Homicide case hurt by police scandal
Detective’s actions limit prosecution of suspect
A former Memphis Police Department homicide detective, Eric Kelly, was implicated early this year in a sex scandal that cast doubt on every criminal case he touched.
Now, the Kelly case has hurt the prosecution of a young man who’s accused in the 2016 carjacking and killing of 83-year-old Eddie Walker.
Kelly interrogated the young man, Ladarius Montgomery, who signed a confession. But then the detective got into trouble for a sexual relationship with a young woman he had charged in connection with a murder case, and MPD’S investigators concluded the detective lied to them.
Because Kelly had interrogated Montgomery in the elderly man’s killing, the confession can’t be used in court, and the prosecution has offered a plea deal, a defense lawyer said.
Meanwhile, Montgomery insists he’s innocent.
“My statement, which was illegally obtained by Mr. Eric Kelly, cannot be used against me as evidence at trial!” Montgomery wrote in a handwritten letter that’s included in court records. It’s one of a lengthy list of filings he has submitted from behind bars.
“They cannot use Mr. Eric Kelly to testify against me at trial due to his damaged credibility! Due to the fact that there is no substantial evidence against me, the courts have no case!”
The Shelby County District Attorney’s office declined to comment. “This is set for trial. We cannot discuss a pending case,” spokesman Larry Buser wrote in an email.
The situation illustrates how police misconduct can tarnish investigations and disrupt the administration of justice. The legal system relies on honest testimony from police officers and other officials, and once that honesty is seriously challenged, it is much harder to determine the truth.
83 years old and still dancing
Even into his 80s, Eddie Walker still liked to go to blues clubs and dance, one of his daughters, Vedia Brunt, said in an 2016 interview with WMC TV.
“A fun loving man. Outspoken man. He’s known to be outspoken. Everybody knows Eddie Walker,” she said. He was still working part-time as a security guard, she said.
On August 21, 2016, someone shot him near his home on Prospect Street and took his 2005 Ford Taurus. He died at a hospital.
“I was angry, and then I wanted to know why,” Brunt said at the time. “Even if you was going to take something from him, why did you have to shoot him?”
A crash and a confession
A short time after the fatal shooting, someone driving Walker’s stolen car crashed in Horn Lake, Mississippi. Two men ran from the car. Police caught them nearby The two men in the car were brothers. One of them was 21-yearold Ladarius Montgomery.
The evidence against him looked strong. He had been inside the victim’s car. He tried to flee from police. Investigators found a gun in the car, and the ballistics from that gun matched the bullets from the victim’s body, said his defense lawyer, Juni Ganguli.
Once taken to the homicide office in Memphis, Montgomery was interrogated by Kelly and by Sgt. Sheila WrightGreen. (Her name is given as Sheila Green in some records.)
Without a lawyer, Montgomery signed a form giving up his right to remain silent and spoke with officers. Kelly typed up his statement and Montgomery signed it.
The document quotes Montgomery. “I was walking down the street and he was getting out the car and I called out to him,” it says at one point. “He just turned around and upped his gun on me and I shot him. I didn’t try to kill him. I was scared for my life and I shot him. I was just trying to ask him for a ride. His car was still running and I got in the car and rode off.”
At the end of the confession, Montgomery is quoted as saying, “I am very remorsefully for what I have done. It wasn’t intentional. I was scared he was fixing to shoot me.”
No recording of the interrogation exists, MPD says
There is no way to verify independently that the four-page confession is what Montgomery really said.
For years, the MPD has stood out among law enforcement entities nationwide for its reluctance to make recordings of interrogations, the Institute for Public Service Reporting at the University of Memphis reported last year.
“No, we were not recording investigative interviews in 2016. We began recording in July of 2019,” police spokesperson Lt. Karen Rudolph wrote in an email.
Still, Montgomery had signed a document in which he admitted guilt to the killing. He faced a count of first-degree murder and other charges.
For the moment, it looked like Montgomery would face life in prison.
Lawyer tried to suppress confession
Montgomery couldn’t afford a lawyer, and the court appointed Ganguli, a private attorney, to defend him.
In the summer of 2018, more than a year before the detective’s issues became public, Ganguli filed a motion to keep a jury from seeing Montgomery’s confession.
“Mr. Montgomery alleged that the officers unduly coerced him and that his statement was given involuntarily,” the attorney wrote.
The document doesn’t go into detail. In a recent interview, Ganguli described it as a longshot effort. “There really isn’t much to the motion. We just did it because we had to.”
A hearing took place. Kelly testified against Montgomery, Ganguli said. The lawyer says that if he recalls correctly, he argued that law enforcement threatened his client with the death penalty. ‘The judge ruled not to suppress the confession.
‘The stench of corruption’
Then in January of this year, the Institute for Public Service Reporting at the University of Memphis broke news of Kelly’s actions.
The background: Kelly had helped investigate the homicide of Robert Glidden, who was found nude and with signs of torture in 2017. Two men were charged in Glidden’s death.
In March 2018, Kelly wrote an arrest affidavit charging a young woman as an accessory after the fact, alleging that she took the suspects to different locations to use the victim’s credit cards.
Kelly later admitted he had a sexual relationship with this woman, according to the MPD’S internal investigative report. Investigators found sexual text messages between the two, receipts of money that Kelly sent her and photos of the woman in Kelly’s home, posing with guns.
MPD investigators concluded Kelly had lied to them, too — for instance, he denied buying marijuana for the woman, but text messages suggested he did.
“His current and upcoming cases are now stained with the stench of corruption,” the internal investigators wrote. Kelly resigned in late 2019. In January, the prosecutor’s office announced a review of all cases that Kelly touched, and also added that it was reviewing all cases involving officers on the Brady List, a list of officers who have gotten into trouble or whose honesty has been called into question.
Then in August, Kelly was indicted by a grand jury. He faces charges of official misconduct. An attorney entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf.
Kelly hasn’t spoken publicly about the case. His attorney, Arthur Quinn, declined to comment this week.
Detective’s actions lead to a plea offer
Because of Kelly’s actions, the prosecutor’s office has said it won’t use Montgomery’s statement of admission to the killing of the elderly man, Ganguli said.
Prosecutors have offered Montgomery a chance to plead guilty to second-degree murder and serve 25 years, he said.
“And so without his statement, we’ve benefited tremendously in the sense that we’ve gone from no offer or spending life in jail, to an offer of 25 years of which Ladarius will serve 21,” Ganguli said.
“And he served four years already, (so it’s) 17 additional years. So it’s benefited us tremendously.”
Ganguli says if the Montgomery case goes to trial, he could now argue that the real killer was his brother, Devonell Montgomery, who was in the car with him at the time of the Horn Lake crash.
Devonell Montgomery pleaded guilty to unrelated carjackings and this summer was sentenced to 13 years in federal prison. He’s currently in state prison on other charges.
Ganguli said the evidence isn’t as strong as it was before, but Ladarius Montgomery might have his own problems in a trial.
Among them: Montgomery has a prior criminal record, and if he testified in his own defense, the state could attack his credibility by introducing his statement of admission.
It’s unclear what the victim’s family makes of all this.
Another one of Walker’s daughters, Edlyn Walker, said this month that she wanted to share her father’s story, but needed to check with a prosecutor first to avoid damaging the case. She later said the prosecutor advised her not to talk publicly until the case is resolved.
Plea negotiations go nowhere
Meanwhile, Montgomery has turned 25 inside the jail at 201 Poplar.
Ganguli said his client doesn’t want to take the plea deal that leads to a 25year sentence, and said the plea negotiations are stuck. “I think Ladarius would take a minimal prison sentence, something that wouldn’t require too much additional time. But the state does not want to offer that.”
Montgomery is now scheduled for trial in April 2021. Nearly five years will have passed since the killing. And with many other trials on hold due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this trial might face another delay.
It’s unclear how many other criminal cases have been impacted by the Kelly case and by other officers on the Brady List. The prosecutor’s office didn’t respond to requests for an update on its internal review of those cases.