KY police Chief promises full review of police actions in wrongful conviction

Once again, animalistic members of an American police force ignore evidence and coerce a false confession

Louisville Metro Police Chief Robert White said Wednesday that he is ordering a thorough review of the police investigation that led to the wrongful conviction of Edwin Chandler 14 years ago. White said the discovery that Chandler was not that man who fatally shot Brenda Whitfield in the head in September 1993 while she worked as a clerk in a gas station on Newburg Road raises questions about the procedures and tactics police used to get a confession from Chandler — a confession that Chandler has long contended was coerced.

White said he also wants to know how police have responded over the years as new information or questions arose in the case. By figuring out where mistakes were made, White said, the department can ensure they aren’t repeated. “There are going to be some things that go wrong,” White said of police operations. “But we don’t want them to be catastrophic. That’s a catastrophic mistake when the wrong man goes to prison for murder.”

Marguerite Thomas, director of the Kentucky Innocence Project, which helped exonerate Chandler, said an investigation was “absolutely necessary.” She said her office was told many times by Louisville police since it began exploring the case in 2004 that evidence — including a beer bottle with a fingerprint that eventually helped clear Chandler — either didn’t exist or couldn’t be found.

“The investigation should happen, because I don’t know whether their conduct was intentional or it was laziness or sloppiness,” said Thomas. “If anything was intentional, they have a really big problem in that department that needs to be solved.” Thomas said the Innocence Project has had — and continues to have —problems obtaining old evidence in cases they have taken on, both in Jefferson County and other places.

She said in Chandler’s case it was only when Sgt. Denny Butler, who works with Louisville Metro Police's cold-case homicides, got involved that the evidence was found and the bottle retested, with more advanced automated fingerprinting system matching the print to a convicted felon, Percy Phillips.

Phillips was indicted Tuesday on murder and robbery charges for Whitfield’s death. Phillips, who is in prison on a separate assault conviction, has not been arraigned.

White said he believes his detectives do their best to find the right people responsible for crimes, but he said the review may show areas where policies could improve. “Based on what we discover, we’ll take appropriate action,” White said.

In 1993, Chandler gave police a confession that he says was coerced, through threats and coaching by a detective. Several pieces of physical evidence from the murder scene did not match Chandler either, including hairs found in a hat worn by the killer and fingerprints from a bottle of beer touched by the killer. Still, based in part on his confession, Chandler was convicted in 1995 of manslaughter and robbery. He served nine years in prison before he was paroled in 2002.

On Tuesday, after a judge had wiped the conviction from Chandler’s record, the 37-year-old father said he doesn’t want to waste time being bitter about the years he’s lost. “Even though I’ve been through a lot, I know I’m still blessed,” Chandler said. “I’d like for someone to miraculously go back, give me my nine years back. I can’t get back what’s been taken from me.”

White said he’d like to know how police were able to get Chandler to confess and what tactics they used. He said he’d also like to know what the detectives did to try to corroborate that confession with other evidence.

Although he has not reviewed the case file personally, he said he is instructing one of his assistant chiefs to spearhead a review. White said sometimes people do admit to acts they didn’t commit, but detectives have a responsibility to make sure that what they’ve been told is the truth.

Though the Chandler case happened 16 years ago, White said a wrongful conviction hurts the credibility of the department. Asked if a criminal investigation could be brought against the detectives involved in Chandler’s conviction, White would not rule anything out, but he said he didn’t want to make accusations against the detectives without a more thorough review.

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