Campaign update for week of March 25

Oral Arguments
On March 18th, oral arguments were held by Judge Michael Manners in his Jackson County court room. Two major items came out of last week’s oral arguments that we didn’t learn during the September 2012 hearings. One is a new witness whose testimony was presented; the other is a date has been targeted by Judge Manners for getting his recommendations in to the Missouri Supreme Court.

Excerpts from a video-taped deposition with Warren Weeks were presented as new evidence to Judge Manners by Reggie’s legal team. Weeks contacted the team after he read about the special hearing. In 1991 Weeks was a bail investigator who interviewed Reggie just hours after his interrogation by the St. Louis police in which a forced confession had been beaten out of Reggie. Weeks testified that he observed a large bump about the size of a golf ball on Reggie’s face and included that observation in his written report. The report obtained by Reggie’s attorneys had been altered (just as the police report had been) to remove the reference to the injury. In his testimony, Weeks said that Moss tried to get him to change his mind about the injury he saw, challenging his ability to know what an injury was. Weeks recalled telling his wife later that evening that he felt something strange was going on with the case by the way the prosecution was proceeding. Weeks was steadfast in his recollection. He was never interviewed by Internal Affairs nor was his statement ever disclosed to Reggie’s original attorneys. This testimony is an extremely important piece of corroborating evidence that Reggie was indeed beaten by police.

Judge Manners was reluctant during oral arguments (as he was at the hearing) to include proportionality in his review as he stated that MO Supreme Court will make its own determination on this issue. Proportionality in death penalty cases means that the sentence must fit the crime and in Reggie’s case, the evidence against him for the crime he was convicted is weak.

Judge Manners will ultimately make a recommendation in the case, which could include a recommendation that Reggie stay on death row, be granted a new trial or have his sentence commuted to life without parole. The judge stated several times during the evidentiary process that this case is complicated and that there is a voluminous amount of information to review. The judge will continue his review and may ask either side for particular documents in the coming weeks. He hopes to send his recommendations to the Missouri Supreme Court by June 1.