Those of us who take seriously what poor black people say about criminal justice in St. Louis wish that some of the well-intentioned middle-class attention being paid to military prisons in Cuba and the torture of international terrorists would be directed closer to home.
Unless Gov. Jay Nixon or the Missouri Supreme Court intervenes, on June 17 the State of Missouri will execute Reginald Clemons, who grew up poor and black in St. Louis County and claims he gave a rehearsed confession after repeated beatings by St. Louis Metropolitan Police detectives who had ignored his requests for counsel.
Clemons was convicted and sentenced to death in 1993 for the murders of Robin Kerry and Julie Kerry, who left behind their own family and friends who mourn their tragic loss to this day.
Marlin Gray also was convicted of their murders, sentenced to death and executed in 2005. Antonio “Tony” Richardson was convicted and is now sentenced to life in prison. Daniel Winfrey – the only co-defendant who was not black – cooperated with the prosecution, received a far lighter sentence and was released on parole in 2007.
Like Gray, Clemons was convicted and sentenced to death under “accomplice liability.” The State did not argue that Clemons himself pushed the girls off the Chain of Rocks Bridge in 1991, but rather that he was an accomplice to that act. The rape of one of the girls, to which Clemons confessed to St. Louis police, was included in the sentencing phase as an “aggravator” and certainly played a large role in the jury’s decision to sentence Clemons to death.
Clemons has always claimed – even in his taped confession – that he did not kill the Kerry girls. Just two days after his taped confession, he testified to Internal Affairs police investigators that he was coerced into confessing to rape by repeated beatings. Two days after his confession, he said that he had been denied legal representation by the detectives who interrogated him, and that those detectives had recorded his scripted confession to rape only after giving up on getting him to confess to murder.
Clemons was 19 years old when he was interrogated and, he says, repeatedly beaten into confessing. The judge who arraigned him the day after his interrogation, Judge Michael David (still a judge on the 22nd Judicial Circuit in St. Louis), ordered Clemons taken to an emergency room, where injuries consistent with the beatings he described – a swollen face, sore and swollen stomach muscles – were noted.
The two St. Louis detectives who interrogated Clemons, Chris Pappas and Joseph Brauer, have denied that they beat Clemons or denied him legal representation when he asked for it.
In black and white
In his Internal Affairs interview, Clemons said he also had been coached to confess to an armed robbery, but refused. In his taped confession on April 7, we find what could be traces of that coaching.
Det. Pappas: “Did any – did you or Marlin or Tony or this white guy that you talk about, did – uh – did any of youse have a – a knife or a gun or a bat, or anything like that? Any weapon?”
Clemons: “No weapons.”
(All quotes are direct from the transcript introduced as State’s evidence in Clemons’ 1993 trial by prosecutor Nels C. Moss.)
And, then, this:
Det. Pappas: “And was there an intent to rob the – uh – the white male that was with them?”
Clemons: “No.”
One is struck, reading the transcript today, by the constant racial profiling. Pappas and Brauer are careful throughout the interrogation to declare who is black and who is white. Winfrey is always Gray’s “white male friend”; the Kerrys are always “these white girls.” The girls’ cousin, Thomas Cummins, is “the white male that was with them.”
Cummins – initially a suspect who also confessed to a role in his cousins’ death – settled for $150,000 for the police beatings he said he suffered during what he described as his coerced confession.
Gray and Clemons described similar beatings during confessions they also said were rehearsed and coerced, only to see those confessions admitted into evidence in capital murder trials that resulted in their death sentences.
The only co-defendant likely to see the light of day – Winfrey – is the only one who is white. It is no wonder. The color coding and racial typing of this case began during the process of interrogation.
Consider this classic question from Detective Pappas: “Was the white guy rapin’ her?”
Clemons’ first mention of the alleged rape during his interrogation on the night of April 7, 1991, sounds off-handed and unconvincing: “We were walkin’ off the bridge. But then it was mentioned that we could rape ‘em and we rape ‘em and then leave and everything.”
When the detectives drive him to get more detailed, at times Clemons sounds like he is doing his best to remember his script.
Det. Pappas: “Who – uh – were you – was it planned out by someone – by you or Tony or Marlin or the white guy to – uh – who was gonna restrain the guy? I mean, was the idea that you were all gonna take turns?”
Clemons: “I guess, yes.”
“I guess, yes.” It is difficult to believe this is the sincere memory of someone who had participated in a gang rape the week before.
Internal Affairs
Two days after confessing, Clemons testified to Sergeant Jack Huelsmann that the beating began the moment he asked to see a lawyer: “Well I entered the interrogation room and they asked me to take a seat and I took a seat and then they started asking me questions about what happened on the Chain of Rocks Bridge. And I told them that I wanted to talk to my lawyer first. So then detective number one [Pappas] he got up and he slapped me in the back of my head.”
(All quotes are direct from the transcript introduced as State’s evidence in Clemons’ 1993 trial.)
Then, Clemons said, “He asked, after he slapped me in the back of my head he asked me did I still want my lawyer. And he was also telling me that if I didn’t talk he was going to start bouncing me off the walls and everything.”
Clemons testified that he outright denied any connection to the rapes and murders when first questioned directly (and questioned illegally, if it is true that he had previously asked to speak to an attorney).
Clemons: “And detective number one [Pappas] I told him to go ahead and then he sat down, and I told him I still wanted to see my lawyer. And then he said, oh you do. And then he started to stand up again and I asked him what did he want to talk to me about and he leaned over on the desk and said, I want to talk to you about the two girls that were raped and killed. And I told him I had nothing to do with it.”
Clemons also said his head was slammed against the wall repeatedly and he was punched repeatedly – “on and off” – in the stomach and chest, which is consistent to how Gray and Cummins described their alleged police beatings.
Huelsmann asks a good question about the alleged beatings – and gets an interesting answer.
Sgt. Huelsmann: “What did you do to defend yourself?”
Clemons: “Nothing.”
Sgt. Huelsmann: “Nothing? Why not?”
Clemons: “Because I figured if I started swinging on the officer, then I would most likely get jumped on by more than just the two.”
Clemons is describing the interrogation process before the tape recorder started capturing his confession at about 9:30 p.m. According to his mother, Vera Thomas, the police picked Clemons up that day at 4:30 p.m. and told her Reginald would not need a lawyer. Giving the detectives time to get to the station and start asking questions, they had more than four hours to interrogate Clemons before they began making the recorded confession.
Two days after the interrogation – again, this is not after years of thinking this through on death row – Clemons claimed that they first tried to pin the murder on him, but he refused.
Clemons: “They wanted me to agree to fact that I had killed these people
and everything. They wanted me to say that I had pushed them off the bridge and that I had raped them and I had pulled out a gun on (inaudible). Then, they were trying to get me to admit to it and everything, but I didn’t.”
Clemons said he ruined an initial attempt to tape a confession when during the taping he asked again to see a lawyer. Clemons has failed for years to get the police department to produce that first tape.
Finally, Clemons said, he gave up and offered the confession that helped to convict him because “I didn’t want to get hit anymore.”
Sgt. Huelsmann: “And you did what he said?”
Clemons: “Yes.”
Sgt. Huelsmann: “Why?”
Clemons: “Because I just didn’t want to get beat up too much.”
Sgt. Huelsmann: “Why did you think he was going to do that?”
Clemons: “Because they had that look in their eyes like they were going to.”
Sgt. Huelsmann: “Describe this look.”
Clemons: “Well, well I wasn’t too much looking at detective number two because at first he wasn’t saying too much. And detective number one [Pappas] he’s acting quite hostile. And he was like squenching his eyes at me every now and then.”
Clemons said that when he confessed to his participation in the rapes he was remembering notes made by a detective that had been “reviewed and went over, over and over again so that I remembered it and everything.” Clemons said, “He read it off to me and then told me to read it off to him and
then it was set there in front of me, just in case I forgot where I was. And
he asked me a couple of questions, he asked me questions throughout.”
Even many people who believe that our local police are capable of engaging in “enhanced interrogation techniques” to nail down a suspect in a high-profile murder case question why an innocent person would ever break down and confess to a horrible crime he had not committed.
It is instructive to remember that on the night of April 7, 1991, when he was interrogated, Reginald Clemons was 19, black, poor and (by all appearances) in police custody. He also gave testimony to Internal Affairs describing a diminished state of mind that – in addition to making the beating stop – could explain consenting to a false confession.
Clemons: “After my head was slammed against the wall a couple of times and stuff I was basically dizzy and I couldn’t see straight. […] I couldn’t really think straight or see.”