Defense wants charges tossed

Coatesville shooting defendant Steven Carter’s attorney says erased video interview amounts to ‘a key piece of evidence in the case’

WEST CHESTER >> Will the ghost of Jay C. Smith come back to haunt the Chester County District Attorney’s Office?

During pre-trial arguments in Common Pleas Court on Friday, the murder case against the former principal of Upper Merion High School was cited as a legal standard for dismissing criminal charges against a defendant because of misconduct by law enforcement authorities. A defense attorney contends that actions by Coatesville police that occurred during the investigation into a New Year’s Day 2015 shooting in the city were so egregious that the judge overseeing the case should throw out the case and “send a message” that such behavior will not be tolerated.

Both attorney Mark Conte of West Chester and Judge Anthony Sarcione cited as case law giving Sarcione the authority to use misconduct as a basis for a dismissal, Commonwealth vs. Smith, the landmark ruling that saw a firstdegree murder conviction and death sentence against the controversial educator overturned, and the prosecution barred from retrying the case. Smith, who died at age 80 in 2009 after having spent six years on death row in Pennsylvania, had been found guilty of the murder of Upper Merion school teacher Susan Reinert, whose nude and battered body was found in the trunk of a car in a parking lot of a motel outside Harrisburg in June 1979.

State prosecutors contended that Smith conspired with another Upper Merion school teacher, William Bradfield, to kill Reinert and collect insurance money from her estate. They presented evidence that Bradfield was at the beach in New Jersey when the murder occurred, pinning the actual crime on Smith.

But later, it was discovered that the prosecution had intention-

ally withheld evidence that sand was found on Reinert’s body — sand that could have come from the beach linked to Bradfield.

The state Supreme Court deemed the behavior by prosecutors outrageous, and the justices said another trial would amount to placing Smith in double jeopardy. Before the Smith ruling, double jeopardy, which prevents a new prosecution for the same charges, was found to exist only when defendants were acquitted or when prosecutors had deliberately provoked a mistrial.

In the case before Sarcione, Conte has stated that Coatesville police deliberately erased a recorded interview the victim in the New Year’s Day shooting gave to a city investigator hours after he was shot several times, including in the right eye. His client, Steven Carter, is due to go on trial today in Sarcione’s courtroom on charges of attempted murder, aggravated assault, weapons offense and conspiracy.

The interview, said Conte, amounts to “a key piece of evidence in the case.” Because it has been erased without the police making a complete transcript of what the victim, Lamont Wilson, said, no one will be able to

say with certainty what was said about what role Carter played in the shooting.

“This is not some minor thing,” Conte told Sarcione. “I believe, but I’ll never be able to prove it, that there are things in that statement not helpful to the prosecution’s case. It turns out to be a really, really important piece of evidence, that we will never have. I think the police acted in bad faith here. We need to send a message to the Coatesville police.”

Conte, a former chief prosecutor in the DA’s Office, asked Sarcione to either dismiss the charges against Carter, who has been in Chester County Prison since his arrest in January 2015, or prohibit Wilson from testifying in the case. At the very least, he said Friday, he wants “wide latitude in developing the investigation’s factual inaccuracies at trial through cross-examination of the officers involved.”

Sarcione is expected to make a ruling Monday before jury selection in Carter’s case is scheduled to begin. He did not indicate how he would rule on Conte’s motion, but noted that information about the erased recording placed before the jury could have a negative impact on the prosecution’s case.

“It is certainly not going to put the police officers in the best light,” he noted.

The differences in the two

“It turns out to be a really, really important piece of evidence, that we will never have. I think the police acted in bad faith here. We need to send a message to the Coatesville police.”

— attorney Mark Conte

cases are that in Smith, the evidence was hidden from the defense at trial, and in this case police reports contain information that the recording was erased, and include a summary of what Wilson allegedly said, implicating Carter. In addition, in the Smith case, the misconduct was by state prosecutors from the Attorney General’s Office, while Conte said he has no concerns with the district attorney’s involvement.

“You are alleging police misconduct, versus prosecutorial misconduct,” Sarcione stated. “Absolutely,” Conte answered.

The lead prosecution in the case, Chief Deputy District Attorney Ronald Yen, did not dispute the accuracy of Conte’s contention that the recording was intentionally erased. He said he was “not happy about what had occurred here,” and said in hindsight it was, “not the best decision” for the chief investigator, Detective Sgt. Brandon Harris, to have made.

But he denied that there was any conspiracy to destroy evidence that would prove beneficial to Carter, who the prosecution has long contended is the person who shot Wilson in the eye, the most serious of the wounds he suffered in the incident. Instead, the recording had been erased because it was a virtual duplicate of a second interview that Wilson gave later, and had been recorded on an officer’s personal cellphone, which would have had to be taken from him and placed in evidence otherwise, Yen told Sarcione.

“Was that the best decision to make?” Yen asked. “No it wasn’t. But it does not warrant the kind of relief Mr. Conte is looking for.”

Yen said Wilson’s account has been consistent from the beginning, that he was shot by multiple men, including Carter. “He always says the same thing, which is that ‘Snoop’ shot him.”

Wilson was shot in the afternoon of Jan. 1, 2015, in front of a house in the 300 block of Walnut Street in Coatesville. Wilson’s house had been burglarized the

night before, and he had contacted people he knew so that he could question them about the break-in — one of them being Carter, who he knew as “Snoop.”

Wilson said he was shot once in the shoulder and once in his left front side. One bullet, he said, grazed his forehead. The bullet that injured his right eye came in through his ear, he said. He now has an artificial eye in its place.

Three of the men accused in the case – Trevor Dupree Hogue, 23; Juwan Dion Smith, 21; and Marquann Trowery, 20 – have already pleaded guilty and been sentenced in the shooting. Hogue is serving 5 ½ to 12 years in state prison for aggravated assault and firearms charges. Smith is serving 3 ½ to eight years in state prison for assault, conspiracy, and weapons charges; and Trowery was sentenced to 20 to 40 months in prison

for assault. Wilson had testified that he had seen Trowery at the scene with a gun but did not think he fired the weapon.

Conte said that after the shooting, Wilson made his way to the police station, where he was briefly questioned and then taken by ambulance to Paoli Hospital. Harris instructed Officer Sylvester Earle to follow him there and get a statement from him, afraid that he might be on his death bed because of his injuries.

He was later interviewed three more times by police. The first recording was erased following the last interview, on Jan. 12. Conte said this was done despite police knowing that Wilson had lied to them on more than one occasion about what had occurred.