THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, September 11, 1994 TAG: 9409110038
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: By JOE JACKSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 243 lines
Homicide investigator Shaun Squyres wanted the Williams brothers so badly for the 1992 drug-related killing of Andrew Green that he was willing to bend the rules.
A co-defendant, Eugene Owens, who had been in jail for half a year, alleges Squyres struck a deal with him: If Owens signed a statement implicating the brothers in the murder, he would get time alone in the Police Operations Center to have sex with his girlfriend.
The deal was struck, the deed done. But things didn't turn out as planned.
Even with the statement, the brothers - Ronnie and Michael Williams - went free. Only Owens was convicted. The girlfriend, Kim Baldwin, got pregnant. Law enforcement officials implied the baby, named Eugena, was fathered by another man. But Baldwin said the girl was a product of the union with Owens, and was born prematurely on Valentine's Day 1993.
When Owens returned to jail after the tryst, a sheriff's deputy, Sgt. Nathaniel Blount, noticed and took photographs of the ``passion marks'' on his body and neck where the girlfriend had bitten him during their lovemaking.
Such are the allegations made in interviews or contained in a court appeal by Owens, who is serving time now in Brunswick Correctional Center. On March 26, 1993, a jury found him guilty of second-degree murder, robbery and two firearms charges and recommended 36 years in prison.
Now the Virginia Court of Appeals has granted him a rare full hearing on the grounds that Owens, now 21, was induced by police to give self-incriminating statements in exchange for sex. No date has been set for the hearing.
``Such police conduct was clearly directed at (Owens') raging hormones in an endeavor to overcome his reluctance to implicate himself,'' wrote Robert Eisen, Owens' attorney, in his brief to the appeals court. ``This pattern of conduct by the Norfolk Police Department in eliciting statements from (Owens) by employing the sexual allure of his girlfriend . . . mandate that . . . a new trial should therefore be ordered.''
Squyres would not comment, stating that it is against department policy to talk about pending court cases.
But in a February 1993 suppression hearing in Circuit Court, Squyres denied all the allegations. He said that on Sept. 24, 1992, he did leave Owens and Baldwin alone in the interview room, but only for about three minutes. He returned and ``they were sitting face-to-face talking,'' he testified. ``I didn't think anything of it.''
He left them alone again ``and eight or ten minutes later, I stepped back in the room and I told them to say goodbye,'' Squyres testified. They were sitting in the same position as before, he said, holding hands.
Squyres was asked whether he made Owens any promises. ``No,'' he answered, ``other than I would try to find the truth out as best I could.''
Owens, in a prison interview, said he, too, is seeking the truth. ``The justice system should get better,'' he said. ``I'm sure there's lots of other cases like this out there.''
On Friday, Assistant Police Chief Charles Cameron said: ``The senior administration has just become aware of the specifics of this allegation during the past 24 hours. We have begun a review of the entire investigation. allegations were put forth in a suppression hearing . . . and it was the ruling of the Circuit Court . . . that the allegations have no merit.''
Few Norfolk detectives have their integrity questioned so publicly, but the 1990s have been a bad decade for the city's homicide squad. Court records show that a pattern developed in the squad of arresting people on slim evidence, then dismissing murder charges when a stronger suspect emerged. In 1992 and 1993, at least seven murder trials were drastically altered when the suppression of key evidence by police or prosecutors came to light. This happened while the squad went through at least 11 supervisors, detectives were overworked, and the city's homicide count became the bloodiest on record.
Then, last year, veteran homicide detective David Browning resigned in protest over the withholding of evidence in the case of Brian McCray, convicted of first-degree murder and sentenced to 42 years based on the changing testimony of a 13-year-old boy. Squyres, the lead investigator, arrested McCray on the same evidence that Browning had deemed insufficient for a warrant. In May, a new jury acquitted McCray of all charges.
If the Owens incident happened as alleged, ``as far as I know, no law or code of ethics would be broken by this action,'' said William S. Geimer, a professor of criminal law at Washington and Lee University in Lexington. ``It's not like lawyers,'' whose conduct is governed by a code of ethics prescribed by the American Bar Association. ``Now, whether the police broke some obscure state fornication law, making them principals in the second degree, I don't know.''
Geimer does believe, however, that the allegation is in tune with a general relaxation of police constraints due to recent Supreme Court rulings.
``More people are pushing the limits,'' Geimer said. ``Still, this is bizarre.''
Edwin DeLattre, author of the 1988 book ``Character and Cops: Ethics in Policing,'' who conducted an ethics seminar for the Norfolk and other Hampton Roads police departments last October, said: ``I never heard of a department that would allow trading favors for testimony. . . . If this actually happened, it's neither excusable nor justifiable. It certainly poisons the well.
``If this count is true, this guy supposed that the ends justifies any means whatsoever,'' said DeLattre, a professor of philosophy and dean of the School of Education at Boston University. ``Institutional policies and standards of ethics never justify that view.''
The murder of Andrew Green occurred on the night of Feb. 18, 1992, at Green's house at 5249 Elmhurst Ave. Green was shot five times. Also killed that night was Turner Smith, shot in the back during a gunfight with Green. The resulting investigation revealed that a group of men - including Owens and Smith - had driven to the home to rob Green of cocaine he had recently purchased, but Green fought back and died.
Shortly after 11 that night, Green walked out the front door. Inside the house was Green's nephew, Lewis Dailey, and some other people. At about 11:20, Dailey testified, he heard Green say, ``Open the door.''
When he did, Owens, standing beside Green, pointed a gun in Dailey's face. He saw Green surrounded by two other armed men as Owens threatened, ``If you don't open the door we're going to kill you,'' Dailey testified.
Dailey and another man pushed the door shut, then everyone scrambled to escape. Dailey jumped out a rear window and, hearing gunfire, ran to a convenience store, where he called police.
Owens, who denies being present at the killing, was arrested early the next day. Police found Green's ring and necklace in Owens' pockets, court records say. At first, he denied being at the murder scene, but over the next three days he would make four statements to Squyres, each containing different details of his involvement. On Feb. 22, Squyres told Owens that he had made so many conflicting statements that he didn't want to talk to him again.
Yet none of these early statements, made between Feb. 19 and 22, implicated Ronnie and Michael Williams. Still, Lewis Dailey identified the brothers as the two men at the door with Owens, and a manhunt was on.
On Feb. 20, the Williams brothers turned themselves in to WVEC-TV, saying they feared that police would beat or shoot them if they were caught on the street. They said on camera that they were innocent. They said they had been set up or mistaken for someone else.
In the broadcast, Ronnie Williams also displayed fresh scars that he said were bullet wounds. He said he had been shot by a fourth suspect in the shooting: LaShawn Grimes, 19, of the 800 block of Mariner Street.
By Feb. 22, the Williams brothers, Grimes and Owens were all in jail and charged with capital murder, abduction and robbery for Green's death. But by Sept. 22, the charges against Grimes and the two brothers would be dropped for lack of evidence, leaving Owens alone to face the possibility of the electric chair.
According to the Williamses' mother, Ola Cunningham, her sons had good reason to be afraid. The day after the murder, she said, police burst into her Roberts Village apartment, with guns drawn. ``They didn't have a search warrant,'' she said.
``They just came in and said they were looking for Ronnie and Mike . . . said we better not be hiding them. They went upstairs, made my 18-year-old grandson, who was sick in bed, stand up. . . . I said, `You don't have the authority to do this.' One officer said, `If Mike or Ronnie fight back, we have the authority to kill.' ''
There is no court record of a search warrant for Cunningham's home.
George Anderson, Michael Williams' attorney, later asked Michael why the police were after him. ``Mike told me Squyres had been hounding him for years,'' Anderson said.
``He said Squyres thought he was involved'' in the shooting of ice cream vendor Hugh Williamson, who was paralyzed from the waist down after an August 1991 robbery in Tidewater Gardens. Yet a 15-year-old boy was arrested for that robbery, and neither Williams brother was ever charged.
By September 1992, Anderson had transcripts of the 911 tapes in which Lewis Dailey called police. In those tapes, Dailey said he could describe the two men at the door with Owens but didn't know them. Yet he told police afterward that the two men were the Williams brothers and he had known them for years, Anderson said.
``I confronted the prosecutor, Catherine Dodson, with this, and she talked to Lewis,'' Anderson said.
On Sept. 22, the charges against the Williams brothers were deferred and they were released from jail.
That left Owens. Squyres testified that on Sept. 23, Owens contacted him from the jail. Owens was upset that the Williamses were getting out.
He said he would now give a statement putting the brothers at the scene, Squyres said.
Squyres testified that he believed the Williams brothers had paid off a witness to change his identification. He believed Mike and Ronnie had showed up independently of Owens, also intending to rob Green, on the night of the murder. Squyres told the court he believed the Williamses had been sent over by the drug supplier who had just sold cocaine to Green. That way, Green would have to buy more drugs, Squyres said.
But according to Owens, Squyres contacted him the day the Williamses were released. The next day, Sept. 23, Squyres got Owens out of jail and took him to the Police Operations Center on Virginia Beach Boulevard.
Squyres was ``mad about Michael Williams and Ronnie Williams getting released from custody,'' Owens testified. ``He said he wanted them really bad
``He told me, `You do this for me, I'll do this for you,' meaning he was going to help me at the trial,'' Owens said in an interview. ``I trusted him. He'd arrested me for burglaries when I was a juvenile. . . . He'd been straight about the amount of time I'd get in Beaumont (Learning Center) if I helped him clear a bunch of burglaries.'' After that, Owens said, he became Squyres' informant - a fact Squyres confirmed.
According to Owens, Squyres coached him on the statement implicating the Williams brothers. ``He had a tape recorder,'' Owens said.
``He said, `I want you to say this,' then rewind the tape and let me say it. Over and over. . . . All the time he was saying, `Yeah, yeah, that's it.' ''
The next day, Sept. 24, Owens was brought back to the detective division to read the statement. ``Squyres said, `I'm gonna go get Kim,' '' Owens recalled. `` `I'm gonna let you do what you gotta do, then you sign the statement and I'm gonna take her home.'
``But the statement was all lies,'' Owens said. ``I hadn't been with a woman since February. I wanted time with Kim.''
According to Baldwin: ``Squyres called that day and told me Eugene was at the police station. He came and got me at 9 (p.m.) He was talking about how he wanted Mike and Ronnie, how a guy came to court and said they weren't there at the shooting. . . . All he said was I'd get to see Eugene.''
Baldwin was led into the Detective Division and passed an interrogation room near the back door. Inside sat Owens, reading the statement. The room was about as small as a jury box: ``One door, no windows, a table, three chairs,'' she testified. She waved at Owens as she passed. Only a few other detectives were in the bureau, she recalled.
Baldwin talked with Squyres in another room for a couple of minutes, then was taken back to Owens. ``Squyres left me in the room and said, `Don't do nothing nasty,' '' she said. ``Then he left.''
It was only then she realized that she and Owens were going to have sex.
``I was surprised,'' she said. ``I never knew nothing like that ever happened with the law.''
They made love on the table, and she bit Owens on the neck, chest and stomach, both Owens and Baldwin said. After about 30 minutes, Squyres knocked on the door. ``I said, `Hold up,' '' Owens said. ``Then he came back and knocked again. Kim was sitting on my lap when he walked in.''
Owens signed the statement, and Squyres drove Baldwin home. Then Owens was taken back to jail. By then it was about 2 a.m.
Sgt. Blount was working that night in the booking office. ``He (Owens) had gone out in the day shift and returned at about 2 a.m.,'' Blount recalled last week. ``I questioned why he'd been at the Police Operations Center as long as he had. He smiled and said he'd had a good time.''
Blount also noticed the bite marks on Owens' lower neck and chest. He wrote a report, and other deputies took photos of the marks because ``they weren't there when he'd left the jail,'' Blount said. The photos and report were passed up the chain of command, and Blount never saw them again.
Jail officials say they now have no record of the photos. There's a chance they were destroyed by the previous administration, jail officials said.
Owens was taken back to his cell. ``My cellmates said, `Damn, where you been, getting all them hickeys?' I said, `Boys, I just got me some . . . I'm ready to go to sleep.' And I did.''
The baby was born four and a half months later, Baldwin said. Owens and she were married on May 28, 1993, two months after a jury sentenced Owens to 36 years for the killing of Andrew Green. ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Squyres
Color photo
Owens
KEYWORDS: MURDER NORFOLK POLICE DEPARTMENT SEX FOR
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