Highway patrol finds missing video sought by defense in Sikeston murder case

Missing surveillance video evidence in a Sikeston, Missouri, murder case has been found by a Missouri State Highway Patrol investigator and turned over to defense counsel less than two weeks before the scheduled trial.

The evidence was discovered on a computer hard drive that was found not in the police station but at a different undisclosed location, defense attorney Thomas Peterson said.

Peterson said he doesn�t know where the hard drive was found nor why �it just magically appeared.�

He said Friday he drove to Benton, Missouri, on Thursday to pick up a copy of the video after the Scott County prosecutor�s office notified him the security video had been found.

Peterson said it�s unclear how video evidence that had been in the possession of Sikeston officers ended up being taken out of the police station and not logged into evidence.

Sikeston Department of Public Safety (DPS) officers had said repeatedly they couldn�t find a thumb drive containing the surveillance video that had been requested by the defense counsel for Antoine Harris-Applewhite for more than two years.

Harris-Applewhite of Sikeston faces charges of first-degree murder, armed criminal action and two counts of unlawful possession of a firearm in the Dec. 19, 2015, shooting death of Samuel Sanders outside a Sikeston liquor store.

The case is scheduled for trial starting Aug. 20.

The defendant�s St. Louis attorneys sought unsuccessfully to have the case dismissed after police admitted they lost the store-security video the attorneys said could benefit the defense.

Judge David Dolan denied the defense motion. Defense counsel appealed the decision, arguing police failure to preserve the evidence �constitutes gross negligence that rises to the level of bad faith.�

On July 11, the Missouri Court of Appeals Southern District denied the defense�s petition, setting the stage for the case to proceed to trial in circuit court.

Peterson said he was told by the prosecutor�s office the video was recovered by Sgt. Scott Rawson of the highway patrol. Online records show Rawson is a criminal investigator and a 25-year veteran of the patrol.

While the video has been turned over to the defense, Peterson said it is unclear why the evidence was stored on a hard drive and why the thumb drive, on which the original store video was downloaded, is missing.

DPS director Mike Williams confirmed in a brief email to the Southeast Missourian �the video was located by the Missouri State Highway Patrol� and sent to Prosecuting Attorney Paul Boyd.

Citing litigation, Williams declined to make any further statements about the situation.

Peterson accused Sikeston officers of not telling the truth about what the evidence shows.

�We have been saying from the beginning that they are lying. Now that we have the video, there is proof they were lying,� he said.

The video was used, in part, to establish probable cause for the arrest of Harris-Applewhite in the shooting death.

A detective�s written and oral description of what the video showed has changed over the course of the case, including his testimony in a motion to dismiss, after the DPS could not provide a copy of the video to the defense.

Bobby Sullivan, a detective with the DPS, wrote in a probable-cause statement Dec. 19, 2015, the video from the store security camera and a DPS pole camera showed Harris-Applewhite and Sanders fighting in the parking lot.

�Harris-Applewhite pulled a pistol from his waistband and fired numerous times striking� Sanders twice, Sullivan wrote in the statement.

But Sullivan subsequently testified in court the shooting was not captured on either video.

At a preliminary hearing April 19, 2016, in Scott County Circuit Court in Benton before Judge Scott Horman, Sullivan said no gun could be seen on the store video in the possession of either man. The video shows a �scuffle,� but doesn�t show either man pulling out a gun or aiming it, Sullivan said.

No gun was ever recovered in the case, he told the court.

To complicate matters, the only �eyewitness� who identified Harris-Applewhite as the shooter has changed his testimony, court records and transcripts show.

Harris-Applewhite, in an Aug. 8, 2016, handwritten letter to the circuit court, requested an evidentiary hearing. He said he had been held in the Scott County Jail for months based on �an affidavit written by Det. Bobby Sullivan and his confidential informant, Virgil Tate.�

In the letter, Harris-Applewhite said the prosecutor�s office had failed to produce the video to the defense as requested. He questioned the credibility of Sullivan�s statements about the case.

According to a transcript, Tate said at the preliminary hearing the victim was his cousin and he also knew the defendant.

Sullivan, in court testimony, said Tate provided the only identification of Harris-Applewhite as the man who shot Sanders. Sullivan said Tate stated the defendant pulled a pistol from his waistband and shot Sanders in the back as Sanders was running away.

But Tate told a different story in court. Under cross-examination from defense attorney Terence Niehoff, Tate said, �I didn�t see nobody shoot a gun.� He said he was inside the store at the time of the shooting. �I just heard gunshots,� Tate said.

As for the video, Williams, the Sikeston DPS director, said recently the video was recorded �from inside the store and did not show the crime, which actually occurred outside the store.�

Drew Juden, who directed Sikeston DPS at the time of the murder and is now Missouri�s director of public safety, said Sikeston officers did not tell him the evidence was missing.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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