Prosecutors will re-try Missouri man in sisters' deaths

ST. LOUIS -- A man whose murder conviction and death sentence were overturned in the 1991 slayings of two sisters thrown from an abandoned Mississippi River bridge in St. Louis will be retried, prosecutors announced Monday.

St. Louis Circuit Attorney Jennifer Joyce announced she again will seek the death penalty in the case against Reginald Clemons. The Missouri Supreme Court threw out his first-degree murder conviction and death sentence in November and sent the case to circuit court to determine whether Clemons would be retried.

Michael Manners, a retired judge who the Missouri Supreme Court appointed as a "special master" to review the case, said in a report he found no direct evidence Clemons didn't participate in the killings. But he ruled \procedural errors, including prosecutors withholding evidence, were not the harmless mistakes the state claimed.

Clemons' attorney, Joshua A. Levine, who is based in New York, said he was "obviously disappointed" prosecutors had decided to retry the case. He said he wouldn't comment further.

Julie Kerry, 20, and Robin Kerry, 19, were visiting the abandoned Chain of Rocks bridge with a male cousin late one night in 1991 when they encountered Clemons, who was 19 at the time, with his cousin, Antonio Richardson, and two friends, Marlin Gray and Daniel Winfrey. Prosecutors alleged the men raped the sisters and shoved them off the bridge into the river and forced the women's cousin, Thomas Cummins, to jump off. Cummins survived.

Winfrey received a 30-year sentence in exchange for his cooperation and has been paroled. Gray was executed in 2005. Richardson's death sentence was commuted to life in prison without parole.

"While this is a heartbreaking and emotionally charged case for this community, I believe we have the evidence needed to pursue charges and hold Mr. Clemons accountable for the crimes he committed against Julie and Robin Kerry and Thomas Cummins," Joyce said in a statement.

Her office legally informed Clemons' defense attorneys, as well as corrections and court officials on Monday of the plans to pursue two counts of first-degree murder in the sisters' deaths. Her office also filed two counts of forcible rape and one count of first-degree robbery.

Clemons is serving a 15-year prison sentence in a separate case after pleading guilty in 2007 to an act of prison violence against a Missouri Department of Corrections employee.