Former St. Louis police officer Jason Stockley, 35, was arrested from his Houston home on Monday, May 16 and charged with first-degree murder for the shooting death of 24-year-old Anthony Lamar Smith following a car chase in December 2011.
“We believe we have the evidence we need to prove Mr. Stockley’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt in a court of law,” said Circuit Attorney Jennifer M. Joyce in a statement.
When Christina Wilson, Smith’s fiancée, heard about the charges, the first thing she did was thank the Lord, she said.
“I’m sure Anthony would be glad justice has come after all these years,” Wilson told The St. Louis American.
On the morning Smith was killed, Wilson was on the phone with him, while he was waiting for his friend to get some food from Church’s Chicken at Riverview and Thekla at around 11 a.m.
“He told me he was going to wait to eat with me,” she said. “He didn’t like to go out to eat if it wasn’t together.”
All the sudden, it got quiet, she said, and then he told her the police shot the window out of his car.
According to the prosecutors’ probable cause statement, Stockley allegedly shot into Smith’s car, and then he and his partner, who was driving the SUV, chased Smith at speeds over 80 miles per hour. During the pursuit, Smith is heard on an internal police car video saying, “Going to kill this m/f, don’t you know it,” according to the statement.
As Smith’s car was slowing to a stop, Stockley is also heard telling the other officer to “hit him right now,” at which point the driver slammed the police SUV into the victim’s car. Stockley then approached Smith’s car on the driver’s side and shot five times into the car, striking Smith with each shot.
Wilson stayed on the phone and heard the OnStar in Smith’s rental car come on upon the crash.
“And I heard the shots,” she said, along with him begging for his life and moaning.
According to Joyce’s statement, a gun was recovered from the victim’s car, but was later determined by lab analysis to have only Stockley’s DNA on it. She said now she has the evidence she needs to prosecute the case.
Wilson’s attorney, Albert Watkins, represented their daughter, Autumn, in a 2013 federal wrongful-death lawsuit against Stockley and the police department. The Board of Police Commissioners agreed to a $900,000 settlement, contingent upon complete confidentiality – meaning Watkins had to shred all the evidence he gathered during the case.
During the civil case, he signed a global discovery request – which meant if there were DNA analysis completed for the gun, Watkins should have gotten it. But he never received any DNA lab analysis, he said.
The incident occurred under former St. Louis Police Chief Daniel Isom’s tenure. When Isom took over as chief of police, he told The American, the department formed a relationship with the FBI, and he appointed a sergeant of “corruption investigations” to work with the agency. When Smith was killed in 2011, “we immediately saw it as a problem,” he said. And he is glad it’s getting a second look today, he said.
“Why didn’t it happen almost four years ago?” Isom said.
Soon after the shooting, both the FBI and police were working on investigations simultaneously, Isom said, and they approached U.S. Attorney Richard Callahan.
“Within a month, information was being funneled to a federal grand jury,” Isom said.
That process lasted until October of 2012, he said, three months before he retired. At that time, he said, “We were notified that the U.S. Attorney would not prosecute.”
Soon after, representatives from the police department, U.S. Attorney’s Office and Joyce’s office sat down to give the evidence over to Joyce, Isom said.
Callahan has indicated that the DNA evidence was known as of February 2012, only three months after the incident occurred, Isom said. The police’s in-car audio was known the day of the incident. Watkins later presented the OnStar audio, which initially was inaudible, he said. Isom initiated the enhancement of both the OnStar audio and the police video footage before Police Chief Sam Dotson took over, Isom said.
“What existed four years ago, all of it exists today,” Isom said. “All information was presented to the Circuit Attorney’s office (in October 2012), and they declined to file charges.”
Joyce told The American that the evidence summarized in the probable cause statement does not represent all of the evidence they have. Because the investigation is still ongoing, she cannot disclose details about the evidence.
“While we understand there is a lot of public interest in this case, we must focus our efforts on pursuing this case to the fullest extent of the law in the courts and not in the media,” she said. “We will not risk tainting the jury pool or having any piece of evidence thrown out by the courts because we discussed it in the media.”
Activist Anthony Shahid said the public was crucial to reviving the case. On January 14, he said, he made a Sunshine Law request for information about the case. He said he pressured the authorities weekly to look at the case again.
On Wednesday, May 18, the Ethical Society of Police and the Firefighters Institute for Racial Equality (F.I.R.E.) held a press conference to say they are glad Joyce’s office has taken up case.
Heather Taylor, president of the society, said that the rumbling at the police department after the incident was, “This was murder.” Yet, she was disappointed that the department didn’t suspend Stockley after the incident. Stockley resigned on August 13, 2013.
“We are talking about murder,” Taylor said. “We allowed these two officers to remain on the force, yet we have minorities who have been suspended for years for minor infractions.”
