ST. LOUIS _ The acquittal of ex-St. Louis patrol Officer Jason Stockley on a murder charge on Sept. 15, 2017, sparked weeks of protests and renewed calls for police accountability and changes in police policies on crowd control during protests.
In the year since the ruling, the civil case filed on behalf of the daughter of Anthony Lamar Smith, who was killed by Stockley in 2011, has been revived by a failure to turn over all the evidence to the daughter's lawyers.
Stockley has filed his own lawsuit claiming misconduct by prosecutors and an investigator. He has since returned to Texas, where his lawyer says he has struggled to find work and has been badgered online and in his own neighborhood.
Although hundreds of arrests followed the verdict, a city official suggested to the Post-Dispatch last week that no charges would be filed before the one-year deadline passes.
While some of the major players in the case have stepped down or retired, those changes appear unrelated to the verdict. The now-retired judge who found Stockley not guilty stands by his decision.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch looked at the fallout of the Stockley case on the St. Louis region, including controversies and policy changes that unfolded in the wake of the decision.
The fallout
Stockley was acquitted last year of first-degree murder and armed criminal action in the shooting death of drug suspect Smith, 24. The high-speed chase and crash that preceded the shooting on Dec. 20, 2011, were captured on in-car police video. Stockley was charged nearly five years later, after then-Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce claimed unspecified new evidence had surfaced in the case.
Stockley waived his right to a jury trial in favor of having a judge decide his case. Protests after Stockley's acquittal last year led to a federal investigation that may be heating up.
More than 300 people were arrested in the protests that erupted in St. Louis and St. Louis County. Of those, at least four people were charged in St. Louis Circuit Court, a dozen others were charged with misdemeanor or felony crimes in St. Louis County Circuit Court. Fourteen protesters have pending municipal cases in Richmond Heights stemming from a protest at the Galleria mall.
Most of the arrests stemmed from a police crackdown of protesters on a single night, a few hours after vandals broke windows and flower pots in downtown St. Louis. Officers blocked an intersection using a tactic called a "kettle" to trap and round people up on the street. At least 143 others were arrested a few weeks later during a shutdown of Interstate 64.
City Counselor Julian Bush told the Post-Dispatch that the statute of limitations on all of those arrested expires after one year. He said that while those who were arrested received letters months ago from the city's municipal court, none has been charged with ordinance violations.
"It would be a reasonable inference to draw that (charges) will not be filed," Bush said. He would not say why.
After three days of testimony in October, U.S. District Judge Catherine Perry issued a preliminary injunction in November restricting the use of chemical agents and dispersal orders by St. Louis police and their ability to declare a nonviolent protest an "unlawful assembly." She said the kettle arrest "cannot meet constitutional standards" and ordered both sides to mediation.
The ACLU and city officials have been discussing a settlement, according to court filings.
Several of those arrested in the kettle also filed lawsuits. Former Post-Dispatch reporter Mike Faulk, who was arrested while covering the protest for the newspaper, was among those. His case is pending.
Two documentary filmmakers arrested that night also sued the city and three officers who they alleged assaulted them because they were journalists. Their case is still pending in U.S. District Court in St. Louis.
Police activity on the night of the kettle, including the arrest of an undercover officer, also sparked complaints from officials and requests for a federal investigation.
U.S. Attorney Jeff Jensen announced in November a federal investigation into "allegations of potential civil rights violations by law enforcement officers in the St. Louis area on Sept. 15, 2017, and in the weeks that followed."
Since that time, the city has received federal grand jury subpoenas over the incident.
In recent weeks, Fara Gold, a prosecutor with the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division in Washington, has been spotted in the federal courthouse in St. Louis. Gold and Jensen declined to comment.
The St. Louis circuit attorney's office charged four people in St. Louis Circuit Court with felony and misdemeanor crimes including property damage and misdemeanor assault. A grand jury declined to indict two of those people, but cases against two others are still moving through court.
A dozen people were prosecuted in St. Louis County Circuit Court for charges including rioting, resisting arrest and assault after arrests during protests at the St. Louis Galleria in Richmond Heights and the Delmar Loop in University City. Court records say some of those with state-level charges received plea deals in exchange for community service or participating in citizen police academies; at least three defendants still have pending cases. More than a dozen other protesters arrested at the Galleria protest have pending ordinance violations in Richmond Heights municipal court for trespassing, refusal to disperse and rioting.
The major players
_ St. Louis Circuit Judge Timothy Wilson, the judge who acquitted Stockley, retired in December when he turned 70, the mandatory retirement age for Missouri judges. After presiding over the Stockley trial, Wilson waited more than five weeks to issue a ruling, fueling tension across the region. At one point, a member of St. Louis' black clergy calling for Stockley's conviction warned the judge: "The blood will be on your hands."
When Wilson acquitted Stockley, one of the judge's more controversial lines was commentary on Smith: "Finally, the court observes, based on its nearly thirty years on the bench, that an urban heroin dealer not in possession of a firearm would be an anomaly."
Today, Wilson makes no apology for his ruling. In a statement to the Post-Dispatch, Wilson said: "Most things a trial judge does are mundane and eminently forgettable. The Stockley case was neither. I intensely analyzed the evidence and the law. My 30-page decision was not a casual endeavor."
He continued, "An honest judge should never just play to the galleries or accede to a clamoring crowd. In a word, (Pontius) Pilate was wrong."
_ Former interim Police Chief Lawrence O'Toole. St. Louis Mayor Lyda Krewson criticized as "inflammatory" O'Toole's comment that police "owned tonight" after the kettle arrests, but she continued to support him. He was not picked to fill the chief's job, however. Instead, Public Safety Director Jimmie Edwards in December chose Maj. John Hayden. O'Toole ranked fourth out of six finalists based on a management assessment test, and interviews with the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Citizen Advisory Committee. O'Toole sued, claiming that racial discrimination spiked his chances, but Hayden told the Post-Dispatch that he topped the list.
_ Stockley. The former St. Louis police officer, 37, has returned to his home in Texas. Daniel Finney Jr., one of his lawyers, said that Stockley was looking for work but has been hounded online and in person. Roughly six weeks ago, Finney said, Stockley's neighborhood was papered with "wanted" posters accusing him of murder.
_ The lawyers. The Stockley case was the first trial as a prosecutor for Robert Steele, who had worked as a public defender for more than two decades before joining the staff of Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner.
_ Aaron Levinson, who in his opening statement said Stockley fired a "kill shot" just six inches from Smith's chest, left the circuit attorney's office this summer to work as a prosecutor in the Cincinnati area. The other prosecutor assigned to the case, Devon Vincent, still works as a prosecutor.
Stockley's defense team included Neil Bruntrager and Brian Millikan, who have continued to defend area police officers charged with crimes.
Smith family civil case
A 2012 civil lawsuit filed on behalf of Smith's daughter settled for $900,000 in 2013.
But after Stockley was charged with murder in May 2016, the daughter's lawyers learned for the first time that Stockley's DNA had been found on a silver .38-caliber Taurus revolver recovered from Smith's car. Both prosecutors and the family's lawyers suggested Stockley planted the gun after rifling through his patrol car moments after shooting Smith.
After Josh Hawley was elected attorney general, his office appointed former federal prosecutor Hal Goldsmith to conduct an outside investigation into the failure to turn over DNA evidence. His report said an assistant attorney general was aware of the DNA results and that they should have been turned over to the daughter's lawyers. The report also said that the office was "intentionally non-responsive" when the lawyers asked about the issue in 2016.
Lawyers for Smith's daughter then received a judge's permission to reopen discovery in the civil case. They said the DNA could have increased the settlement amount, and penalties for failing to turn over the information may be appropriate.
In recent weeks, they've been allowed access to Internal Affairs and FBI records that they say they never saw before the settlement. Many of the filings are sealed, and it's not clear how much of those investigative materials were generated before the civil settlement.
They are also interviewing additional witnesses in the case.
Stockley suit
In June, Stockley sued former St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce, internal affairs investigator Kirk Deeken and the city, claiming that Joyce lied when she claimed new evidence had triggered charges and Deeken lied in charging documents. Joyce did not seek re-election in 2016, and the prosecution fell to Gardner.
Joyce, Deeken and the city denied the claims. Their central defense is that police and prosecutors are immune from such lawsuits, in part because their actions were not malicious and showed no improper motive. Both a judge and a grand jury found probable cause to arrest and charge Stockley, they said.
Stockley's civil case is pending.
