MOBILE, Ala. — The Glover murder case will go forward after a Mobile County judge on Thursday refused to dismiss the charge against William Malik Glover. His defense argued that police withheld a key piece of evidence for years, causing his first trial to collapse.
Mobile County Circuit Judge Michael Windom denied the defense motion following a hearing. Last month Windom declared a mistrial after finding that prosecutors had failed to turn over a report on a cell phone extraction.
Glover, a Mobile resident, is charged with murder. Prosecutors allege he fatally shot Al Dimitri Craig on Flicker Drive in 2023.
The Defense Argument
Defense attorney Tom Walsh asked the court to go further than a mistrial and throw out the case entirely. In a court filing, he argued that the prosecution bears responsibility for evidence held by the police department that investigated the shooting.
“The State cannot simply wash its hands of MPD’s refusal to produce certain, relevant and owed discovery,” Walsh wrote, referring to the Mobile Police Department.
Walsh laid out a timeline in his filing that he said showed the defense did everything it could to obtain the evidence before trial. He noted that before he took over the case from the Mobile County Public Defender’s Office, the judge had already ordered the prosecution to disclose all of its evidence.
“Leading up to the trial, the parties had extensive communication regarding trial, witnesses, and evidence,” Walsh wrote.
In the week before the trial began in August, he wrote, he met with prosecutors to review the evidence. “The Defense believed it possessed all the evidence related to the investigation,” he wrote.
‘Its Very Existence Was Kept From the Defendant’
According to Walsh, it was not until the trial was already underway that he learned the Mobile Police Department had been in possession of the cell phone extraction report for years.
“In fact, its very existence was kept from the Defendant,” he wrote. “As such, the Defense had no reason to file a Motion to Compel.”
A motion to compel is a request asking a judge to order the other side to hand over specific evidence. Walsh’s point was that the defense could not ask for a report it did not know existed.
The Prosecution’s Explanation
The Mobile County District Attorney’s Office has said it missed the report during its pretrial review.
When the mistrial was declared, the office also said the prosecutors trying the case had been unaware that the cell phone analysis existed and did not know whether the evidence was significant to the case one way or the other.
Judge Windom sided with the state on the question of dismissal, allowing the prosecution to continue.
Why the Report Matters
A cell phone extraction is a forensic download of the data stored on a phone, which can include text messages, call logs, location data, photographs and app activity. In a homicide case, that kind of information can bear on a timeline of events, relationships between the people involved, or the credibility of witnesses, and it can cut in favor of either side.
Under criminal discovery rules, prosecutors must share evidence in the state’s possession with the defense before trial. That obligation is generally understood to reach material held by the law enforcement agencies working on the case, not only the documents individual prosecutors have personally reviewed. That is why a report sitting in a police file can create a disclosure problem even when the trial prosecutors did not know about it.
Mistrial Versus Dismissal
The difference between the two remedies the defense has sought is significant.
A mistrial ends a trial that is already underway and resets the case. It is not an acquittal, and the state remains free to try the defendant again with a new jury. Judge Windom granted that remedy last month after the existence of the extraction report surfaced during testimony.
Dismissal is a far more drastic step. Courts generally reserve it for situations where a disclosure failure has caused prejudice that cannot be cured by other means, or where the government’s conduct is serious enough to warrant ending the prosecution. With the mistrial already granted, the defense now has access to the report before any new trial begins, a factor courts often weigh when deciding whether a lesser remedy is sufficient.
Thursday’s ruling means the case returns to the posture it would have been in had the report been disclosed on time: a pending murder charge awaiting trial.
What Happens Next
With the motion to dismiss denied, the case is expected to be scheduled for a new trial. No new trial date was announced at Thursday’s hearing.
Before a retrial, both sides will have the opportunity to examine the contents of the cell phone extraction and decide how, if at all, it affects their strategy.
For the family of Al Dimitri Craig, who was killed in 2023, the ruling means the case continues, though a resolution is still some time away.
The murder charge against Glover is an accusation. He is presumed innocent unless and until proven guilty in court.