Less than a week after a Chicago police detective gave dramatic testimony in the case of accused cop-killer James Scott, a seemingly contradictory police memo has surfaced, temporarily halting Scott’s trial.
The memo was sent by prosecutors to defense attorneys Saturday night. It shows that hours after Officer John Knight was fatally shot, his partner told a supervisor that Scott stood over him with his gun drawn, yelled an expletive, then ran before the two exchanged gunfire.
On the witness stand last week, James Butler told a different story–that Scott stood over him, but pulled the trigger of his gun twice, only to have it jam. It was after the gun jammed, Butler said, that Scott shouted the expletive and ran.
In court Tuesday, Cook County Assistant Public Defender Michael Mayfield said he had never been given the three police reports delivered to him Saturday night and argued the discrepancy was important enough to warrant a mistrial.
Circuit Judge Clayton Crane disagreed. Instead, Crane delayed testimony one day, allowed Mayfield to depose the memo’s author, Lt. Thomas Tansey, Tuesday afternoon and said the defense could recall Butler to the witness stand based on the new information.
Assistant State’s Atty. Bernie Murray said he began looking through documents on Saturday and at first thought the three reports had been overlooked. He said he immediately sent them to Mayfield. However, on Monday, Murray said he realized he had already sent the reports to defense attorneys as part of a larger document in May 2002.
Murray said he was looking through documents on Saturday to make sure he had not made the same mistake as in another case involving a cop killing. On Friday, attorneys for another accused cop-killer, Aloysius Oliver, asked for a mistrial in their case because prosecutors had failed to give defense attorneys a similar police report.
“I absolutely never received these three reports,” Mayfield told Judge Crane. “It could mean all the difference in the world to the future of Mr. Scott.”
Mayfield said that had he seen the memos earlier, he would have changed his opening statements, and would have conducted his cross-examination of Butler differently. “We should have been able to confront Officer Butler with this testimony,” Mayfield said. Out of court Tuesday, Mayfield said it was unlikely the defense would recall Butler.
Defense attorneys have not denied Scott shot and killed Knight on the South Side on Jan. 9, 1999, but say he did so in self-defense. They say Scott did not know the men chasing him were police officers, because the police car was unmarked and the officers were in plain clothes.
The key issue, Mayfield said, is under what circumstances Scott yelled the expletive.
