Judge frees murder suspect

By ED MEYER

Youngstown police switched shell casings from another crime to build their case, prosecutors said.

AKRON — A judge dismissed aggravated murder charges Monday against a Mahoning County man over an assertion by Summit County prosecutors that Youngstown police “compromised” ballistic evidence in the 2002 slaying of Javan Rogers, 24, of Akron.

Summit County had jurisdiction in the case, prosecutors said, because Rogers was abducted from his Akron residence on North Portage Path and found shot to death, execution-style, in Youngstown on Aug. 27, 2002.

The Mahoning County defendant, Arian S. O’Connor, 30, was charged in October with the Rogers slaying after Youngstown police tied him to the crime by switching shell casings from that shooting and an unrelated drive-by shooting in September 2002, prosecutors said in open court.

“A trial in this case would not be in the interest of justice for either the defendant or the victim’s family,” Gregory W. Peacock, assistant Summit County prosecutor, stated in his court-filed dismissal action.

Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove of Summit County Common Pleas Court granted Peacock’s request, calling the compromised evidence “a situation that strikes at the very heart of our democracy and our justice system.

“When we can no longer believe that the police, law enforcement, are being truthful, it’s a very sad day for the justice system,” Judge Cosgrove added.

Youngstown Police Chief Jimmy F. Hughes did not return detailed messages seeking comment on the case.

Also, attempts by The Vindicator to reach Hughes, Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams, Jason Whitehead, chief of staff/secretary to the mayor, and former police chief Robert Bush Jr. were unsuccessful.

The victim’s mother, Vickie Rogers, who was present in court for the dismissal, said afterward that she “waited five years to get some justice, and I didn’t get it. So I feel like the system failed me.”

Rogers, however, quickly added that she was thankful for Akron police detectives James Pasheilich and Michael Shaeffer “for trying to continue to find out what happened” to her son.

Meanwhile, defense lawyer Jonathan T. Sinn asked Judge Cosgrove for an independent investigation of Youngstown police for instigating what he called ‘“a fraud upon the Summit County court, the Akron police and the people of Summit County.”

The judge said she would take Sinn’s request under advisement.

Sinn said he also will ask for repayment of “tens of thousands of dollars” of Summit County taxpayer money spent in the investigation and prosecution of O’Connor “for a crime he clearly did not commit.”

Assistant Summit County Prosecutor Brad Gessner, head of the department’s criminal division, said Peacock first learned of the compromised evidence while interviewing investigators from the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation several days before O’Connor’s scheduled March 18 trial date.

In filing for the dismissal, Peacock submitted a day-to-day time line of the crucial events before and after the shell casings were switched.

Gessner and Sinn said Summit County prosecutors and Akron police had no advance knowledge of the compromised evidence until Peacock’s pretrial interview this month with the BCI investigator.

“All we know is that the evidence was compromised. We do not know how,” Gessner said outside of court.

Under the departmental policy of Summit County Prosecutor Sherri Bevan Walsh, Peacock and all other assistant prosecutors — with the exception of Gessner and Walsh’s chief counsel, Mary Ann Kovach — are prohibited from commenting on a case outside of court.

Walsh said in a statement released by her office that O’Connor has been in custody at the Summit County Jail since Oct. 25, when he was transferred there from a federal prison after serving five years for a probation violation in the September 2002 drive-by shooting.

O’Connor will be released from the county jail and returned to federal authorities to answer to them about matters related to the probation violation, Walsh said.

Sinn asked Judge Cosgrove not to transfer O’Connor to the Mahoning County Jail for his own safety.

When the judge asked O’Connor if he had anything to say, he replied: “I just want to get home and start rebuilding what I lost.”

He then said he hoped Rogers’ family “finds out who did this so they can have some peace of mind.”