Consider This from NPR - Police Pushback Against Progressive Prosecutors

Episode Date: November 28, 2023

In different places throughout the country, police are pushing back against the policies of progressive prosecutors.NPR's Sacha Pfeiffer tells the story of one such struggle in St. Louis where a detective wouldn't testify in a case. That refusal may have helped a man charged with murder walk free.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

If you watch police procedurals, you know a lot about the first part of a detective's job. When a crime happens, they investigate, gather evidence, interview witnesses, identify suspects. Then comes the second part. When a case goes to trial, a detective often has to testify in court. The prosecutor puts them on the stand as a witness to walk the jury through the details of the investigation. It's a key step in turning an arrest into an actual conviction. That's why these voicemails are so striking. Hey, Detective Murphy, I wanted to reach out to you one more time. I do think we need you on this case. There is no problem with calling you to the witness.

So please give me a call. It's a prosecutor pleading, almost begging a police officer to testify at a homicide trial. The officer didn't respond, so he called again. Hey, Detective Murphy, I understand you have issues, but this is a murder case and we kind of need you. It makes any difference. This guy's a really bad guy. So can you put your differences aside and focus on getting this guy? That would be helpful. Thank you.

The man who received that voicemail, St. Louis Detective Roger Murphy, he never testified, despite being the lead detective, despite the fact that he believes the man on trial did beat a person to death. And in the end, the jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Consider this. The story of why Detective Murphy refuses to testify is also the story of a power struggle playing out across the country between progressive prosecutors and people in the criminal justice system who resist their policies. Was it the right thing to do? In my mind, yes. In other people's mind, probably in your mind, it wasn't the right thing to do.

From NPR, I'm Ari Shapiro. It's Tuesday, November 28th. Hey, it 28th. So a big shout out to our supporters and anyone listening who currently donates to public media. Thank you. You are making a real difference. And if you haven't donated yet, well, today is Giving Tuesday. It's an international day of giving and the perfect reason to become part of the community that makes this podcast possible. We can't do it without you and your support makes sure everyone can listen. Give today at donate.npr.org slash consider this. That's donate.npr.org slash consider this. Thank you. Now, back to the episode. It's Consider This from NPR. Roger Murphy isn't the only St. Louis police officer who's refused to cooperate with prosecutors, but he is one of the most extreme.

So far, he's refused to testify in at least nine murder cases where he was the lead detective and in another one coming up soon. NPR investigative correspondent Sasha Pfeiffer has been digging into this story, and I sat down with her to talk about it, starting with the most basic question. Why won't Detective Murphy testify? So, some context. As we've said, this is taking place in St. Louis. That city, of course, became an epicenter of the Black Lives Matter movement and of calls for police accountability after the 2014 shooting of Michael Brown. For anyone who doesn't remember, Michael Brown was killed by police in the St. Louis suburb of Ferguson.

His death and the protests that followed created a huge push for criminal justice reform. Yes. And as part of that push for reform, St. Louis elected a new top prosecutor in 2016, and she created what's called an exclusion list of problematic cops. What is an exclusion list? It's a list where police officers who are believed to have credibility problems get put on it, and it excludes them from getting search warrants or bringing cases forward. And Detective Murphy feels so wronged about being put on that

list that he's basically willing to sabotage his own cases. So I went to St. Louis to talk with him. Well, take us there. What did you find? Well, I met Murphy at his home on the city's south side. He lives in a small house with his wife and his pickup truck and two pit bulls. That's Lucy, the brown one, and that's Ethel. I got her from a crime scene, a murder-suicide. We got her back to health, and now she's... She's 50 pounds of craziness. It's not that Murphy doesn't have time to testify. He's now retired, so he has nothing but time. I get up, I go and hit the coffee pot, put the dogs out. I go out in the garage, I smoke a cigarette.

I go fishing, eat dinner, get with our neighbors. Murphy appears to have a clean record, but he landed on a list of problematic St. Louis cops because of some Facebook posts. In one, he called a Black man who'd been killed by a white police officer a violent thug. He also referred to the top prosecutor in St. Louis at the time, a Black woman named Kim Gardner, as Kimmy G. A judge later said Murphy's Facebook posts were unprofessional but not racist. And Murphy says he was just exercising his right to free expression. There's nothing biased.

It shows that I'm a conservative and it shows I'm, you know, pro-police. I mean, I could see if I committed a crime, but this was because I was speaking out against the political system here in the city of St. Louis. Murphy strongly opposes Kim Gardner's policies. She's a progressive Democrat. She wants to reduce mass incarceration, eliminate cash bail, promote rehabilitation over punishment, and not prosecute some nonviolent crimes like shoplifting.

Murphy calls that a soft-on-crime approach that's making cities less safe. And although Gardner's office put him on its exclusion list, it still asked him to testify at some trials. Murphy says it's hypocrisy to question his integrity, yet want him to testify. And he says even if he did testify, defense attorneys might grill him about why he's on the list. I'm going to get on the stand and they're going to crucify me. It would have been all about me and not about the case. Being on Gardner's list meant Murphy wasn't allowed to do much work on cases. So he ended up doing a whole lot of nothing.

I'd come in at six o'clock in the evening and I'd watch Amazon Prime or I'd watch Netflix or I'd watch Hulu or whatever. You're paying me at that time $61,000 a year plus benefits to sit there and watch TV. So Murphy retired about two years ago out of boredom and frustration, but some of his cases are still ongoing. The police department didn't order Murphy to testify and didn't discipline him for not testifying. There's now a new top prosecutor in St. Louis who says he doesn't have an exclusion list, and his office has also asked Murphy to testify. But Murphy still won't

do it, and he said his lawyer advised him not to testify either. Was it the right thing to do? In my mind, yes. In other people's minds, probably in your mind, it wasn't the right thing to do. Prosecutors were able to get some convictions without Murphy on the stand, but in other cases, they offered plea deals or dropped charges entirely. Had Murphy testified, the outcomes may have been different. But that one defiant guy in Tamman Square standing in front of a Chinese tank, and I'm not saying I'm that guy, you know, but somebody has to stand up and go, this system needs an overhaul. He is a menace to society. Adolphus Pruitt is president of the St. Louis NAACP. He has a sworn duty to protect and serve. And if he doesn't do such, because he was on this list

of some other bull crap, he is the biggest problem with policing and the biggest problem with society. Murphy says he's fed up with what he calls hatred towards police and disgusted by liberal prosecutors. He also says he's taking a principled stance and speaking for other disillusioned police officers who are afraid to speak up. But Pruitt buys none of that. It is retribution. If they had to drop cases or they had to plead for weaker sentences, it worked. He extracted the retribution he wanted to extract on the office. And that's all there was. That office is the St. Louis Circuit Attorney's Office. It was led by Kim Gardner for nearly seven years.

She was elected and re-elected by a wide margin both times. Her progressive message resonated after the trauma St. Louis went through following Michael Brown's death. Here's Gardner after winning her primary three years ago. The people spoke, and they said enough is enough. People saw the murder of Mr. George Floyd. People see the murders of many others at the hands of law enforcement. But Gardner clashed with police. They say she failed to prosecute legitimate cases and her office struggled with massive dysfunction. About a third of her attorneys quit. The ones left behind had crushing caseloads. Some didn't show up in court for trials.

Eventually, Missouri's attorney general sued to try to remove her from office, and a judge said this. The circuit attorney's office appears to be a rudderless ship of chaos. Back in 2020, Gardner had filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city and police union, alleging a racist conspiracy to push her out of office. She did not respond to multiple requests for comment, but here she is at a Baptist church in St. Louis in May. You can't run an office that you have people inside and out purposely tearing this office down.

And I'm going to tell you, I'm not leaving. I'm not resigning. I'm not doing nothing. You're going to have to remove me. About two weeks later, Gardner did resign. But the legacy of her exclusion list still lingers. I don't think exclusion lists are a good idea to begin with. That's Boston College law professor Michael Cassidy. He says these lists alienate police officers, so prosecutors shouldn't be surprised when cops on them refuse to cooperate. Saying that I'm going to put you on an exclusion list is basically the death penalty to your career.

But Cassidy also says Murphy has an obligation to testify. Murphy could be subpoenaed, but he says if that happens, he'd refuse to answer questions on the stand. And Cassidy says that means murders may go unsolved. So he doesn't get a lot of sympathy from me, but neither does the extreme position of creating exclusion lists without giving the people on that list any opportunity to talk to you before the list is created. So neither party here gets a lot of sympathy from me. Murphy is still railing against Kim Gardner months after she resigned from office, and he does not intend to testify in another St. Louis murder trial scheduled to start soon.

Did it hurt cases? It definitely hurt cases. And I apologize to the family and all the other families out there that didn't get to seek justice. But I don't believe in the progressive system at all, at all. The public has seen me as the enemy and has seen our profession as the enemy. But we didn't break the system. We kept arresting people and she kept letting them out, refusing cases, refusing good cases. Murphy did agree to testify in one case. That's because Gardner's office wasn't involved and one of the victims was related to a police officer. And yeah, the bias in that point is it's a policeman's family and we're all, you know, supportive of each other. Murphy says it does bother him that one homicide case he refused to testify in resulted in an acquittal.

Murphy thinks if he had testified, the man accused would be behind bars. I still feel bad that he's walking the streets because he's going to do it to somebody else. Murderers don't just murder one time. Progressive prosecutors say that attitude shows how much external and internal opposition they're up against. That's NPR's Sasha Pfeiffer. NPR collaborated with ProPublica for this project. You can find a link to their digital version of the story in our episode notes. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Ari Shapiro.