About

An all too familiar tale. Young man of color, high school dropout, unemployed, past record of trouble with the law, is picked up by police and convicted of a crime he didn’t commit. That’s Ju'ane Kennell’s story.

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Out of all the voices calling for help, how does someone like Ju'ane make his voice heard? That’s the question he has spent the last 20 years trying to answer.

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In June of 2002, a few days after the St. Louis police department were called to the scene of a shooting homicide in Walnut Park, the police identified Ju'ane Kennell as a suspect, and charged him with the murder of Freddie Chew.

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Ju'ane was assigned representation by the public defender’s office while he awaited arraignment in the city’s new half-full $300 million dollar Justice Center. It all seemed to be a case of mistaken identity. One that should be easily cleared up by simply vetting Mr. Kennell’s alibi.

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The murder of Freddy Chew had occurred at approximately 5:00 am June 21st, 2002. A date and time at which Ju'ane would have been found in bed at his grandmother, Hattie Bolton’s, home. An alibi easily corroborated by Mrs. Bolton and Kennell’s two younger siblings, Hatta and Patrick Holmes. The alibi was further verifiable by the unbiased, electronic activity log for the home’s security system.

 

Furthermore, the St. Louis Police Department and city prosecutor, Robert Craddick, had fallen on the motive of revenge for Kennel1’s actions in the death of Mr. Chew. A motive brought to their attention by one of the prosecution’s key witnesses—and allegedly intended target—Jeffery Shockley.

 

Based on Shockley’s word, the State was asserting Ju'ane Kennell and two other assailants drove up to Freddie Chew’s residence in search of Shockley with the intent to exact revenge for the shooting death of Ju'ane Kennell’s younger brother, Jesse Kennell. Certainly a viable motive—were it true.

 

Overdue investigative diligence by the police department would have revealed no such incident had occurred, and in fact, shown Jesse Kennell to be alive and well, living in the St. Louis area. Void of arguable motive, and possessing sound alibi, Ju'ane Kennell’s nightmare should have soon been over.

 

The preeminent failure of the police department’s investigative efforts were further compounded by Ju'ane’s public defender, Afocha Ibe, who not only failed to depose Ju'ane’s grandmother and sibling as evidence of his alibi, also failed to file a notice of alibi defense with the court, effectively barring Kennell’s ability to present his defense once it was apparent the case would proceed to trial. (Shortly after Kennell was convicted, Ibe left the public defender’s office for a position with the State’s Attorney General. In a later evidentiary hearing on appeal, Ibe would go on to testify she was ignorant of her responsibility for filing a notice of alibi defense. A fact the hearing judge ruled “trial strategy” on the part of defense.)

 

Despite so great a setback, all hope that justice would prevail was not yet lost for Ju'ane Kennell. Aside from Jeffery Shockley, there were three additional witnesses to Freddie Chew’s murder: Chew’s fiancé, Jacqueline Daughtery; a neighbor, Damon Stower; and a man named Robert Stewart who admitted to being involved in the shooting along with Jeffery Shockley.

 

Neither Stower nor Daughtery’s descriptions matched Ju'ane. Additionally, Ju'ane was not identified by Stower and Daughtery at trial, or during police photo lineups. Although Robert Stewart identified Ju'ane Kennell as present, Stewart first identified a man named Corey Hughes immediately following the shooting. (In a later private investigation Stewart would admit to being coached by Shockley to ID Ju'ane Kennell and a third man, Cortez Vincent who coincidentally was already incarcerated at the time of Chew’s death.)

 

In fact, none of the physical descriptions offered by any of the witnesses matched Ju'ane Kennell. The police department’s photo record of Ju'ane from a recent arrest the month prior showed the only apt portion of the witnesses’ descriptions was the fact Ju'ane Kennell happens to be a black man.

 

The single point of evidence even tentatively linking Ju'ane Kennell to the murder was a set of prints lifted from the outside of the car abandoned by the shooters at the scene. A Ford Tempo, the car was registered to a local man named Donald Toney who was known to privately rent out the vehicle. Three additional sets of prints were lifted from inside the car-one of which were identified as belonging to Jesse Kennell. The reportedly deceased brother of Ju'ane—according to the State’s key witness, Jeffery Shockley.

 

The arrangement of the prints corroborated Ju'ane’s testimony of having leaned against the car a day or two prior while talking to his brother Jesse who had stopped by the Bolton residence at the time.

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The State never sought to question the owner of the Tempo to verify who the car had been rented by. The police never sought to locate and question Jesse Kennell, and the police failed to verify Corey Hughes’ alibi of having been with his girlfriend at the time of the incident, ultimately dismissing Hughes as a suspect. Again, through our investigation, years later Corey Hughes’ girlfriend has denied he was with her at her home at the time of Chew’s death.

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In 2003, Ju'ane Kennell was found guilty of murder in the 1st degree and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole by a jury who was never afforded the opportunity to hear his alibi, consider the evidence supporting that alibi, or weigh the multitude of significant evidence pointing to several other more likely culprits and the blatant failings of those involved in the State’s investigation of Chew’s death.

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Is Kennell’s experience an example of a poor man falling through the cracks; a prosecutor taking advantage of an underfunded and overloaded public defender system; ubiquitous systemic racism; rubber-stamp apathy by the appeals courts; or is it an example of the system widening cracks for people like him to fall through?

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In addition to the latent evidence of new and recanted testimony, a private investigation has also uncovered the fact that the prosecutor, Robert Craddick paid Jeffery Shockley for his testimony, as well as, reduced a sentence he was facing for previous charges on manslaughter and possession.

 

After 20 plus years in a maximum security prison and a string of thwarted appeals, Ju'ane Kennell is still asking the question, “What is it going to take?” as he waits for his voice to be heard.

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