Missouri death row inmate Reginald Clemons will finally get his day in court – November 7, 2011 at 9 a.m. in the St. Louis City Courthouse.
This is the date for Judge Michael Manners, the Special Master appointed to review his case by the Missouri Supreme Court, to review Clemons’ case.
Most recently, the case had been rescheduled for September 19, 2011. This itself was a rescheduling from an original hearing date of May 10, 2010. That date was rescheduled when DNA testing of newly presented evidence forced a delay in the case plan laid out by Manners.
Manners had been informed on March 25, 2010 that Clemons’ attorneys and the State of Missouri had reached an agreement to submit the new evidence to DNA testing.
Joshua A. Levine, one of Clemons’ attorneys, wrote to Manners that “we are confident that further testing will only serve to confirm what is already established: no physical evidence connects [Clemons] to the crimes.”
In 1993 Clemons was convicted as an accomplice in the murders of Julie Kerry and Robin Kerry. Two days after his interrogation by St. Louis police, after being sent to the hospital for treatment of injuries, Clemons filed a complaint that he had been denied the rights to silence and counsel during his interrogation. He also claimed that his confession was coerced and scripted after an hour and a half of beatings.
In this allegedly coerced and scripted confession, he said he raped Robin Kerry but not Julie Kerry. He never confessed to murder, and he has never been tried for nor convicted of rape. However, the charge of rape was used as a “sentence enhancer” by prosecutor Nels C. Moss in his successful push for the death penalty.
The evidence newly presented by the state in 2010 includes a rape kit taken from the corpse identified as Julie Kerry. Robin Kerry’s body never was found.
Also in the newly presented evidence: a condom, clothing that purportedly belonged to Clemons’ codefendant Marlin Gray, and what Manners describes as “a light-colored hair recovered” from Gray’s clothing.
Gray was executed by the State of Missouri in 2005.
Clemons’ execution was scheduled for June 17, 2009 before a federal court issued a stay of execution while it ruled on a separate procedural matter. In the meantime, the Missouri Supreme Court shockingly opened a new evidence phase by appointing a special master with subpoena powers.
In his original jury trial, Clemons’ attorneys requested any evidence taken from the Kerry corpse in a pre-trial motion. His current attorneys insist the sudden unearthing of this old evidence proves Clemons deserves a new trial.
As Levine wrote to Manners on March 25, 2010, “Due process demands that [Clemons] be granted a new trial to fairly evaluate all exculpatory evidence suppressed by the State, which includes not only the rape kit and lab report, but also the draft police report altered by the prosecutor in this case and other evidence uncovered during the discovery process.”
At the conclusion of his case plan, Judge Manners will issue a recommendation to the Missouri Supreme Court on how to proceed with Clemons – anything from “procced with the execution” to “release him for time served” is possible.
