Request to suppress evidence in teen’s murder case denied
A magistrate denied a request to suppress evidence from an Amber Alert used in the case of a teenage girl accused of stabbing and killing her mother.
Chastinea Reeves is scheduled to go to trial June 3 in the death of Jamie Garnett, 34, who was found dead Feb. 13, 2017, at her home in the 4400 block of West 23rd Place in Gary.
Reeves, who was 15 at the time, was charged as an adult with murder in Lake Superior Court.
Police issued an Amber Alert for Reeves when Garnett was found.
At the time, police said that Reeves “may be in extreme danger” and that “it is urgent we locate Chastinea and assure she is safe from harm.”
The alert was canceled after Reeves was found safe around 2:30 p.m. Feb. 14 walking alone near 21st Avenue and Carolina Street in Gary after police said they received information generated from the alert.
John Cantrell, Reeves’ court-appointed attorney, filed a motion in February claiming that police “fraudulently used the state’s Amber Alert System to generate information regarding a fugitive of the law. Any evidence that came from the Amber Alert should not be allowed at trial, he argued.
“The police knew by the time the Amber Alert was requested that (Reeves) was not abducted,” Cantrell said.
Deputy prosecuting attorney Maureen Koonce asked a judge to deny Cantrell’s request, according to her written response.
“Issuing the Amber Alert neither directly nor indirectly implicated any of the defendant’s state or federal constitutional r i g h t s,” Koonce said.
Cantrell did not “specify any ‘evidence seized,’ ‘observations made’ or ‘statements taken’ as a direct or indirect result of the issuance of the Amber Alert,” according to Koonce.
“Indeed, none exists,”
Koonce said.
Cantrell filed a response March 4, citing the Indiana Code referring to the Amber Alert system.
“The police in this case sent out an Amber Alert for a child they knew was not abducted. The police knew the defendant was a suspect when the Amber Alert was sent out,” Cantrell said.
In a court filing March 6, Koonce wrote that Cantrell failed “to clarify any of the vagueness asserted” in his original motion, and the state does not know “what Constitutional violation” the defense is asserting and “what legal doctrine merits suppression.”
“Simply pasting definitions of ‘Amber Alert Program’ and ‘missing endangered child’ into a document does not alleviate the vagueness of the original motion,” Koonce said.
The defense “continues to make meaningless blanket assertions without any legal support,” and “fails to specify what ‘incriminating evidence’ police obtained from issuance of the Amber Alert,” according to Koonce. “The state does not concede a misuse of the Amber Alert.”
“Furthermore, the Amber Alert was NOT the basis of (Reeves’) arrest,” Koonce said.
A March 8 hearing scheduled to address the issue was canceled. Instead, Magistrate Kathleen Sullivan issued an order March 7 denying Cantrell’s motion to suppress.
Reeves is scheduled for a pretrial conference March 20.
Two others, Matthew Martin, 18, and Virgil King, 19, alsoo were charged as adults in connection with the Reeves case.
Martin took a plea deal in December, agreeing to plead guilty to assisting a criminal, a level 5 felony, and battery with moderate injury, a level 6 felony.
Martin agreed to “cooperate fully, truthfully and completely” with prosecutors, including testifying at Reeves’ trial, the deal states.
Martin and King moved a Ford Escape on Feb. 13, 2017, that Reeves gave them the keys for, according to Martin’s plea deal.
Reeves had “what appeared to be blood on her clothing” and took “a knife out of her purse” that had “a broken tip and what appeared to be blood on it,” the deal states.
Reeves “smirked” and said, “I broke the tip off on that (expletive),” according to the deal.
Martin is scheduled to appear in court again March 26, court records show.
King, who is charged with assisting a criminal and auto theft, has a hearing Monday, according to court records. rejacobs@post-trib.com Twitter @ruthyjacobs