Judge dismisses case against two officers after prosecutors withheld evidence

What happened

In April 2018 two off-duty St. Louis officers struggled with a man in the parking lot of a South St. Louis bar. During the struggle the man’s gun went off, wounding one of the officers, and the other officer fired, wounding the man.

A grand jury declined to indict the officers. Prosecutors then presented the case to a second grand jury, which indicted them.

The outcome

The defense learned that prosecutors had not turned over the transcript of the second grand jury. According to the reports, that grand jury was not shown the surveillance video and was not told of an agreement prosecutors had made with the man who was shot.

In December 2019 the judge found that prosecutors had deliberately failed to disclose the evidence, and dismissed the indictment as a sanction. The ruling also noted that the surveillance video appeared to contradict statements made to the grand jury, and described a pattern of disclosure failures in the Circuit Attorney’s office. The office said at the time that it would refile the charges.

Read the coverage

• KSDK “St. Louis judge tosses case against officers who shot man outside of bar, citing video evidence” · Free to read
• St. Louis Post-Dispatch “Judge sanctions St. Louis prosecutors by dismissing case against 2 officers” · A subscription may be required

Past results afford no guarantee of future results, and every case is different and must be judged on its own merits. The summaries are written by the office from published reports; each article belongs to its publisher, and some require a subscription.

Photograph: Mel Carnahan Courthouse by Kbh3rd, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons; cropped.