Reginald Clemons will stand trial again for 1991 murders of Julie Kerry and Robin Kerry, and also faces charges of forcible rape and first-degree robbery in the Chain of Rocks Bridge case, St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer M. Joyce announced on Monday, January 25. The case will remain a death penalty case as originally filed.
In a 1993 jury trial, Clemons was convicted of first-degree murder for the deaths of the Kerry sisters. He was charged with rape, and though the rape charges were never tried, they were used as a sentence enhancer when prosecutor Nels Moss sought – and won – the death penalty.
Following the appointment of a special master, Judge Michael Manners, and his report, the Missouri Supreme Court vacated the conviction on Tuesday, November 24, 2015, and gave the circuit attorney 60 days in which to file new charges.
Clemons remains confined at the Potosi Correctional Center on a 15-year sentence for a 2007 assault on a Missouri Department of Corrections employee.
Joyce said a team of prosecutors have reviewed the state’s evidence, determined the availability of witnesses and reporting officers, and discussed the matter with the victims’ family.
“While this is a heartbreaking and emotionally charged case for this community, I believe we have the evidence needed to pursue charges and hold Mr. Clemons accountable for the crimes he committed against Julie and Robin Kerry and Thomas Cummins,” Joyce said in a statement.
Cummins is the girls’ cousin, who was robbed during the incident.
Cummins was the first suspect in the case, and police said he confessed during his interrogation. However, Cummins maintained his innocence and claimed that police beat him and tried to script a confession for him. Cummins received a reported $150,000 settlement from the city for his claim of police brutality, which was awarded almost immediately after Clemons was sentenced to death.
Clemons confessed to raping one of the Kerry girls, not murder. He immediately recanted his confession and claimed it was coerced, citing some of the same beating techniques as Cummins described. Though the judge who saw Clemons after his interrogation and confession sent him to the hospital for treatment, his confession was permitted in his jury trial.
Clemons has called for a new trial since his conviction, on grounds that the coerced confession should not have been admissible and the jury was denied evidence that Clemons had been beaten, known as a “Brady violation” of due process after the landmark 1963 ruling in Brady vs. Maryland.
In his report, Manners found that the state did suppress critical evidence from a parole officer, Warren Weeks, who noted that Clemons had an injury consistent with a police beating after his interrogation.
“The master determined that the state’s failure to disclose this evidence was prejudicial to Mr. Clemons because it could have led to the suppression of Mr. Clemons’ confession, a critical part of the state’s case against Mr. Clemons,” Chief Justice Patricia Breckenridge wrote in a 4-3 decision when the Missouri Supreme Court vacated Clemons’ conviction.
Joyce told The American that the Supreme Court ruled that the defense counsel should have been alerted to Weeks’ testimony and given the chance to have him testify to the jury. She said the Supreme Court did not throw out Clemons’ confession and “it remains to be seen whether it’s admissible.”
Joshua Levine, who led the pro bono legal team that argues Clemons’ appeals and habeas corpus proceedings, said, “We are obviously disappointed that the Circuit Attorney has decided to pursue a retrial.”
The Justice for Reginald Clemons campaign said in a statement: “The 24-year-old case has seen many twists and turns, and this latest announcement comes as no surprise. We remain committed to Reggie’s struggle for the truth and justice.”
Clemons also won the new evidence phase based on his Habeas Corpus claim that he had new evidence of his innocence. Advocates who expected Clemons to take the stand and offer a dramatically new version of events on the bridge were disappointed, however, as he pled the 5th Amendment 29 times.
Clemons answered a few questions to deny that he murdered the Kerry sisters or directly aided in their murders, but he refused to answer a string of questions relating to their rapes and other incidents on the bridge.
Many Clemons advocates had clung to the idea that Cummins was the actual perpetrator, but Clemons provided no new evidence that Cummins was guilty. The special master looked through all the evidence and concluded that Cummins was “the most honest man in this forest of deceit.”
However, the new evidence phase opened by the special master did turn up new evidence that bolstered the state’s case against Clemons’ codefendant Marlin Gray, who was executed in 2005.
The state called DNA analysts from the Missouri Highway Patrol and a private company that performs paternity tests to present data concerning a used condom found on the Chain of Rocks Bridge the morning after the April 4, 1991 events and from boxer shorts and pants that Gray wore that night.
More sensitive DNA analytics developed since then now make it possible to develop DNA profiles from the scant amount of DNA material left on the objects, the DNA analysts testified.
The new DNA profiles conform to the state’s case that the Kerrys endured a group rape on the bridge. DNA with female characteristics extracted from the condom matches DNA with female characteristics extracted from Gray’s boxers and pants, according to Stacey Bolinger, DNA analyst for the Missouri Highway Patrol. And according to Kim Gorman, DNA analyst for Paternity Testing Corp. in Columbia, this female DNA is 99.99 percent (“and really many more 9s than that”) more likely to be a daughter of the Kerry girls’ parents than a random person, according to comparisons to the parents’ DNA profiles.
The DNA on both Gray’s shorts and pants was subjected to a process that separates out sperm cells, enabling a separation of male DNA profiles. The male DNA on his shorts contains a mixture of at least two individuals, Bolinger said, and neither Gray nor Clemons could be eliminated from a possible match, based on a comparison to their DNA profiles. She said the male DNA on Gray’s pants contains a mixture of at least three individuals, and Gray, Clemons and their codefendant Antonio Richardson could not be eliminated from a possible match.
In 2003 Richardson’s sentence was commuted to life without possibility of parole because his death sentence was imposed by a judge when the jury could not decide.
Under cross examination by Andrew Lacy of Clemons’ legal team, Bolinger said there was no exact DNA match for Clemons in any of the evidence.
