One of Sam Henderson’s first experiences with the police was as a teenager, growing up in Chicago in the 1980s. He was walking home one night when a white police officer stopped him and asked, “Where do you live?” Henderson pointed and said, “Down the street.” The officer replied, “Don’t make me slam you against the car. Tell me where exactly you live.”
In 1997, when interviewing to work in private security in St. Louis, Henderson was told he was overqualified and should consider applying with the St. Louis Metropolitan Police Department.
“I would have never in a million years thought that I would be a police officer,” Henderson said. “But I know how cops treated me and my family growing up. I thought that I could make a positive difference and make a change from the inside, so I applied.”
He worked for the St. Louis police from 1997 until 2000. In that time, he said, he observed situations that he would describe more as hypocritical than police misconduct. For instance, he saw an officer berate and arrest a woman for disciplining her child with a belt, while in a separate incident he saw that same officer nearly break a teenager’s arm during an arrest.Â
Since that time, Henderson has held a belief that police departments should adopt and implement greater measures of accountability for the sake of public safety.
As a means of cultivating police accountability, he encouraged people to take action by filing formal complaints. As an officer, people would tell him stories of how police mistreated them. His response: file a complaint.
“Ultimately, Internal Affairs, the courts or a private lawyer are going to review those documents, and they could likely be used as evidence in a case,” Henderson said.
While he was an officer, Henderson said, he educated people on how to file a complaint and even accompanied people to police stations to file them.
His goal was to raise public awareness of citizen’s rights and help people feel safe in exercising them. He said he never experienced any backlash or retaliation for teaching and accompanying people through that process.
After a few years on the beat, he began to feel like he would more effectively make a positive difference as a lawyer practicing criminal and civil defense. So he became a lawyer.
Advocate for the poorÂ
In 2009, Henderson was approached by Kathleen Zellner, an attorney from Chicago, who was looking for local counsel to work on a case to help to exonerate Ryan Ferguson from a murder he did not commit. Henderson worked with a team of Chicago attorneys to get Ferguson’s conviction overturned.
He combed through evidence, witnesses and testimony to uncover that police had pressured the co-defendant and witness to lie. They also discovered that the prosecutor hid critical evidence from the defense. The wrongful conviction led Ferguson, an innocent man, to spend 10 years in prison. He’s been free since 2013.
Henderson was working at Brownstone Law firm in 2013 doing post-conviction relief work when Cornealius Anderson’s case came across his desk. He worked to find dusty but relevant case law to prove Anderson had already done time served, which secured his client’s acquittal from unsubstantiated charges.
In 2014, he represented Anderson in a second case when he was arrested for a robbery that he did not commit. When Anderson was leaving a bar, he was falsely accused and subsequently arrested for a robbery that had been reported downtown. Henderson worked tirelessly to investigate the case himself and found evidence that proved Anderson’s innocence.
“Sure, people make mistakes, but they could have done a more thorough investigation,” he said of the police on that case.
Henderson successfully got the case dismissed, and the prosecutor’s office issued a public apology to Anderson.
Following that win, Henderson applied for an attorney position with ArchCity Defenders, a nonprofit civil rights law firm in St. Louis. Since then, he has represented hundreds of cases. He has helped numerous people to avoid eviction, homelessness, and the inevitable downward spiral that often follows client interactions with police and municipal courts.
Less than one week into 2017, Henderson helped a hard-working mother, Keilee Fant, avoid a $14,000 judgment, winning a landlord tenant case on her behalf. In late 2015, Fant requested the new owner of her rented house to make necessary repairs, and the new landlord began threatening eviction. Fant and her children eventually moved out of the house, but the owner filed a lawsuit alleging Fant abandoned the house and allowed someone to break in, causing damage to the air conditioner unit, HVAC system and plumbing.
The owner was aware the police arrested a neighbor for the burglary. Instead of going after the neighbor who broke into the house, she sued Fant for almost $14,000.
At trial, Henderson argued Fant did not cause the damage. Additionally, he argued that the owner was not entitled to rent payments under the lease because she failed to comply with Missouri law. The cornerstone of Henderson’s winning argument was a landlord-tenant case that ArchCity Defenders won in appellate court in 2014, which set legal precedent and expanded tenants’ rights.
While Henderson’s caseload includes housing, criminal, municipal court, and family law matters, he intends to focus on protecting individuals’ civil rights, particularly in situations of police misconduct.
“Police,” he said, “can make a big impact in people’s lives.”
For more information, follow ArchCity Defenders on Facebook and on Twitter @archcitydefense.
Rebecca L. Gorley is director of communications for ArchCity Defenders.
