Last week, prosecutors in St. Louis dropped murder charges against a 52-year-old woman who for almost two years stood accused of killing a woman who rented a room from her.
During the time the charges were hanging over her head, Consandra Perry spent more than a year in the troubled City Justice Center and, in the words of her attorney, "I don't think she has anything left."
The Circuit Attorney's Office has given no indication they will refile the charges against Perry, who is now a free woman.
Niehoff says they should have dropped the charges a whole lot sooner.
"The police and the prosecutors failed to see the most obvious things here," says attorney Terry Niehoff. "They had a terrible case."
Niehoff says that Perry had inherited a building in the 1400 block of Semple Avenue in the Hamilton Heights neighborhood, where she rented rooms to tenants.
In December of 2021, 28-year-old Tatyana Smiley was one of her renters. Smiley was free on bond while facing murder charges for killing a 72-year old man in Walnut Park East a little over a year before. Smiley had allegedly shot Charles Watkins and then set fire to his home, suffering severe burns to her face in the process.
On December 14, 2021, someone went into the Semple Avenue rooming house where Smiley was staying. They shot Smiley multiple times and then fled.
To Niehoff's mind, the killing was obviously an act of revenge for Watkins’ death.
Police and prosecutors didn't see it that way.
"Sometimes the police latch on to the first thing and they just want to close it up real fast," Niehoff says. "It was a circumstantial case."
The evidence against Perry appears to have been pretty thin. In the wake of Smiley's murder, Perry gave a statement to police that put her near the scene of the crime. She said she'd gone to the property, heard gunshots and then ran out. By way of motive, the best authorities could do was that Perry had complained to her sister about Smiley not paying rent.
Police also neglected a seemingly important clue. The night of the killing, when Perry was in custody, someone set fire to the building on Semple Avenue, trying to burn it down.
"It was a mirror of what happened to Smiley's victim," Niehoff says.
Niehoff says that prosecutors should have dismissed the case long ago, yet under Circuit Attorney Kim Gardner, he couldn’t get traction. "Trying to get anybody to do anything was almost impossible," he says.
After new Circuit Attorney Gabe Gore took office in early June, the case was still set for jury trial in Judge Theresa Burke's court. That trial was set to happen August 28, but a week prior to it, the new prosecutor on the case asked for a continuance. Niehoff said he would agree to kick the can, but only if the judge scheduled a bench trial (which is a trial held in front of a judge only, with no jury present) sooner rather than later. "Otherwise it would have been kicked into the new year," says Niehoff.
That bench trial was originally scheduled to happen yesterday. But last week prosecutors filed a nolle prosequi, dismissing the case and electing not to pursue it any further.
Niehoff says the bench trial was his way of forcing the prosecutor's office to "shit or get off the pot." He adds, "They got off the pot."
As for Perry, she was originally free on bond while awaiting trial, but she violated the terms of that pretrial release and ended up spending a substantial amount of time in custody. Niehoff says he isn't exactly sure how long Perry was in the City Justice Center, but he's certain it was longer than a year.
The conditions at the city jail have increasingly raised alarm bells for criminal justice reformers — and even others who don't usually pay attention to the jail. Two inmates died there in August. Defense attorneys have complained of their clients not having regular access to food and showers.
"That place should be burned down," Niehoff says of the jail.
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