Police conduct issues may be swaying jurors in St. Clair County

Attorney Lloyd Cueto Jr. is on a roll.

In the last 108 days, three men accused of first-degree murder were acquitted by St. Clair County juries. Cueto was at the defense table for each of the defendants: Torcus Boone, William Cosby and most recently, Greg Seddens, who received a not-guilty verdict from a St. Clair County jury on Wednesday night.

During the Seddens trial, Cueto’s co-counsel Derek Siegel questioned prosecution eyewitness Nicole Hobson, whose account changed three or four times. Hobson broke down on the stand and said she was beaten by East St. Louis Police before she identified Seddens as the shooter of her boyfriend, Melvin Conners.

“When I first read the police reports in the case, I questioned why Hobson wasn’t listed as a victim,” Siegel said. “That’s when I knew something was fishy.”

But when Hobson testified that she was thrown against a wall and punched until she urinated on herself, Cueto knew the case changed.

“It was a real ah-ha moment,” Cueto said.

The conduct of police officers has been coming up in criminal trials for a long time, but after high-profile cases such as the shooting of a black youth by a white officer in Ferguson, Mo., or last week’s in South Carolina where an officer shot a man in the back, there can be a tendency by the public to question officers’ testimony, said Southern Illinois University Carbondale law professor Bill Schroeder.

“That’s the climate that’s out there right now,” Schroeder said.

Cosby was accused of the shooting death of Antwan Thomas outside an East St. Louis lounge. A St. Clair County jury acquitted Cosby in a trial after East St. Louis Detective Orlando Ward, the lead investigator in the case, was charged with federal drug-trafficking.

“I have been a lawyer for eight years, and the difference now is that jurors no longer give police officers the benefit of the doubt,” Cueto said. “I think jurors focus on the case they are deciding.”

Public defender and longtime defense lawyer John O’Gara agreed. He thought it may have begun with the O.J. Simpson murder case. During the televised trial, jurors sent out questions to Judge Lance Ito, asking and challenging evidence and witnesses. Those jurors were empowered and engaged, O’Gara said, leaving potential jurors around the country to expect the same.

“Jurors we are getting now are millennials. They tend to question things more, not take things at face value, not take the word of a police officer over anyone else,” O’Gara said.

There have been several prosecutions of St. Clair County police officers. Former New Athens police chief Dallas Hill pleaded guilty to official misconduct charges after he admitted that he took an Apple iPod and an Apple iPad from the evidence locker for personal use. Former East St. Louis and Alorton Police Chief Michael Baxton pleaded guilty to stealing evidence and making false statements.

While St. Clair County State’s Attorney Brendan Kelly said those were isolated instances, the cases may leave an impression with the public.

“Even the officers who are outstanding and do their job with integrity, which is 95 percent of them, get questioned because of the misconduct of a few officers,” Kelly said.

Prosecutors can try to minimize the impact by asking questions to potential jurors to determine whether they have a bias, Schroeder said. They also can try to keep such evidence out of a trial by showing the issue does not affect the guilt or innocence determination.

“It is going to be tough,” Schroeder said. “This issue of police misconduct is reaching a receptive audience right now. Officers are guilty until proven innocent in some cases.”

Mistrust of police also may cause witnesses to not cooperate with officers, Kelly said, leaving prosecutors with a difficult task at trial.

Improper handling of physical evidence can complicate prosecutions, such as the Nicole Willis murder case.

Willis, 16, was found naked and beaten to death in 1989 in a vacant lot in Centreville. Despite a 1-in-32 quadrillion DNA match that led to murder charges against Carlos Garret in 2010, a jury acquitted him after hearing testimony of poor evidence-handling practices by the Centreville Police Department.

“An overwhelming majority of our prosecutions have resulted in some kind of conviction in recent months, but it goes without saying that integrity and trust are fundamental. In fairness, every case is different and some are aggressive prosecutions that are just tougher to prove, but we have to fight with what we have,” Kelly said.

He added, “It is not mistrust in law enforcement that is always the problem. Jurors can also have widely different views about use-of-force, for example, either by the police or by private citizens in dangerous neighborhoods, and that can create doubt when you prosecute a shooting case.”

Madison County State’s Attorney Tom Gibbons, who hasn’t had an acquittal in a murder case during his tenure in office, said the defense bar has been raising the issue of police misconduct for a long time. These are not new arguments, Gibbons said, but they may be starting to stick.

“Police are very aware of the issue of public trust because of the heightened media attention to police misconduct,” Gibbons said. “In most cases, law enforcement’s reaction to that is to renew their commitment to integrity and professionalism.”

Cueto agreed.

“This is my job. I have a lot of respect and affection for the police,” Cueto said. “But I appreciate jurors who focus on the particulars of cases where they are asked to decide the guilt or innocent of a citizen.”

Vigorous murder prosecutions will continue in St. Clair County, Kelly said, whatever the outcomes.

“I can’t point to one common concern among cases where jurors decline to convict. Nonetheless, it can be a hell of a time right now for prosecutors and law enforcement,” Kelly said. “But when you are going through hell, you just keep going. I think that’s what the public and jurors expect us to do, and it’s what justice requires us to do.”

This story was originally published April 11, 2015 at 12:59 PM with the headline "Police conduct issues may be swaying jurors in St. Clair County."