Police and prosecutors in the 2016 Wilkinsburg mass shooting case did not present a key piece of evidence at trial that would have corroborated testimony placing the accused killer just houses away from the scene moments after five people and an unborn child were killed.
Jurors who acquitted Cheron Shelton last week were never told about the evidence because it was never turned over to defense attorneys before the trial as is required — seemingly because of a miscommunication between the Allegheny County District Attorney’s office and county homicide detectives on the case.
The presiding judge ruled that the evidence — a note and county 911 log — was inadmissible. The note, from a county detective to his supervisor, and the accompanying log prove, contrary to what the defense claimed throughout the trial, that police were aware of a car spotted near the crime scene that night and that it was directly linked to Shelton.
“This mistake — whoever made it — this failure to take this critical information and move it from law enforcement to prosecution had a direct impact on what evidence the jury heard or didn’t hear,” said David A. Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh. “We don’t know what effect it might have had on the verdict.”
Mike Manko, a spokesman for the district attorney’s office refused Thursday to answer specific questions on the handling of the evidence, including what steps might be taken to ensure something like this does not happen in the future.
Allegheny County Police Superintendent Coleman McDonough said that at the end of any trial, his officers meet with representatives of the DA's office to talk about what can be done better.
"And that's happening now."
Superintendent McDonough said he did not want to engage in finger-pointing.
"We all are very disappointed with the verdict."
He continued, “The blame is solely with the individuals who pulled the trigger in March 2016. I don't think anything positive is gained by retrying the case [in public].
"I think we need to focus on moving forward and finding ways to reduce gun violence.”
The issue revolving around the evidence came up on Day 2 of trial during a whispered sidebar conference at the bench involving the judge and lawyers for both sides and out of earshot of the rest of the courtroom. The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette this week obtained the documents in question.
Among the crucial issues in the case was whether a Wilkinsburg detective really did see Shelton get into a white Lincoln Continental, registered to his mother and sister, just moments after the shooting.
Detective Michael Adams testified that he did, telling the jury that he was on patrol and heard the shots at 10:53 p.m.. He was making his way through the 1400 block of Franklin Avenue when he saw a man getting into a Lincoln.
The detective said he pulled alongside the car, waiting for the man, who he later identified in a photograph as Shelton, to make eye contact with him, but the man never did. After a period of time, Detective Adams said he pulled off to assist a woman at the crime scene a block away who was screaming for help.
The detective testified that as he drove away, he looked in his side-view mirror and noted the car's license plate, "Jiffy Butter Peanut 2200," he recalled for Plate No. JBP-2200, and gave the information to a county homicide detective at the shooting scene at 1304 Franklin Ave. a short time later.
That plate was the first link — and one of the strongest — investigators had to Shelton.
But defense attorney Randall McKinney made much in his opening statement about whether Detective Adams really saw his client in the Lincoln, going so far as to tell the jury that the 25-year veteran officer was lying.
Because if he wasn't, Mr. McKinney wondered, why wasn't there evidence of Detective Adams turning over the plate number, or it being run by investigators that night as they claimed?
It turned out that there was evidence — but the jury never heard it — and Mr. McKinney had no idea about it when he made his statement.
That evidence includes an undated message from Detective Patrick Miller to Lt. Andrew Schurman, as well as a 10-page report from the county’s Computer-Aided Dispatch system.
CAD systems collect initial information and communications from police officers at an incident and compile it into a report.
Among the pieces of information a CAD report collects are police units on the scene, requests for officers to look for suspects, and when requests are made to run a license plate for vehicle owner information.
According to the CAD report for the Wilkinsburg case, a county police officer ran the license plate JBP-2200 at 1:19 a.m. on March 10, 2016, — less than 2-1/2 hours after the shooting — creating a direct link between Shelton and the scene in the early hours of the investigation.
The plate number was run again at 3:48 a.m. and just eight minutes later, at 3:56 a.m. It was also run, the report shows, at 10:50 p.m. on March 11, 2016.
The CAD report is dated July 11, 2017, and was faxed from an Allegheny County emergency systems operator to the county police homicide unit at 4:20 p.m. that day.
That means that county homicide investigators had a report showing that very early link between the car Detective Adams claimed he saw and Shelton at least 2-1/2 years before the trial started.
In his message to Lt. Schurman, Detective Miller wrote that he had heard about a defense motion, filed July 6, 2018, that challenged Detective Adams' identification of Shelton.
"I did some research and found the following, I have that information written down in my notes from that night along with the other information pertaining to the detail,” he wrote.
After explaining what the CAD report shows, Detective Miller continued, "I don't know if any of this helps, but I have attached everything and highlighted where the vehicle is listed on the CAD as well as the individual print out of the vehicle."
However, the DA’s office claimed on the second day of Shelton’s trial, on Feb. 4 during a sidebar discussion, that it never saw that report — which is typically included in a criminal case file.
That day, Deputy District Attorney Kevin Chernosky presented the report to the defense and told the judge, according to a transcript, that he had just received it from Detective Miller at the afternoon break.
"Obviously, it is a discovery violation," Mr. Chernosky admitted. "Obviously, it is detrimental considering the path that the defense has taken."
Because the issue was not relevant to the proceedings right then, Allegheny County Common Pleas Judge Edward J. Borkowski said they would discuss it at another time.
That came two days later.
At that time, also at sidebar, Judge Borkowski agreed that the CAD sheet and the key information it contained could not be used at trial.
But he also agreed that Mr. McKinney could no longer call Detective Adams a liar, as he had throughout his opening.
Mr. Chernosky suggested that neither the prosecution nor the defense could ask any further questions about the issue, but that Mr. McKinney "would be in his right to close to the jury that ‘you never heard any information that it was run.’
"I think that would be a fair compromise if we go that route,” the prosecutor said.
Mr. McKinney asked if he could argue the Adams issue at closing.
"You have to phrase it delicately," Judge Borkowski answered. "I don't think you can any longer call Adams a liar because there is substantial corroboration that he did [report the plate number.]"
"I would hope that I could argue to the jury you never heard any other witness or detective confirm that they were given this information?" Mr. McKinney asked the court.
"You can argue that," Judge Borkowski said.
In his closing, Mr. McKinney hammered on Detective Adams’ account, asking the jurors if it made sense that an officer would see a person immediately after hearing shots fired, sit and stare at him for some period of time but not try to talk to him or detain him.
Although he did not call the detective a liar again, Mr. McKinney argued to the jurors, "There's absolutely no corroboration of Detective Adams' testimony.”
Mr. Manko, the DA’s spokesman, said Thursday in response to questions from the Post-Gazette, “The officer from Wilkinsburg testified truthfully, and that has been verified by the document you are referencing.”
The issue of whether Detective Adams really saw Shelton that night appeared to be a sticking point for the jurors.
On the second day of their deliberations, the jury asked Judge Borkowski if they could review previous testimony from Detective Adams that Mr. McKinney had used to try to impeach him on cross-examination at trial.
In his pretrial testimony, at a hearing on July 9, 2018, the detective said he sat and stared at the man in the Lincoln for up to a minute, but at trial, he testified that it was only about five seconds.
Police Superintendent McDonough said Detective Adams did "excellent police work” that night and called the CAD report an important piece of evidence.
Still, he doesn’t think it would have changed the verdict.
"That wasn't the only reason, I'm sure, the jury chose to acquit Mr. Shelton,” he said. "There were a thousand pieces of evidence that went in, and they thought, as a whole, it wasn't enough to convict him."
Mr. Harris, the Pitt law professor, said that the judge made the right decision precluding the prosecution from using the CAD report.
“We have these kinds of rules to make sure information that is crucial to one side or the other makes its way to the lawyers so they can prepare their cases,” he said. “What we don’t want is trial by ambush.”
The CAD report can be a valuable piece of evidence, he said. "It's something that a prosecutor would always want to see if it's available.
“In the right case, it can be contemporaneous evidence that reflects what was actually happening, instead of just looking back in hindsight through someone's memory,” Mr. Harris said.
Like Superintendent McDonough, Mr. Harris said it’s not productive to place blame. But, he also said the loss of a “crucial piece of evidence” shows “a problem of systems.”
“When you see this kind of breakdown, what you’re talking about is an insufficient system of checks and care,” he said. “That stuff’s just got to be coordinated.”
Paula Reed Ward: pward@post-gazette.com, 412-263-2620 or on Twitter: @PaulaReedWard.
First Published: February 20, 2020, 11:59 p.m.