Fellow SJ-R reporter Sarah Antonacci and I worked together on this piece about problems within the Springfield Police Department’s Major Case Unit and more specifically with former detectives Paul Carpenter and Jim Graham, whose methods had been called into question by local attorneys, a judge and a fellow detective.

This award-winning piece brought together all the issues with Major Case and helped readers understand what was at stake.

Detectives said to be loose with procedures / Allegations against Major Case Unit detail numerous investigation violations
Jan. 22, 2006

Allegations against the Springfield Police Department’s now-disbanded Major Case Unit apparently revolve around suspicions that unit detectives violated department procedures and legal requirements in connection with search warrants, suspect interviews and court testimony.

In one case, a panel of federal appellate judges said they believed detectives had not told the truth when testifying against an alleged drug dealer. Their actions, the judges said in a written opinion, cast “a dark cloud” over the conduct of all police officers.

Illinois State Police investigators for months have been looking into allegations against the unit, as well as reviewing some of its investigations and the unit’s policies.

The state police probe originally was expected to lead to, if anything, internal departmental discipline of any officers found to have acted improperly. However, sources inside and outside the Springfield Police Department now say the investigation could culminate in criminal charges against some city officers.

The Major Case Unit was disbanded as of Jan. 1 by Police Chief Don Kliment. Kliment said the move was meant to relieve overworked detectives and had nothing to do with the investigation.

Two detectives formerly with the unit, Paul Carpenter and Jim Graham, have been placed on administrative leave while the investigation continues. They have not been formally accused of any wrongdoing, and city officers have said that being put on administrative leave is not necessarily an indication of guilt. Carpenter declined to comment on this story without authorization from the police department, which was denied. Graham could not be reached.

According to documents obtained by The State Journal-Register, a local judge, a Springfield attorney, a private investigator and a former drug investigator, in addition to the federal appellate court opinion, have called into question the unit’s investigative techniques and the integrity of some of its detectives.

Many of the problems apparently have to do with procedures used for obtaining search warrants. Several defense attorneys said privately they are taking additional measures to make sure cases against people they’re representing were built legitimately.

In some instances, cases have been thrown out against apparently guilty people because of allegedly improper behavior by detectives. In others, including the trial of a man for a 1994 murder, detectives have been accused of going too far to attempt to convict people who may have been innocent of the crimes they were suspected of.

Many of the allegations stem from incidents that preceded Mayor Tim Davlin’s appointment of Kliment as police chief in June 2003. Kliment said he asked for the state police investigation after learning of the allegations.

“The matter’s still under investigation by the Illinois State Police,” Kliment said Saturday night. We asked for their assistance, and we’re not going to have a comment until the investigation is concluded.”

Ernie Slottag, Davlin’s spokesman, said the mayor is aware of the investigation.

“The state police are looking into this, and we’re looking forward to seeing what their findings are,” he said. “I don’t know what the allegations are. It’s really an internal issue, a personnel issue. The thinking was the state police could be more objective at looking into this, and we welcome their findings.”

***

Former associate judge Stuart Shiffman apparently was one of the first to document concerns about city detectives. After reading a newspaper article in February 2001 about the dismissal of drug charges against two men because of problems with an affidavit for a search warrant, Shiffman wrote a memo to Chief Judge Leo Zappa and all other Sangamon County judges.

The case involved Phillip C. Thomas, whose truck containing 20 pounds of marijuana was stopped and searched by detectives in September 1999. Thomas was sentenced to eight months in prison and served about four months at the Vienna Correctional Center before his conviction was nullified, and he was released.

Officials at the time said a detective failed to follow proper procedures in identifying a confidential source in an affidavit for a search warrant. Charges against a second man arrested in the same investigation also were dropped.

Bill Pittman, who commanded the Springfield Police Department’s investigations division at the time, said then that city internal affairs investigators were looking into the incident. The department was reviewing other cases to make sure similar problems hadn’t happened before, Pittman said.

In his memo, Shiffman said he had learned that, on at least two other occasions, cases investigated by two Major Case Unit detectives were dismissed when information they provided later proved to be false.

“What may be at issue here is the integrity of an important judicial function, the review and issuance of search warrants,” Shiffman wrote. “I believe that the entire judiciary of this County is entitled to be certain that this process is not tainted by false and misleading statements by police officers.”

Shiffman retired from the local bench last week.

On Friday, Shiffman said he met in 2001 with then-Chief John Harris, Pittman and circuit judges Leo Zappa and Patrick Kelley. He characterized the meeting as a “dog and pony show” and said he felt the punishment for the officers should be more than internal.

“I expressed concern and felt it needed to be addressed otherwise, not necessarily that they be held accountable criminally. But I don’t think an officer who furnishes false information in an affidavit and someone goes to prison even for five minutes, I don’t think the officer should be working any longer. Apparently Harris and the others didn’t have the same concern,” he said.

Not long after that meeting, Shiffman said, he was excluded from most criminal cases.

“Their response, in a way, was to lock me out of the system. I didn’t handle many criminal cases after that. I would do a search warrant on occasion when it was my rotation. They felt there were plenty of other judges who would sign a warrant.

“I noticed a marked change from then on. It was easier to cut me out of the system rather than do something with the officer.”

***

In April 2005, Springfield attorney Bruce Locher filed an internal affairs complaint against Carpenter, Graham and another major case detective, Stephen Welsh, accusing them of misconduct while investigating three 1999 drug cases involving his clients.

In each of the cases, Locher said, revelations of the questionable information led to charges being dropped and a conviction being overturned.

One case involved Huey Whitley, who was arrested in 1999 after police raided his Springfield hotel room during a drug investigation. Locher did not represent Whitley, but did represent Marcellus Mitchum, who also was arrested during the raid.

Mitchum’s case was dismissed after the court found inconsistencies with police officers’ testimony. Whitley was convicted in federal court, but appealed after Mitchum’s case was thrown out. Whitley’s conviction eventually was overturned.

The situation began when a woman was pulled over after leaving the Stevenson Inn, 2860 Stevenson Drive, and was found with baggies of marijuana in her vehicle. The woman told police she did not get the marijuana from Mitchum or Whitley at the hotel and that she had it with her before she went to the hotel, according to the opinion.

However, an affidavit used to obtain warrants to carry out the raid said Carpenter had told Welsh that the woman got the marijuana at the hotel room. Welsh, under questioning during a suppression hearing, contradicted the information set forth in his warrant affidavit, saying he did not recall who gave him that information, according to the appellate court’s decision.

“None of the officers involved admitted to a clear recollection of who told what to whom,” the appellate opinion states. Welsh, the panel said, gave “less than truthful testimony concerning aspects of his participation in the searches at issue.”

No phone listing could be found for Welsh.

Another question centered on whether police legally searched a motel room. Officers obtained a warrant for one room, but when they carried out the warrant, they learned Whitley and Mitchum were in two rooms. They did not have a search warrant for Mitchum’s room.

According to the opinion, Welsh and another detective testified during Mitchum’s case that they knocked on Mitchum’s door and he let them in. Mitchum denied that, the appellate opinion said – he claimed that he was sleeping when the officers arrived, and they entered without his permission.

It later was revealed that hotel management copied the room’s key card for police and that the computerized timing system in the door showed that a key card had been inserted into Mitchum’s door at the time the search took place.

In its written opinion, a three-judge panel from the Seventh Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals in Chicago harshly criticized the investigators’ conduct.

“Regrettably, conduct of this type by one or two officers casts a dark cloud over the thousands of dedicated law enforcement personnel working at the local state and federal levels to protect and safeguard the rights of all citizens guaranteed in the United States Constitution,” said the opinion, written by Judge John Coffey. “We refuse to excuse and accept questionable conduct of this nature.”

***

Also in question is the Major Case Unit’s use of what police call “trash rip” operations, in which detectives search a suspect’s garbage once it’s discarded or put out for pickup. No warrant is needed for a “trash rip,” as long as officers follow legal standards for what is considered discarded.

However, drug charges against Reco L. Faine, who also was represented by Locher, were dismissed in 1999 when prosecutors learned a search warrant was obtained under questionable circumstances.

Testimony indicated Graham, Carpenter and Welsh had gone through garbage cans they said Faine put out for pickup and found evidence connecting him to drug possession. That information allowed the officers to obtain a search warrant for Faine’s home, where they allegedly found cocaine inside.

The problem, Locher said, was that Faine did not put his trash out at the curb – he had an arrangement with a trash hauler under which Faine would carry his trash out only when the hauler arrived at his house each week.

Faine was indicted on federal drug charges, but the charges were dropped once assistant U.S. attorney David Risley learned about Faine’s garbage pickup arrangement, Locher said.

The third case cited in Locher’s internal affairs complaint involved another allegation of detectives obtaining a search warrant with suspect information garnered during a traffic stop. The charges were dropped, and the arrest was expunged from his client’s record.

Locher wrote then-Mayor Karen Hasara in May 2001, urging her office to investigate. He said he never received a reply. Locher said he has not heard anything further about the internal affairs complaint he filed in April, but said he believes “it’s about time” for the state police probe.

“I brought these actions to the attention of the city several years ago,” he said. “That Seventh Circuit decision really, I think, speaks to the problems in the Springfield city police department.”

***

Private investigator Bill Clutter filed a complaint against Carpenter and Graham in the Tonia Smith murder investigation.

Smith was killed on New Year’s Day 1994. In 2002, authorities used DNA evidence to link Anthony Grimm to the crime. A jury acquitted Grimm last year.

Clutter accused the detectives of withholding interview reports that may have helped the defense and intimidating a witness.

According to Clutter’s complaint, Graham had a file folder on his lap when he was asked during the trial if he had interviewed a witness, Curtis Bradford. Grimm had said Bradford could support his alibi for the night of the murder.

Graham told defense attorney Craig Reiser he had interviewed Bradford, but that he didn’t have a report indicating he had done so. Graham was asked what was in the folder. Graham allegedly replied that it was his “personal” folder.

Zappa, who was presiding over Grimm’s trial, asked that the file be opened. Inside was a written report Graham had prepared of his Aug. 20, 2002, interview with Bradford.

Failing to disclose reports to the defense violates Illinois law and U.S. Supreme Court rules.

Zappa agreed with prosecutors that police had not willfully concealed the reports, but he said at the time that law enforcement agencies need to come up with better safeguards to prevent evidence from slipping through the cracks.

Clutter also said that a man, age 14 at the time of the killing, who said that he believed he might have seen Smith abducted the night she was murdered ended up being hauled in by city police, even though he was a defense witness.

Clutter said in the complaint that the man, who testified reluctantly, was confronted by Graham and Carpenter and told that the detectives had told the men the witness named as Smith’s abductors what the witness had said and that those men would be in the courtroom when he testified.

***

An additional case investigators may be looking at involves a man with a history of church burglaries whom detectives wanted to talk to during their investigation of the beating of the Rev. Eugene Costa in Douglas Park in December 2004.

The man, Thomas Munoz of Divernon, filed suit in federal court, accusing Graham of violating his civil rights by having him arrested for allegedly trying to burglarize the St. Jude Parish rectory in Rochester. Munoz is representing himself in the case, which is still pending.

Springfield police arrested Munoz to question him about an alleged Dec. 18 break-in attempt at the Rochester church. Detectives also wanted to know if Munoz knew anything about the Costa beating.

Investigators determined Munoz had no connection to the attack on Costa, but they did file the attempted burglary charge, which put Munoz in violation of his parole on a previous church burglary conviction. He was returned to state prison, but was released when the attempted burglary charge was dismissed in March.

Two youths – neither of whom had any connection to Munoz – later admitted beating Costa.

Munoz claims in his suit that the warrant for his arrest was issued as a result of false testimony by Graham that Munoz had tried to enter the rectory “when no such incident even occurred at that location.”

A Rochester police report attached to Munoz’s suit indicates a member of the congregation saw Munoz try to open the front door to the parish reception hall, then try to open the front door to the rectory. When he was unable to open either door, he walked to the side of the residence and tried to open a side door.

The parishioner asked if he could help, and Munoz said he was looking for the Rev. William Carpenter to give him a Christmas decoration. He retrieved the decoration from his vehicle, gave it to the parishioner and left.

The parishioner, an employee of the state Department of Corrections, “felt that Munoz’s mannerisms were suspicious and consistent with someone who was not being truthful,” according to the police report.

***

On Jan. 3, Ron Vose, a veteran Springfield police officer and drug investigator, submitted his resignation, citing fear of retaliation for blowing the whistle on what he described as misconduct by other officers. Vose’s last day on the job was Thursday. He has retained Springfield attorney Howard Feldman, presumably to file a lawsuit against the city, though his resignation letter included no explicit threat of legal action.

Vose’s concerns also center on the Major Case Unit. He said in his letter of resignation that he had complained to his supervisors as early as June 2004. According to the letter, he informed superiors, including Kliment, of potential police misconduct, though the letter does not specify what his concerns were.

He wrote that he believes his superiors told the officers in question about his concerns, causing “a very hostile work environment and led to an altercation between one of the officers and me during November 2004.”

Vose and his attorney drafted a 20-page memo, alleging both administrative and criminal violations, and submitted it to Kliment on March 2, 2005. He later met with Davlin to make sure the mayor was aware of the situation, Vose wrote in his letter. Several days later, he said, found empty boxes with his name on them outside his office door.

Not long after that, Vose was transferred from supervising the department’s drug unit to second-shift street patrol, a move he believes was meant to teach him a lesson for trying to expose misconduct.