RICHMOND — An often-contentious hearing in Madison Circuit Court today ended with Judge William G. Clouse denying a motion that would have required an assistant prosecutor to testify as a witness.
The motion was sought by the attorneys for Richmond police officers Sgt. James “J.J.” Rogers and patrolmen Brian Hensley and Garry Murphy, and would have required Assistant Commonwealth’s Attorney Jennifer Hall Smith to testify as a witness in the officers’ March 22 trial on charges they attempted to influence McQueen's statements to investigators about an October incident.
Smith’s testimony was being sought because the officers’ attorneys, Scott Crosbie and Jim Deckard, had argued that it was essential to prove claims of intimidation made by another witness, April McQueen, against Smith and Madison County Sheriff Nelson O’Donnell.
McQueen is the woman that Rogers, Hensley and Murphy are accused of intimidating in connection with a sexual assault investigation of the men by O’Donnell’s deputies.
Attorneys also met with Clouse privately to discuss redacting portions of a response prosecutors filed to motions Deckard and Crosbie had filed in the case. The portions in question quoted from McQueen's testimony to a grand jury which returned the indictments against the officers.
