The State’s Witness, Robert White
“We put [White] on the stand; he was a witness of ours but you’ll never see me standing in front of a jury saying what this witness says is the truth.”
“The truthfulness of Mr. White’s testimony is seriously in doubt, and he even admits this. The extent of Mr. White’s inconsistencies about the events make it clear that he testified untruthfully.”
“It’s already been demonstrated I think so far in cross-examination that this witness (Robert White) has only a passing acquaintance with the truth.”
White, the surviving “delivery man”, was the state’s main witness in its case against Keith Washington.
White had at least twelve convictions at the time of the trial, including a first degree sexual assault conviction in 1995 in South Carolina, for which he spent ten years in prison and had to register as a sex offender in South Carolina.
White had at least ten more arrests in addition to those twelve convictions before the trial, and has had two more arrests after the trial for breaking into the homes of two more women, one where he “pushed [the victim] down on the floor” and another where he “grabbed her by the shoulders and threw her into the door in the hallway” (both from police reports).
Robert White was never a hired employee of Marlo Furniture, the company that Keith had hired to deliver bed rails to his house on the day of January 24, 2007, according to its Human Resources Director.
On the morning of January 24, 2007, Marlo Furniture employee Brandon Clark picked White up in a delivery truck on the side of the road near a Popeye’s (pg. 8).
The Marlo Furniture customer who interacted with Clark and White before Keith, Robert Baker, wrote a sworn statement in which he says that White “seemed to be either high or intoxicated” and that he “was very relieved that my wife was not home alone when they arrived.”
After being treated at a local hospital the night of the incident, White was found to have cocaine in his system, according to a toxicology report.
One week after the incident, White filed a $400 million lawsuit against Keith and Prince George’s County, which was later dismissed. White had a strong incentive to lie about the night of the incident in order to collect payment in the civil suit.
Between his pre-trial media statement, grand jury testimony, criminal trial testimony, civil deposition, and civil trial testimony, White’s story changed constantly and was often false. In his civil trial testimony, White admitted to several perjured statements in his grand jury testimony.
Click here to read more about U.S. and Maryland perjury law as it relates to Keith’s case.
An independent court commissioner issued a twelve count criminal summons against White for perjury in his grand jury testimony, but the State refused to pursue it and nolle prossed the case.