Witnesses make claims of officer corruption in Box/Robinson case

David Robinson is now into his 17th year of incarceration for a murder to which another man confessed on tape in 2004. Robinson was convicted almost exclusively on the testimony of two jailhouse informants, men who were admitted drug addicts and had an incentive — whether perceived or real — to testify in exchange for prison leniency.

Both of those witnesses eventually recanted under oath, against their own interests, knowing they could face more time in prison by admitting they had lied in a murder trial.

The Missouri Attorney General’s Office continues to stand by the conviction and fight against Robinson’s case for exoneration, despite these men’s recantations, their admitted drug abuse at the time of their testimony, the taped confession of Romanze Mosby and the absence of physical evidence linking Robinson to the murder.

The AG’s office has argued these men’s original statements are credible, Robinson’s alibis gave conflicting testimonies, and Mosby’s confession did not meet legal standards.

The AG’s office also argued the public-defense investigator, Butch Johnson, Robinson’s longest-standing legal advocate, was overly aggressive with his tone in a letter he sent to a witness as he sought a recantation, which they said was out of the normal process.

Meanwhile, three witnesses in the Sheila Box murder case — including the two who testified against Robinson — over the years have made accusations of police corruption.

Detective John Blakely

Another victim in a related crime involving Mosby told the Southeast Missourian in an interview the investigation into that crime was “crooked.”

The accusations are inflammatory, made by individuals with criminal records and dubious credibility, but two of the accusations come from the same people who put Robinson in prison, people the state trusts to hold together Robinson’s conviction.

After its initial series focusing on Robinson’s claim of innocence in December, the Southeast Missourian examined hundreds of pages of documents to study how police investigated Mosby.

The lead detective in the case from the Sikeston, Missouri, Department of Public Safety, John Blakely, testified in a 2015 appeal he did not know Mosby was a suspect until after the conviction, adding had the department known, he would have followed up on the tip.

That testimony contradicts what another officer from the Scott County Sheriff’s Department, deputy Bobby Sullivan, testified to at trial and in a pretrial deposition, a transcript of which was obtained in a recent open-records request.

Sullivan said he told Sikeston detectives about the tip, but they didn’t follow up on it, and he subsequently handled it even though he was not assigned to the case.

The newspaper requested 19 records from 10 jurisdictions. Those records revealed criminal accusations by witnesses in the case. While there is no way of knowing which, if any, of the accusations are true, three of the accusations were made under oath; another came via an interview while researching a related case. Each of the accusations came from witnesses with varying degrees of credibility. None of the witnesses had an obvious incentive to lie about the accusations, and at least two offered their accounts at personal risk. None of them has close ties to Robinson.

In a case where no physical evidence exists to implicate Robinson and in which witnesses recanted, these accusations shed more light on the questions surrounding Robinson’s conviction and whether Robinson was treated fairly during the investigation and court process.

They also support several other sources from Sikeston who claim police and detectives often have cut corners and behaved unethically in cases unrelated to Robinson.

Blakely denied two of the most serious accusations in court, the most damning of which was made by a man named Ronnie Coleman.

Coleman claimed Blakely called him the night before trial and told him if he testified for Robinson’s defense, officers would arrest him on pending drug charges. If he did not show, he would not be charged, Coleman claimed.

Coleman’s claim

With no physical evidence against Robinson, the state’s case rested almost squarely on the testimony of a man named Albert Baker.

Baker was living in a trailer on Coleman’s property before police arrested Baker on charges of trying to steal an air conditioner and took him to the Scott County Jail.

In an interview with the Southeast Missourian, Coleman said Baker was homeless, and Coleman let Baker live on his property in exchange for yard work such as mowing and cleaning dog kennels.

Days after denying he knew anything about the Box murder, Baker summoned police and told them he saw Robinson shoot Box. He passed a polygraph bolstering this testimony, which prompted the prosecuting attorney’s office to formally charge Robinson with Box’s murder.

Police released Baker on an own-recognizance bond and gave him a bus ticket to Milwaukee, placing him in a witness-protection program — the first and only time Blakely would do that, he later testified in court.

Coleman claimed a few weeks after Baker arrived in Milwaukee in November 2000, Baker called him. Coleman didn’t recognize the number at first; it had a Wisconsin prefix.

Coleman told the newspaper he and Baker were “tight” friends before Baker was arrested. Coleman said he got the word that at some point, Baker had given a statement to police against him concerning drugs.

In 2004, according to a deposition obtained in a records request to the Attorney General’s Office, Baker told Coleman over the phone he never saw Robinson shoot Box, and he was testifying only to get a deal with police to get out of jail.

“We … kind of got in a little heated argument over the phone,” Coleman said of Baker during his deposition. “I asked him why is he making statements against me and also David Robinson, you know what I’m saying, when, you know, actually he didn’t see him.”

When pressed by an attorney for more details about that conversation, Coleman said, “He told me that he didn’t see David shoot [Sheila Box]. ... And he said the only reason he did it was because he has pending charges and David took some money from him awhile back, you know what I’m saying, supposedly, and then robbed him out of some money and didn’t do nothing. So, I guess this is the only way he could get David back. …

“That’s what he told me over the phone. He didn’t see David shoot the lady and that was it, and I was asking him why he was going through all this. I mean, why is he doing this over a burglary charge? … He just said he couldn’t go to jail.”

Coleman said he divulged this information to Robinson’s defense team, and public-defense investigator Linda Bollinger later subpoenaed Coleman to testify.

Coleman had no obvious incentive at the time to reveal this information. At that time, he was not in police custody.

He did, however, have problems with the law.

Coleman told the Southeast Missourian he was dealing with ongoing cyclical drug charges and investigations. He said he would be charged and bond out, only to have the charges dropped. He said this happened several times. But he said he had every intention of testifying in court that Baker was lying about his testimony.

The following August, about nine months after Baker’s phone call and about two weeks before Robinson’s trial, Coleman was arrested on pending drug charges. He was taken to the Scott County Jail.

He said he told Sikeston detective Chris Rataj about the phone call he got from Baker. Several hours later, he was released, not to hear from police again until the night before Robinson’s trial, he said, when Blakely called him at home, according to a court deposition taken in 2004.

“What were you told would happen if you did show up for David’s trial?” Robinson’s public-defense attorney asked Coleman.

“That my drug charges would be filed against me, and I will be arrested.”

“You’d be arrested after you testified?” the attorney asked.

“No, that the drug charges would be dropped if I didn’t show.”

“OK, but if you showed, you’d be ...”

“I’d be arrested.”

The attorney asked Coleman whether he would have testified if not for the “threat.”

“Yes, I would have.”

In a post-conviction hearing, Blakely denied the accusation.

In a recent interview with the Southeast Missourian, Coleman said he stood by his court statement.

He said he didn’t worry about picking up charges for blowing off a subpoena because the prosecution was on the side of the police, who were making the threat/offer. He said he was right; he was not charged for disobeying a subpoena.

He said Robinson’s family was upset with him when he did not testify. He said he told them why he didn’t testify.

David Robinson’s brother, Justin Robinson, confirmed the family was upset, especially when they learned Coleman’s reason for not showing up to trial.

Justin Robinson said he approached Coleman just a few hours after the jury’s verdict. He said he asked Coleman why he didn’t testify, and Coleman told him about the threat.

Several months after Robinson’s trial, in December, Coleman was arrested on drug charges and received a two-year sentence.

Coleman told the Southeast Missourian that Baker “told me straight out of his mouth” police “offered a deal” that if he testified against David, they would drop his charges and give him a ticket out of town. They made a deal with him.

Coleman’s recollection of that call with Baker refutes testimony given by Blakely and Baker.

They testified nothing was promised in exchange for Baker’s testimony against Robinson.

The defense questioned at trial why Baker was released on an own-recognizance bond when he was facing burglary charges if nothing had been promised. The prosecution later argued this was done to put Baker in a witness-protection program, because they feared Robinson or one of his associates might do harm to him, though Sikeston was not consistent with this type of protection in a related case in which Romanze Mosby tried to shoot a man who was going to testify against his brother.

Two others confirmed to the Southeast Missourian that Coleman told them of the Blakely phone call shortly after it happened.

Coleman’s ex-wife, Angella Coleman, remembered Ronald Coleman saying, “That’s the detective, and he said, ‘I wanna go (and testify), but if I go, they gonna try to hit me with some gun and drug charges.’”

Additionally, Angella Coleman said she talked to Baker at some point before the trial.

“I asked Al, was he gonna do that?” she said. “Was he gonna testify against David? Say he did that and he didn’t see it? I think he and David had some kind of conflict before all this happened.”

She said he explained the conflict, “And I was like, well that ain’t no reason to take nobody whole life, but he told me, you know I won’t never see him no more, won’t nobody ever see him (Baker) again. Because they had him put in witness protection, and once he testified, he was gone, won’t nobody ever see him again. That’s the last I ever seen him.”

Ronald Coleman’s brother-in-law, Lonell Bratcher, told the Southeast Missourian he saw Coleman the day of Robinson’s trial, and Coleman told him about being threatened by a detective.

Bratcher said he was on Lee Avenue, about 1 1/2 miles from Coleman’s residence, when he spoke with Coleman. Bratcher recalled Coleman saying he wasn’t going to testify because Blakely threatened him with drug charges.

“He (Coleman) is telling the truth,” Bratcher said.

Coleman’s anticipated testimony about the prosecution’s star witness was so important, Robinson’s defense attorney Chris Davis mentioned it in his opening statement to jurors the day of the trial. So when Coleman disobeyed the subpoena, Davis sent public-defense investigator Linda Bollinger to find him.

“I think [Coleman’s testimony] would have been very important,” Bollinger told the Southeast Missourian in a phone interview.

But despite searching for much of the two days of the trial, she was unable to find Coleman. After the trial, however, she said he reached out to explain his absence.

“[Coleman] said, ‘Miss Linda, I knew you were looking for me.’ He said, ‘We were even at the same stop light.’ And he said, ‘I hid from you because I was told I best not come to court,’” Bollinger said.

Missouri law prohibits the use of threats and offers of benefits to get a prospective witness to disobey a subpoena. Tampering with a witness in a felony case is a Class D felony, according to the same statute.

Baker could not be reached for comment.

The Southeast Missourian interviewed him last fall, but he since has been arrested on drug-distribution charges and is in St. Francois County Jail on a $150,000 bond, online records show.

The Southeast Missourian made multiple attempts to seek comment from Blakely, current chief Mike Williams, Sullivan, Mayor Steven Burch and city manager J.D. Douglass.

Williams said all questions regarding the Box case would need to go to the Attorney General’s Office.

When informed several of the Southeast Missourian’s questions were about cases involving Mosby and police practices in general, Williams didn’t respond. The rest of the sources from Sikeston did not respond to messages unless to respond officially to a Sunshine Law request, as required by law.

Second accusation

Coleman is not the only witness who claimed police threatened him with drug charges in the Robinson case.

Jason Richison, who originally testified he overheard Robinson boast of shooting Box in Scott County Jail, later recanted and claimed he was threatened by police with additional drug charges.

Richison, who volunteered his statement of perjury to jail officials in Wisconsin, said in a deposition that at the time of his 2000 incarceration in Scott County, he was addicted to methamphetamine and also had been diagnosed with schizophrenia and depression.

According to the deposition transcript, Blakely and other officers “took and told me they were going to give a dope case. ... They had a bag of dope on them, a quarter grams. I was addicted to methamphetamines really bad. And they told me, if I don’t do this, they were going to charge me with that, with having it in the county jail, and it was going to be a worse charge than I already had.”

Richison claimed out of desperation, he later cut open his wrists in an attempt to get out of jail “so I wouldn’t have to worry about the problem they were threatening me with. And they took me to a mental hospital.”

Richison claimed police “told me the details. He schooled me on what to say and how to say it.”

In correspondence before the Southeast Missourian’s initial series on the case that ran in December, Richison declined to elaborate but said he stood by his recantation. In the deposition and other documents, Richison said he feared returning to Missouri.

“I thought he had gotten out,” Richison told the newspaper last fall. “He should have been out.”

Richison was caught lying on the stand with one statement at the original trial, saying he spent days in a cell with Robinson, but jail records showed that to be untrue.

Blakely denied in post-conviction testimony that he threatened Richison.

Richison was deemed to be a credible source for the prosecution at trial, and the state defended his credibility despite his lie about being in a cell with Robinson.

But the state claimed Richison was lying when he recanted against his own interest, and Blakely testified Richison was lying about the “dope” threat.

Blakely’s credibility was brought into question, however, when in 2015, he contradicted then-sheriff’s deputy Bobby Sullivan when he testified under oath he was not aware Mosby was a suspect in the Box case. Sullivan and Blakely now serve at the Sikeston DPS.

Pills, polygraph

Ultimately, Albert Baker recanted.

He officially did so under oath in 2015.

Baker testified during his recantation he believed Blakely and detective Dan Armour knew he was lying.

Baker said Sikeston detectives had doubts about his testimony and decided to have him take a polygraph.

“Do you remember passing a polygraph test in this case?” asked assistant Attorney General Katharine Dolin, a prosecutor, during the recantation deposition.

“Yeah,” Baker said.

Robinson’s attorney, James Wyrsch, objected because polygraphs are inadmissible as evidence in court.

“You can answer,” Dolin said. “How’d you pass the polygraph?”

“Well, Blakely had gave me a couple of aspirins — I guess they was aspirins — earlier that morning before I went to take it; blue, shaped football.”

“The police officer gave you aspirin?”

“That I know of, yeah. See, I’m allergic to aspirin. I had no reaction, so I don’t know what happened and ibuprofen, so I’m allergic to those, so whatever he gave me I guess it just kept me mellow.”

Baker recanted his testimony against Robinson under intense warnings from Dolin, the prosecutor.

The attorney warned him each count of perjury in a murder case carries with it a sentence of up to 10 years.

She reminded him if he recanted his original testimony, he essentially would be admitting he had perjured himself under oath three times in the Box case.

Baker still recanted.

Regardless, the state continues to argue his original testimony was true. Blakely was not asked about the pill reference in court.

Another accusation

Robinson was arrested in August 2000 and went to trial in August 2001. During that year, while Robinson was awaiting trial, Blakely and other detectives were investigating Romanze Mosby and his brother Louis for four shootings that injured five people.

In one of those cases, Romanze Mosby was a suspect, but another man ended up receiving a conviction for it, due largely to eyewitnesses who pointed out another man.

One of those witnesses, one of the two victims in the shooting, told the Southeast Missourian the investigation was “crooked,” and an officer, who was not Blakely, pointed to the image of the man they believed had done the shooting during a photo lineup.

James Beck was one of two men shot in a case for which Edward Armstong was convicted.

Romanze Mosby was originally the suspect in the case, but two people close to Mosby, including a cousin who was involved in the robbery but did not shoot, said Armstrong was the shooter.

Mosby and his girlfriend said they witnessed the crime from Mosby’s bedroom window, and Armstrong ran to Mosby’s house, put on a jacket Mosby was wearing and fled.

Both victims originally picked Mosby out of a lineup, but later, they picked out Armstrong.

In an interview with the Southeast Missourian, Beck, who was shot in the leg, stated an officer helped him pick Armstrong out of a lineup.

“Crooked all together, that’s all I can say,” Beck said. “When you walk in with a picture and you got your finger pointed to a picture without saying words, that’s pretty well indicating to the person in front of you, ‘This is the guy,’ right?”

Beck now believes Mosby likely shot him, not Armstrong, although he said he couldn’t prove such.

In what could be coincidence or something else, Beck is Sheila Box’s stepson. Beck denied knowing Mosby or having sought out his assailants the day he was shot.

But L.A. Thompson, whom Beck said was his father, testified at Robinson’s trial he warned Beck against trying to find Box’s killer.

“He was getting wind of what was going on,” Thompson said of Beck, who at the time lived near the area Box was shot. “I kept telling him to quit snooping around. He was going to wind up getting himself killed.”

Beck, who has had some convictions, but not a long or violent criminal history, told the Southeast Missourian police had an unethical culture when Robinson and Mosby were being investigated.

Beck said police were “notorious down here for that, for going around and putting cases on people and locking them up; John Blakely is notorious for it.

“John Blakely was planting a lot of drugs on people back in those days is all I can say. Trying to make a name for himself.”

Beck said Blakely deserved credit, however, for cleaning up a bad part of town.

The Missouri Supreme Court will hear Robinson’s case in August, following an extensive review by a Special Master appointed by the jurists to the case.

Robinson hopes the court will grant him an exoneration or retrial.

bmiller@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3625

tgraef@semissourian.com

(573) 388-3627