Possible YPD bungling being investigated

By ED MEYER

Two investigations are under way, and a third one is likely.

AKRON — At best, the dismissal of aggravated-murder charges against a Youngstown man last week could point to the “bungling of a major homicide investigation,” a judge reasoned.

At worst, the judge said, if prosecutors were correct in asserting that crucial ballistics evidence was compromised by Youngstown police, then there was “a deliberate intent to commit a fraud” for the sole purpose of convicting the defendant, Arian S. O’Connor.

Either way, Judge Patricia A. Cosgrove of Summit County Common Pleas Court concluded the unraveling of the state’s case against O’Connor was such a “horrendous situation” that it “strikes at the very heart of our democracy and our justice system.”

But what are authorities doing about it?

Two internal investigations are under way, and a third possibly involving a special prosecutor to look at the case from top to bottom, from Akron to Youngstown and places in between is under consideration.

In wrapping up her decision to throw out the case, Judge Cosgrove assured the family of murder victim Javan Rogers, 24, of Akron, that some sort of investigation “is very much needed.”

Youngstown Mayor Jay Williams said last week the police department’s internal affairs unit, police Chief Jimmy F. Hughes and additional “city hall agencies” have begun investigating the Summit County claims.

But early indications, Williams said, do not point to any wrongdoing.

“We have to determine if anything at all transpired at YPD,” the mayor said. “There were multiple agencies involved in this, including BCI [the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Identification and Investigation] and the Akron Police Department.”

Akron Police Capt. Dan Zampelli declined to comment on the case or the investigation, saying the department was deferring all questions to the Summit County Prosecutor’s Office.

The claims of compromised evidence — a switch of two shell casings that ultimately led to the aggravated-murder indictment against O’Connor — were made by Gregory W. Peacock, an assistant Summit County prosecutor, in open court April 7.

Peacock told Judge Cosgrove the switch occurred through “a convoluted set of circumstances” and that he did not find out about it until he talked to a BCI agent while preparing for O’Connor’s trial last month.

O’Connor, 30, was arrested by Akron police last October more than five years after the Rogers slaying. He was charged with aggravated murder, kidnapping, criminal gang activity and various firearms offenses.

At the time of O’Connor’s arrest by Akron authorities, he was in a federal halfway house, his lawyer said, for a probation violation for an unrelated drive-by shooting in Youngstown only days after Rogers’ body was found.

O’Connor previously was arrested Sept. 27, 2002, in Hermitage, Pa., with a 9 mm semiautomatic handgun. The gun was test-fired at a Pennsylvania crime lab, and the shell casings were secured as evidence, then were submitted to BCI in Ohio, Summit County court records show.

Summit was handling the aggravated-murder case against O’Connor because Rogers was abducted from the garage of his North Portage Path home, according to Akron police, about 10:30 p.m. Aug. 26, 2002.

The next day, court records show, Youngstown police detectives recovered one shell casing next to Rogers’ body on the west side of town a few blocks from where O’Connor lived on Division Street.

Detectives identified that casing as a “MERC” 9 mm, tagged it as evidence and placed it in a safe in the department’s crime lab, according to court records.

Less than two weeks later, detectives recovered another single shell casing from the scene of an unrelated shooting in which a woman who knew O’Connor said he shot at her while driving past her Youngstown home.

The casing from that drive-by shooting was tagged as evidence in the Youngstown police property room Sept. 8, 2002. But the brand and type of casing were not identified, court records show.

Then, on Oct. 30, 2002, the shell casings from the Rogers slaying and the drive-by shooting were tested at the BCI lab in Boardman. According to court records, lab analyst Jonathan Gardner determined that a Remington Peters 9 mm casing submitted as evidence in the Rogers case matched the test fires from the gun police seized from O’Connor in Pennsylvania.

Gardner also determined that a “MERC” casing submitted as evidence in the drive-by shooting was not fired from O’Connor’s gun, court records show.

Reports documenting this were sent to YPD, the records state.

On Nov. 25, 2002, Gardner received a call from a Youngstown detective who said “the shell casings from the two cases may have been switched,” court records show.

But just one day later, that same detective called Gardner again and told him “everything is fine with the evidence.”

Youngstown police records obtained by the Akron Beacon Journal from the city prosecutor’s office state that police did not file any written reports about either of those phone calls to BCI.

Assistant Summit County Prosecutor Brad Gessner, head of the department’s criminal division, said the calls to Gardner from Youngstown triggered the action that ultimately led to last week’s dismissal of all charges against O’Connor.

Gessner stressed that Peacock did not learn about the phone calls between Youngstown and BCI until March 17. It was the day before O’Connor initially was scheduled to stand trial for Rogers’ slaying.

O’Connor’s lawyer, Jonathan T. Sinn, told Judge Cosgrove: “At some point, the Youngstown Police Department had an opportunity to try and solve an Akron crime. And rather than solve it with good police work, someone took a shell casing from a gun that was found on my client at a later time and switched it with a shell casing that was recovered from a murder scene. And that led everybody to believe my client committed a murder when, in fact, there was no evidence to support that.”

Hughes said his Youngstown officers did “nothing purposely or knowingly” to the ballistics evidence. He also strongly denied Sinn’s allegations of a setup.

Jennifer Brindisi, an attorney general’s office spokeswoman assigned to the BCI communications division, said BCI has initiated its own investigation “to make sure we know exactly what happened.”

emeyer@thebeaconjournal.com