A St. Louis cop sent a Black man to prison — the jury never heard about the officer’s past

Crouched behind a dumpster in a St. Louis alley, Officer Steven Pinkerton heard gunshots. The “only issue in this case is identification of the defendant by Officer Steven Pinkerton,” the prosecutor said at Watkins’ trial. “All along, he’s racist,” Watkins said from the visitors’ room of supermax Jefferson City Correctional Center when told about Pinkerton’s history. At trial, Watkins’ public defender, Brian Horneyer, called Pinkerton’s description of the man who ran through the alley — a bald Black man of roughly 180 pounds and six foot two — “about as vague and ambiguous as you could get,” asking: “How many young men in the City of St. Louis fit that description?” Horneyer raised doubts about the identification. “Having negative feelings about someone or a sub-group of certain people, is different than treating them differently because of it, which I do not,” he wrote in another, referring later in the comment to the “violence and complete disregard for civility in much of the black sub-culture.” If the case were remanded for a new trial with the credibility evidence allowed, Johnson, the Georgetown professor and former public defender, said Watkins’ lawyer would be able to cross-examine Pinkerton on “all of the pejorative things that Officer Pinkerton has expressed about Black people in the community where he’s supposed to be protecting people.” Taylor told the 2020 congressional committee: “For nearly seven years, I have repeatedly reported an officer for his racism,” based in part on the officer’s posts.