Motions heard before George Joseph's murder trial next month

Murder suspect George Joseph was in court Friday in one of his last appearances before his case goes to trial next month.

During the motion hearing Friday, Jospeh's attorney, Cynthia Dryden, sought to revisit motions that had been overruled.

The first was a motion to suppress, which Judge Benjamin Lewis overruled.

The state called several witnesses, starting with David Snell, Joseph's brother-in-law, who visited Joseph during his stay at Barnes-Jewish Hospital in St. Louis after the deaths of Mary and Matthew Joseph and after he was transferred to the Cape Girardeau County Jail.

Assistant prosecuting attorney Angel Woodruff and Dryden's lines of questioning focused on whether law enforcement personnel had directed Snell to try to get a confession from Joseph, who is charged with Mary and Matthew's shooting deaths.

Snell testified he mainly had been communicating with the hospital through assistant Cape Girardeau police chief Mark Majoros because of the Barnes' "silent status" policy and Joseph being kept on a secure floor of Barnes. The family apparently had had trouble getting the bodies released for burial; Joseph's signature was needed on some paperwork. Snell testified police had told him when Joseph was responsive so he could go about getting the signature.

Snell said he was "hurt" when he went to visit Joseph, and he remembered Joseph saying he had been hallucinating while in the hospital, but "I never tried to get anybody to confess. ... "

Dryden's second request involved the disclosure of personnel records of Cape Girardeau Police detective Jeff Bonham.

Dryden said Bonham had changed his mind on his original opinion regarding the crime scene since attending a blood-spatter seminar. She claimed also Bonham's "laxity, if not outright behavior ... allowed evidence to be destroyed."

A gun recovered from the home's swimming pool apparently had rusted by the time it made its way to the crime lab.

Woodruff explained David Warren of the Missouri State Highway Patrol had stated he had not properly instructed police on how to handle the weapon because firearms are not often recovered from water.

"He did not instruct them to keep the gun in water," Woodruff said, which allowed the gun to rust.

Dryden requested all the information from the seminar contained in Bonham's file to be released, along with information from any instances of evidence destruction Bonham may have been involved in.

Lewis overruled this request, as well, adding "there wouldn't be any reason to expect" information on the seminar to be in Bonham's personnel file.

The state also called jail administrator Capt. James Mulcahy and Lt. Don Perry of the Cape Girardeau Police Department. The defense called Joseph's brother, Gerard Joseph.

Both the prosecution and defense entered several exhibits, mainly consisting of medical records from Joseph's stay at Barnes.

A motion regarding jail-visit recordings will be taken up at a later time.

Joseph's jury trial is scheduled to begin July 20.

kwebster@semissourian.com

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