's motion that post-conviction relief is "an extraordinary remedy" that is only appropriate to prevent manifest injustice.

For Brennan to have considered the motion, Bacall would have needed to present either good cause for failing to raise an issue on appeal or show actual prejudice in the conviction, the judge wrote. Brennan said he did not show either and instead chose to "leave it to this court to discover and rationalize the basis for the claim."

This was eventually followed by the joint motion from prosecutors and Bacall's defense attorneys, accompanied by affidavits from the recanting witnesses, transcripts from the trial and the full Conviction Integrity Unit report.

Witnesses recant testimony from 2011 trial

One of the witnesses, Samir Bacall, said in an affidavit that he was upset when his brother, Saif Jameel, was killed in 2010, so he embellished his statement out of anger and for revenge. He admitted he lied about the threats Hayes Bacall supposedly made and wanted to make sure Bacall wasn't declared innocent because he had good legal representation.

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kberg@detroitnews.com