Court has a keen interest in case of the switched shells

Court has a keen interest in case of the switched shells

Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove of Summit County Common Pleas Court said Monday that she would take under advisement a lawyer’s request for an independent investigation of a case of switched shell casings that brought a murder trial in Akron to a screeching halt.

We strongly urge Judge Cosgrove to arrive at the conclusion that she should maintain oversight of an investigation into an incident that may make it impossible to ever do justice in the case of the 2002 murder of Javan Rogers, 24, of Akron.

Cosgrove dismissed murder charges against Arian S. O’Connor, 30, of Youngstown, after Gregory W. Peacock, an assistant Summit County prosecutor, stated in a motion requesting the dismissal that “A trial in this case would not be in the interest of justice for either the defendant or the victim’s family.” It is possible that if more collaborating evidence can be developed, O’Connor might yet face trial on the charges, but Summit prosecutors say a shell casing that would have completed a link between O’Connor, the murder weapon and the murder scene was crucial to the case.

As today’s Page 1 story reports, the presumed murder shell casing was switched at some point with a shell casing found at another crime scene that was also linked to O’Connor.

Nothing ‘sinister’

Youngstown Police Chief Jimmy Hughes vehemently denies that anyone in his department would purposely mix up the casings, and Brad Gessner, head of Summit County prosecutor’s criminal division, acknowledges that his doesn’t believe anything “sinister” happened.

That’s good as far as it goes, but it doesn’t go far enough in explaining what did happen.

And even if the shell casings were switched through simple human error, questions arise as to who made the error, when it was made and, especially important, whether there was an attempt afterward to cover it up.

Hughes says his office will conduct an investigation, and Mayor Jay Williams suggested the city might ask for help from the state attorney general’s office. Any other time, turning the matter over to Atty. Gen. Marc Dann might make perfect sense, except that if the switch weren’t made in Youngstown, it could have been made by the state’s Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation. And besides, Dann’s office has problems of its own right now (fodder for another editorial on another day).

And while Hughes is correct in saying there is no evidence to suggest that whatever happened was done intentionally, there is scant evidence to suggest that it happened anywhere other than in Youngstown.

And, again, it is important to determine that there wasn’t an attempt to cover up what started as an innocent error.

For that reason, and because whatever violence that may have been done to justice occurred in Judge Cosgrove’s court, she should be the one demanding answers and making sure that the court is eventually given the whole truth and nothing but the truth.