money Defendant in Eatontown murder was freed midtrial. Here's how the state's case devolved
FREEHOLD - Last month, prosecutors described Frederick Reed to jurors as one of two men who fired a deadly barrage of 26 bullets at a Red Bank man outside a quiet Eatontown apartment complex, inflicting a dozen gunshot wounds on their target before leaving him in a pool of blood for his horrified relatives to find.
Weeks later, in the middle of his trial in the murder of 37-year-old Rasheen “BJ” Palmer, Reed, 25, of New Castle, Delaware, walked out of the Monmouth County Jail. Reed was handed a plea bargain by those same prosecutors who, just days earlier, said they would not be “bullied" by a defense attorney’s demands for such a deal.
How did the prosecution’s position in the 2015 murder case change so quickly?
Reed’s plea deal, unusual while a trial has been underway for several weeks, came after the lead prosecutor in the case was accused, for the second time in back-to-back murder trials, of withholding potentially exculpatory evidence from the defense. That is a violation of court rules and, according to a U.S. Supreme Court ruling in a 1963 case known as Brady vs. Maryland, a possible violation of a defendant's constitutional right to a fair trial.
Reed was facing charges at trial of murder, conspiracy to commit murder and possession of a weapon for an unlawful purpose, for which he would have faced a minimum of 30 years in prison without the possibility of parole, if convicted.
Instead, he pleaded guilty to a downgraded charge of conspiracy to commit manslaughter in exchange for a six-year term.
Reed, in custody since December 2016, was released from the Monmouth County Jail the same day, having already been eligible for parole under the state’s No Early Release Act requiring violent criminals to serve at least 85 percent of their prison terms.
Reed will be under parole supervision for three years.
Reed entered the guilty plea Feb. 28, following a conference that morning in the chambers of Superior Court Judge Richard W. English, three days after his attorney filed a motion for a mistrial.
In the motion, Trenton defense attorney Robin K. Lord accused Meghan Doyle, an assistant Monmouth County prosecutor, of withholding exculpatory evidence from the defense and eliciting false testimony from two witnesses.
Lord pointed out in the motion that another judge in January found that Doyle deliberately withheld exculpatory evidence from the defense at a trial in October — that of Dolores Morgan and her son, Ted Connors, accused of the murders of two relatives in Long Branch in the 1990s.
Lord's motion noted that Superior Court Judge Joseph W. Oxley, who presided over the Long Branch trial, said he would ask the criminal presiding judge to consider whether the violation should be referred to the state Office of Attorney Ethics.
"A prosecutor's job is not to win at all costs, but to seek justice," Lord, a criminal defense attorney for 36 years, told the Asbury Park Press in an interview.
"The rules require that all information be disclosed to a criminal defendant even if it hurts the state’s case," she said. "Every cop and every prosecutor knows these rules, yet for reasons I cannot fathom, they refuse to abide by them. Unfortunately, this case is not an anomaly, but is probably the most egregious I have ever seen."
In a response filed to Lord’s motion, Doyle and her co-counsel, Assistant Prosecutor Hoda Soliman, said the state did not deliberately withhold evidence in Reed’s case.
And, they said, no ethics complaint or violation was ever filed in the Long Branch case. Lord’s mention of that was “inappropriate, unsubstantiated and a ‘hit below the belt,’" the prosecution’s response said.
“This is the second time the matter with Judge Oxley has been addressed by defense counsel," the prosecutors said in their written response to the court. “The first was in a text where counsel indicated the State should seriously reconsider a plea to time served in the matter because of the allegations made by Judge Oxley, and threatened that I did not want to have to deal with the same again. … The State will not be bullied to resolve a matter and questions the motives of the defense yet again raising an issue and matter that has absolutely nothing to do with this case."
In the Long Branch case, Oxley said prosecutors blatantly violated court rules by withholding evidence from the defense until after the trial of Morgan and Connors. The evidence kept from the defense consisted of handwritten notes from 1995, which indicated the star prosecution witness told an acquaintance that he committed one of the killings Connors is accused of. Doyle is the lead prosecutor in that case.
Morgan and Connors, both of Delray Beach, Florida, are awaiting retrial in the murders of Ana Mejia, Morgan’s daughter and Connors’ sister, and Nicholas Connors, Morgan’s husband and Ted Connors’ adoptive father, after the pair’s first trial ended with a hung jury in October.
Reed’s guilty plea took place three days after Lord, in cross-examining a detective outside the presence of the jury, learned for the first time that the detective helped a key prosecution witness against Reed with a criminal matter he had pending in Middlesex County, something that should have been revealed to the defense prior to trial so they could use it to try to impeach the credibility of the witness.
Kevin Condon, a detective sergeant in the Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office, testified that Doyle knew about the assistance he provided to the witness, according to Lord’s motion for a mistrial.
Earlier, Doyle elicited testimony from the witness, James Rogers, that he never received any help from the state to get out of jail or get into drug court probation.
Doyle asked Condon if the witness ever asked for his assistance, to which he replied negatively, but the assistant prosecutor never asked the detective if the assistance was in fact provided, according to Lord’s motion.
“Despite clear testimony elicited by Ms. Doyle from both Rogers and Detective Condon that Rogers neither asked for nor received help with drug court, on cross-examination, it was learned that this was not only false, not only misleading, but a blatant violation of the rules of discovery," Lord wrote in the motion, referring to the process by which evidence is exchanged between prosecutors and defense attorneys before a trial.
Rogers gave a statement to investigators about Palmer’s murder in February 2016. A month later, after being released from jail and allowed into drug court, he gave a second statement and participated in a photo array, according to court papers.
Rogers, in the statement he later testified he did not recall making, reportedly told investigators that Veney told him they were going to go kill the victim and asked if he wanted to come.
“I knew he (Rogers) was taken from custody to partake in the photo array, but I didn’t realize or inquire, to my detriment, as to the release and whether same was secured by our office," the assistant prosecutors wrote in their response to Lord’s motion. “I did know that he was being brought from the Middlesex County Jail but did not realize that his release was solely for this investigation. As Drug Court is built around relapses and recovery, I mistakenly believed he was back in Drug Court based on their practices of allowing people to recover, again to my detriment. … I do agree, and now mistakenly regret, I should have asked more questions but I did not and when I became involved in presenting the case, Mr. Rogers was back in custody."
On the witness stand at Reed’s trial, Rogers testified he had no recollection of giving any statements to investigators, which prompted the questioning of him and Condon outside the presence of the jury. After that hearing, Lord made her motion for a mistrial.
At Reed’s plea hearing the following Monday, Doyle said the defense agreed to withdraw the motion and instead would accept her plea offer.
Reed’s admission of his participation in Palmer’s murder at the plea hearing was vastly different than prosecutor Soliman’s portrayal of his role in her opening argument before the jury on Feb. 10. Soliman told the jury Reed was one of the gunmen who murdered Palmer, while Reed said he wasn't even at the murder scene.
Soliman, in her opening argument, told the jury that 26 gunshots rang out in the early morning of July 10, 2015, as Palmer left his aunt’s home in the quiet, Country Club apartment complex in Eatontown to take part in a drug deal.
When Palmer’s relatives rushed outside, “they saw their loved one lying in a pool of blood in the street," Soliman told the jury.
A shiny, new, black pickup truck was seen leaving the crime scene, she said.
Palmer sustained 12 gunshot wounds in the hail of bullets and, while taken to a hospital, he did not survive, Soliman said.
Police investigated and ruled out Palmer’s drug customers as suspects, but turned to Veney, Reed's codefendant, whose childhood friendship with the victim had ‘’morphed into an adult hatred,’’ she said.
The assistant prosecutor did not mention that Veney, in April 2014 in Red Bank, was shot in the legs, back, arms, lungs and face by Palmer’s brother, Anthony Sims, in a long-festering family feud. Sims, 33, of Long Branch, is serving a 50-year prison term for Veney’s attempted murder.
Detectives investigating Palmer’s murder learned that Veney purchased a new, black pickup truck at a Carmax in Newark, Delaware on July 8, 2015, and two days later, Reed, a childhood friend, accompanied him to the Carmax to return the vehicle, claiming there was a problem with its brakes, Soliman told the jury.
Investigators utilized cell phone data to track the whereabouts of Veney, Reed and a third person of interest on July 9, 2015, as they traveled from Delaware to New Jersey, she said.
“One of those cell phones was picked up near the scene of the crime," she said.
The cell phones were tracked as they headed south to Delaware after the murder, Soliman told the jury.
Then, in March 2017, a witness came forward and told investigators that Reed told him he, Veney and a third individual, later identified as Jamil Salahudden, drove around on July 9, 2015, “looking for BJ," Soliman said. When they found him, Reed and Veney jumped out of the vehicle and fired upon him before driving to Delaware, stopping only to wipe down the car to rid it of any evidence of the crime, Soliman said Reed told the witness.
Lord, in her opening argument, questioned the credibility of the jailhouse informant who provided that information to police, describing him as a criminal whom authorities repeatedly let out of jail each time he got locked up.
But Soliman said Reed proceeded to tell the informant that Salahudden, 34, of Delaware, died in a botched home-invasion robbery in Pennsylvania three weeks after Palmer’s murder. Salahudden's intended victim disarmed him and shot him in self-defense, Soliman said. Detectives later learned the weapon in the Pennsylvania home invasion was one of two guns used to kill Palmer, she said.
By the time Reed entered his guilty plea, he admitted ownership of that weapon, but did not admit to participating in Palmer’s murder.
Being questioned by Lord about his role in the crime, Reed admitted he went to New Jersey on July 9, 2015, and met people at a home in Matawan, where Salahudden “was talking about wanting to go kill BJ."
Reed said Salahudden told him, “His gun was kind of messed up, so he asked, could he use mine?"
Reed admitted he gave his gun to Salahudden knowing he was going to use it to kill someone.
Reed drove back to Delaware, he said. “I found out later that he killed him," he said.
Questioned by Doyle, Reed said he couldn't recall whether Rogers and Veney were there that night.
“You were never at the Country Club apartments?" Doyle asked Reed at the plea hearing.
“No, I wasn’t there," Reed replied.
“You did not watch BJ Palmer get murdered?" Doyle asked.
“No," Reed responded.
Reed said Veney is the brother of a friend.
Veney is awaiting trial in Palmer’s murder.
The Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office declined to comment for this story while the case against Veney is pending.
Kathleen Hopkins, a reporter in New Jersey since 1985, covers crime, court cases, legal issues, unsolved mysteries and just about every major murder trial to hit Monmouth and Ocean counties. Contact her at khopkins@app.com.
This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Why did Eatontown murder defendant walk out of jail midtrial?
