Dawayne Joseph Spriggs, 35, from Washington, D.C. and Prince George’s County, Maryland, was sentenced to nine years in prison for obstruction of justice and subornation of perjury. The sentence was announced by U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro.
Spriggs pleaded guilty on June 23, 2025, to obstruction of justice in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia. Judge Jason Park also ordered a five-year term of supervised release following his prison sentence.
The case stems from a 2014 cold case sexual assault. On September 13, 2023, a District of Columbia Grand Jury indicted Spriggs for the assault. A superseding indictment on October 11, 2023 added an obstruction charge.
“Neither time nor pressure nor obstruction will prevent this office from identifying and convicting the guilty,” said U.S. Attorney Jeanine Ferris Pirro. “This defendant pressured many witnesses to give false testimony and lie to cover up his violent crimes, which corrupts the principles of truth-seeking upon which our system of justice is based—it didn’t work.”
Spriggs was arrested on May 18, 2023 for sexually assaulting a stranger in July 2014. In 2016, DNA evidence linked the case to another unsolved sexual assault reported in Anne Arundel County, Maryland in 2013. Detectives with the Metropolitan Police Department’s Cold Case Sexual Assault Unit later obtained new leads that allowed them to collect DNA samples from Spriggs in 2023. These samples matched both rape kits and led to his arrest and indictment.
While awaiting trial, Spriggs attempted to obstruct justice through hundreds of recorded phone calls and texts from jail. He pressured his then-girlfriend to tamper with evidence and encouraged associates to provide false statements about events they did not witness. He also instructed others to delete incriminating messages and pressured a family member to commit perjury before the grand jury. His then-girlfriend pleaded guilty for her role in attempting to obstruct justice and has been sentenced.
The prosecution was part of the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Columbia’s Cold Case Sexual Assault Initiative started in February 2018. The initiative aims to solve previously unsolved cases by working with law enforcement partners such as MPD’s Sexual Assault Unit, FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, and other agencies across the DMV area.
Chief Pamela Smith of the Metropolitan Police Department joined U.S. Attorney Pirro in announcing the sentence and commended those who investigated the case as well as Assistant U.S. Attorney Amy Zubrensky who prosecuted it.
