Our son Patrick Casey served his country in combat as a Sergeant in Afghanistan in 2009-2010. For a year we worried about receiving a dreaded phone call from the Army. Patrick returned home safely when many soldiers he served with did not. Shockingly, we did get the phone call we had dreaded. It came from the D.C Police on September 23, 2011.
On that tragic day in the early morning hours, Patrick was attacked from behind while intervening to break up a fight between a friend and a group of three men from Virginia. The men had a history of drunken behavior and several brawls in the same downtown area of Washington D.C. Patrick died from his injuries four days later. No one was ever charged. Making matters worse, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for D.C. led by Ronald Machen precipitously and falsely blamed our son for his own death by concluding without supporting evidence that the perpetrator, Jason Ward, acted in defense of his friend Brian Giblin. Ward was a champion bodybuilder with had a history of drunken brawls in DC and was training in Krav Maga. He was a ticking timebomb. The truth is that Giblin was the initial aggressor which invalidates any claim of self-defense or defense of another. Patrick was the one acting in defense of another - his friend.
The USAO-DC denied Patrick due process.
As we will document, the USAO-DC gave Ward preferential treatment by cutting a secret deal with him on October 10, 2011 and obstructed the DC Police from performing a complete and fair investigation. Throughout the homicide investigation in 2011 and ever since, the federal prosecutors have denied us information, deceived us and outright lied to us and the public.
Before Patrick joined the Army he worked in Israel and traveled to the Palestinian area, Jordan and Egypt. He grew to love that part of the world.
We were forced to do our own investigation something no parents should ever have to do. We obtained all the DC Police files and DC Police Standard Operating Procedures for Homicide Investigations through the Freedom of Information Act. Our investigation included frame by frame analysis of surveillance video and we, not the investigators, prepared the first incident reconstruction. Ward, Giblin and Justin Ruark (the third in Ward’s group) were deposed in civil suits that have been settled. Their testimony under oath in the civil suits proves that they lied with impunity during the criminal investigation.
Based upon new evidence discovered in our investigation, the DC Police have concluded that Patrick was murdered and requested the case be prosecuted. The DC Police conclusion of Murder is irreconcilable with the USAO-DC conclusion of defense of another. Regrettably and unfairly the DC Police have remained publicly silent in the face of deliberate misconduct and obstruction by the USAO-DC.
Over a decade since the crime, we are still seeking justice for Patrick, a man who was falsely blamed in the tragic events of his own death while Ward, his friends and the corrupt federal prosecutors have not been held accountable.
*Current Update: View the Complaint we filed in September 2019 with the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General and the June 2024 response (Report of Investigation Into Allegations of Misconduct Against Then U.S. Attorney Ronald Machen) that incredibly took the Inspector General five years to produce.* The OIG report is beyond overdue, evasive, incomplete showing a lack of effort and due diligence. The role of the Inspector General is to prevent and investigate fraud and abuse by government departments not to participate in it.
We are currently working with staff of the Senate Judiciary Committee seeking an independent, thorough and fair assessment of the OIG’s June 2024
We present the truth about who Patrick was, what happened the night he was attacked, and the deliberate misconduct by federal prosecutors. We continue to fight for Patrick’s legacy so that who he really was — a dedicated son, a brother and combat soldier with his whole future before him — is remembered and he receives the justice and respect he earned.