DeKalb County authorities' failure to find a bloody knife at the scene of a triple killing last week was called unacceptable and incompetent by veteran attorneys and investigators who know how murder cases are built and defended. .
Former Fulton County prosecutor David Cooke said investigators should use a grid to search any crime scene, especially a triple homicide. A grid search requires police to systematically scour every square foot of a crime scene for potential evidence. He said an oversight can hurt the prosecution by making the police look sloppy.
"If it is an important case and you’re going by the grid, you are going to find the knife,” said Cooke, now a prosecutor in Houston County. “If they missed something as obvious as a bloody knife then the next question is, what else did they miss? Depending on the rest of the evidence it can have huge consequences. It is hard to overstate the importance of doing the basic work."
The 911 call was placed about 8:45 p.m. on April 3. Police found a mother and two children stabbed to death in a brick ranch on Rockland Roadnear Lithonia. Twelve hours later, an Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter spotted a long knife on the porch, a few feet from a broken front window. It is unclear how the knife got there.
DeKalb detectives, who had arrested Eugene Quatron McCoy on triple-murder charges, returned to retrieve the weapon. A spokeswoman said detectives thought they had recovered the only murder weapon when they found another knife they believed McCoy used to stab to death Sheila Irons, his 45-year-old mother, and his half-siblings Zion McPherson, 11, and Chasity McPherson, 8.
Thomas West, a veteran defense attorney, said the overlooked knife would allow a lawyer to attack the competency of the investigation. "If you have critical evidence found by a private citizen who is not a trained investigator, it could make jurors think the police did not do a good job and maybe have the wrong man."
Prosecutors said occasionally investigators miss evidence that is later recovered, but it seldom hurts the case. “I can say where a citizen has gone back after the police have processed the scene and found additional evidence, I've probably had it happen four or five times,” said Gwinnett County District Attorney Danny Porter. "I've never had it make a difference to a jury ... but I can see where it could have made a difference.”
Others recalled cases when it did matter. Al Dixon, a defense lawyer after retiring as a top Fulton prosecutor, said police once arrested a suspect identified in a murder at an Arby's restaurant, but police didn't find the bullet at the scene to match to the defendant's gun. Six months later, the restaurant staff was cleaning the kitchen and found the bullet. "When they found the bullet it strengthened the case because otherwise the defendant could have argued that it was a a bad identification," Dixon said.
West recounted "missed" evidence that changed a case's outcome. Police had shot an emotionally disturbed man who they claimed sprang at them from a closet with what they mistakenly thought was a gun, West said. Detectives overlooked the bullet pattern that showed the man, who West defended in the incident, was sitting on the floor when shot, the lawyer said. "We got that case thrown out," West said.
Joseph Pollini, a retired lieutenant commander of the New York City Police Department recalled two kidnappings he investigated in which police overlooked the actual criminals when searching their hideout. In one apartment, police missed two kidnappers hiding under the kitchen sink until returning for a second search. "They were little people," said Pollini, a professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Pollini warned that who finds missing evidence matters, too. "The credibility of the person who found it could destroy the credibility of the evidence," he said.
Danny Agan, who once commanded Atlanta’s homicide unit, said police can't be expected to be infallible.“Even with the best detectives in the world working, something can be missed, something that looks obvious,” he said.
Douglas County District Attorney David McDade was harsher. “There is nothing at a crime scene that does not have the potential to be critical,"” McDade said. “We’ve spent days processing crime scenes because the victims deserve that at the very least."
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