Judge: Death row inmate failed to prove innocence

ST. LOUIS -- A judge's review of a murder case has found flaws in the prosecution but not enough to prove the innocence of a death row inmate convicted of killing two sisters by throwing them off a St. Louis-area bridge.

Reginald Clemons, 41, has been on Missouri's death row for 20 years. His attorneys are seeking to get his sentence commuted and are asking for a new trial. It isn't clear when the state Supreme Court will rule. The case has drawn attention from death penalty opponents from around the world.

Michael Manners, who retired last month as a circuit judge in Jackson County, reviewed the case at the request of the Missouri Supreme Court. His review, released late Tuesday, is nonbinding and goes to the state Supreme Court as part of its review of Clemons' appeal.

Manners determined prosecutors suppressed evidence that detectives may have beaten a confession out of Clemons. Clemons testified at a hearing before Manners last year that he was beaten so badly during an interrogation that he admitted to the crime.

Still, Manners found no direct evidence that Clemons didn't participate in the killings.

"I do not believe that Clemons has established a gateway claim of actual innocence," the judge wrote.

Clemons' mother, Vera Thomas, said in a statement she was thankful for the review of the case that she called "a derailment of due process from the very beginning."

"The wheels of justice are still turning," Thomas said. "But there are no winners in a death penalty case."

A message seeking comment from Clemons' attorney was not returned.

Julie Kerry, 20, and her 19-year-old sister, Robin, were with their male cousin on the abandoned Chain of Rocks Bridge in April 1991. The cousin, Thomas Cummins, was visiting from out of town and the sisters wanted to show him the bridge, which had become a popular gathering place for young people.

While there, they happened upon Clemons and three other men. The men were convicted of raping the sisters, then pushing them into the river and forcing Cummins to jump. Cummins survived.

Clemons testified at the hearing in September that interrogators repeatedly struck him in the head, face, chest, side and stomach. He said he was frightened that the beating could spur a fatal asthma attack.

Confessing, he said, "was the only way I could think of to get them to stop beating me." He agreed to confess to rape, but not murder.

The audiotaped confession was played in court. On it, Clemons gave a detailed account of how he and three friends -- Marlin Gray, Antonio Richardson and Daniel Winfrey -- raped the girls at Gray's suggestion.

The men then decided to kill the trio and led them from the bridge deck through a manhole cover to a structure below the deck, Clemons said on the tape. He said Richardson pushed both girls into the river. Cummins jumped after one of the men threatened to shoot him.

Julie Kerry's body was found three weeks later, 150 miles downriver. Robin Kerry's body was never recovered. Cummins was able to swim to shore.

Gray was executed in 2005. Richardson is serving life in prison after his death penalty was overturned because of a procedural error. Winfrey pleaded guilty to second-degree murder after agreeing to testify against the others. He was released on parole six years ago.

Clemons invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination nearly three dozen times during the September hearing, a fact noted by Manners.

But Manners said the jury in his original trial would not have heard the confession if prosecutors had not suppressed evidence by a probation officer who noticed injuries to Clemon's face after his interrogation. Manners didn't believe the verdict would have been different, but wrote that keeping it out of the trial was not "harmless error" as the state claimed.