IAPE Evidence Blog

World Pub­lish­ing Co., Tulsa World, tulsaworld.com
BYLINE: Staff Reports
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Tulsa, OK

Phillip Anthony Summers 

A Tulsa man who pre­vi­ously was sen­tenced to die in a double-murder case pleaded guilty Wednes­day to a reduced charge in the case, which was affected by the unavail­abil­ity of a key piece of evi­dence for a retrial.

Phillip Anthony Sum­mers, 26, pleaded guilty to two counts of second-degree mur­der linked to the Feb­ru­ary 2004 killings of Shelly and Ples Vann Jr., who were each shot three times in their home at 38 E. 50th Place North.

In accor­dance with a plea agree­ment, Tulsa County Dis­trict Judge William Kel­lough imposed two 30-year sen­tences, which will be treated as one 30-year term for prison purposes.

That state court sen­tence for mur­der also will run con­cur­rently with Sum­mers’ fed­eral prison term of 54 years in other cases.

Attor­neys said it is expected that Sum­mers will serve his sen­tence in a fed­eral prison and not in the Okla­homa Depart­ment of Corrections.

Jurors in 2008 found Sum­mers guilty of two counts of first-degree mur­der for the Vanns’ deaths.

But in 2010, the state Court of Crim­i­nal Appeals granted a new trial, revers­ing those con­vic­tions and death sentences.

The appel­late opin­ion said Sum­mers’ right to a fair trial was vio­lated when then-District Judge Tom Thorn­brugh did not let a wit­ness tes­tify in sup­port of Sum­mers’ “alter­na­tive per­pe­tra­tor” defense.

Before a retrial could be held, a Tulsa Police Depart­ment error led to the destruc­tion of a hand­gun that pros­e­cu­tors said was a mur­der weapon in the case.

Tulsa County Dis­trict Attor­ney Tim Har­ris said the inad­ver­tent destruc­tion of that gun left pros­e­cu­tors with­out the evi­den­tiary use of “the mur­der weapon we believe was used by Phillip Summers.”

That was the “one piece of direct evi­dence that ties Sum­mers to the death scene,” Har­ris said previously.

Sum­mers waived his right to a retrial Wednes­day, and Har­ris dropped the death-penalty request.

In plead­ing guilty to the reduced charge of second-degree mur­der, Sum­mers took respon­si­bil­ity for the deaths of the Vanns, defense attor­ney Stan Mon­roe said.

In a doc­u­ment signed by the defen­dant, sub­mit­ted in sup­port of his guilty plea, Sum­mers indi­cated that while in the com­mis­sion of an assault and in the course of dis­charg­ing a firearm with an intent to injure the Vanns, he caused their deaths.

In Feb­ru­ary, Tulsa County First Assis­tant Dis­trict Attor­ney Doug Drum­mond filed notice that Sum­mers could tes­tify as a pros­e­cu­tion wit­ness in mur­der cases involv­ing the 2008 killing of Tulsa busi­ness­man Neal Sweeney.

In court Wednes­day, Drum­mond said the plea agree­ment with Sum­mers in the Vann case was not related to any coop­er­a­tion by Sum­mers in the Sweeney case.

Sweeney, 63, was fatally shot in 2008 at his busi­ness, Retail Fuels Mar­ket­ing, 3158 S. 108th East Ave. One man has pleaded guilty, and three oth­ers are await­ing sep­a­rate tri­als in that case.

Sum­mers’ poten­tial tes­ti­mony at tri­als in the Sweeney case has him cat­e­go­rized as a jail­house infor­mant, a court doc­u­ment indicates.

At a hear­ing Wednes­day, Sum­mers said he hoped to get “pos­si­ble con­sid­er­a­tion’’ in his fed­eral cases but that “noth­ing is guaranteed.”

In fed­eral court, Sum­mers has been sen­tenced to 33 years in prison in con­nec­tion with an unsuc­cess­ful plot to kill Sgt. Mike Huff, a now-retired Tulsa police homi­cide detec­tive. That term runs con­sec­u­tively with a 21-year prison sen­tence Sum­mers got in 2008 for his role in a con­spir­acy to dis­trib­ute crack cocaine and marijuana.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

The Asso­ci­ated Press, The Jour­nal Gazette, Cox Media Group, ktvu.com
BYLINE: DOMINIC ADAMS
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Fort Wayne, IN

FORT WAYNE, Ind. — Capt. Shane Lee’s task is to make sure the Fort Wayne Police Department’s move from its Creighton Avenue head­quar­ters to its new home in the City-County Build­ing doesn’t jeop­ar­dize any crim­i­nal cases.

Lee is over­see­ing the move of the department’s evi­dence stor­age on the sixth floor of Creighton Avenue to its more mod­ern home on Main Street. The ren­o­va­tions to the City-County Build­ing cost more than $4.8 mil­lion and included remov­ing the esca­la­tor and beef­ing up build­ing security.

Every box, folder, pool cue, com­puter, stuffed ani­mal, tire, gun, drug and other item con­sid­ered evi­dence in a crim­i­nal case must never leave the sight of an offi­cer or some­one who works in the prop­erty room.

An offi­cer watches the movers pack the boxes, fol­lows them to the mov­ing truck, watches the evi­dence loaded onto the truck, locks the truck after it’s loaded, fol­lows the truck to the City-County Build­ing and then watches it get unloaded.

The process will be repeated until all 400,000 boxes of evi­dence are moved.

“For a suc­cess­ful pros­e­cu­tion of a crim­i­nal case, we have to show that the con­ti­nu­ity of evi­dence was strictly fol­lowed,” Lee said.

If an item is left unat­tended, a defense attor­ney could argue the evi­dence is no longer in the same state it was when police ini­tially seized it, Lee said.

That could mean a judge could bar the evi­dence from being used in a trial.

Movers recently started the month long process of mov­ing the police depart­ment head­quar­ters down­town — some­thing the depart­ment has been plan­ning for the past year and a half.

“We’ve made do with this build­ing for 15 years, but it was never made for pub­lic safety,” Chief Rusty York said.

Movers snaked carts in between rows of shelves stacked to the ceil­ing with boxes.

One box is labeled “death inves­ti­ga­tion,” while another con­tains items col­lected in a stab­bing inves­ti­ga­tion and a third box is labeled “sex­ual assault.”

As the carts are loaded with evi­dence, an offi­cer watches nearby and waits until the movers fill a cou­ple of carts.

The three snake back through the aisles, into the hall­way and onto the elevator.

Once in the lobby, the carts are pushed out the front door and across a makeshift bridge to the side door of the mov­ing truck, then loaded inside.

Another offi­cer watches from his unmarked police cruiser and read­ies to fol­low the truck to its new home at the City-County Building.

“It’ll be com­pa­ra­ble in size, but orga­nized dif­fer­ent,” Diane Spiller, the department’s evi­dence man­ager, said of the new loca­tion in the City-County Building.

Each piece of evi­dence is placed in a sealed bag, labeled with a bar­code and put in a box that also is labeled with a barcode.

Spiller said the evi­dence in the new room will be stored on move­able shelves.

Offi­cials had to make room to store evi­dence for a long period — Spiller said, for exam­ple, that evi­dence in child molest­ing cases must be kept until the child turns 31 years old.

There are dif­fer­ent areas of stor­age for DNA, firearms, nar­cotics and homi­cide evi­dence, Lee said.

“They have been dili­gently work­ing for a num­ber of months to pre­pare for the move,” he said of the evi­dence room workers.

Spiller said large tools that have been seized are dif­fi­cult to move because often they can’t be stored in a tra­di­tional box.

Begin­ning this week, offi­cers with crim­i­nal evi­dence or other prop­erty have been tak­ing it to the City-County Building.

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Infor­ma­tion from: The Jour­nal Gazette, http://www.journalgazette.net

Copy­right The Asso­ci­ated Press

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org

Patch.org, Marl­bor­ough­Patch, marlborough.patch.com
BYLINE: Josh Gray,
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Marl­bor­ough, MA

Credit Josh Gray

Det. Derek John­son con­fessed to steal­ing money from the Marl­bor­ough evi­dence room.

City offi­cials have revealed that a long­time Marl­bor­ough police detec­tive has been caught after steal­ing thou­sands of dol­lars from the department’s evi­dence room, accord­ing to a recent WHDH Chan­nel 7 report. 

Det. Derek John­son, a 24-year vet­eran of the force, has con­fessed to steal­ing more than $8,000 related to at least 10 pend­ing cases, accord­ing to the Mid­dle­sex Dis­trict Attorney’s office. 

John­son, who was the offi­cer in charge of the evi­dence room, has been given a deal in exchange for his con­fes­sion, revealed the “Hank Inves­ti­gates,” seg­ment Thurs­day evening. He was allowed to leave the force, cash out a $112,000 pen­sion and return the stolen funds. As part of the deal, he will not be pros­e­cuted for his crimes. 

When asked if the for­mer detec­tive got off easy, Chief Mark Leonard said to WHDH, “Absolutely not. He’s no longer a police offi­cer, the city was made whole, he’s not draw­ing a pen­sion for the rest of his life. If he were pros­e­cuted crim­i­nally and we were not suc­cess­ful, he very well could have come back to work here!”

First-time mayor and long­time city coun­cil mem­ber Arthur Vigeant stood by Leonard’s decision. 

“The num­ber one issue was try­ing to find out exactly who was involved; there was only one offi­cer involved, and he’s been purged from the depart­ment,” Vigeant said to WHDH.

As a result of Johnson’s actions, sev­eral pend­ing cases are com­pro­mised due to the miss­ing and tam­pered with evidence. 

Do you think the chief made the right deci­sion by offer­ing John­son a deal? Do you agree with the mayor — Is the city bet­ter off for it? Vote in the poll and tell us what you think in the com­ment field.

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Inter­na­tional Asso­ci­a­tion for Prop­erty and Evi­dence
“Law Enforce­ment Serv­ing the Needs of Law Enforce­ment”
www.IAPE.org