BELLEVILLE – Lawyers for murder suspect David Fields continue receiving evidence four months after lead investigator Justin Biggs swore that defense counsel had it all.
At a hearing on Tuesday, Fields’ attorney Brittany Kimble said, “He swore under oath I had everything when that wasn’t the case.”
She told St. Clair County Circuit Judge Robert Haida, “I’m just really not comfortable about whether we have everything.”
Haida plans to start trial in July on a charge that Fields murdered Carl Silas of Belleville in his bed on Dec. 30, 2016.
Kimble said she received a report of an interview that sheriff’s deputy Biggs conducted with witness Max Buford more than a year ago.
“He took the interview,” Kimble said. “Why wasn’t it in there?”
She said the state’s attorney and the sheriff had the report, and should have provided it to her.
“I should have received it twice on the same day,” she said.
Prosecutor Charles Colburn said that if she identified what is missing, she could have it in a couple of days.
Kimble started to answer and he said twice as loud, “What is missing?”
She said, “How do you ask us to prove a negative?”
Biggs and eight other police officers watched the proceedings, not by choice.
Kimble served subpoenas on them and other local officers who formed a regional “major case squad.”
She directed them to bring their own records to court at 10 a.m. on Tuesday.
Several officers ignored the subpoenas.
Those who showed up found Kimble and her co-counsel Ryan Neal but Haida had not yet appeared.
Kimble told the officers, “I’m getting things that weren’t turned over.”
She said they served subpoenas on the sheriff and the responses were inconsistent with what they saw before.
“So what did you all bring?” she said.
Haida appeared, and all rose.
Kimble told him some officers didn’t come and she didn’t excuse them.
She said documents refer to pictures that aren’t in discovery.
She said that on a disk she got at a hearing in April, “there are clearly things missing in the transfer from person to person to person.”
She said she made an executive decision not to move for a show cause order against the sheriff but to serve subpoenas on the squad instead.
Haida, a former state’s attorney, asked if the lab reports were complete.
Kimble said April was the first time she received any.
She said she didn’t know if officers photographed the clothes of Silas’s partner, Jamie Lott, and their baby, who both shared his bed.
Haida asked if the reports detailed the items taken.
“I don’t have an itemized list of things that were taken,” Kimble said.
Haida asked if she saw the report of the scene technician.
“I don’t know if I have a report that says, I’m the one,” she said.
She put Biggs on the stand, as she did in January.
She asked him, as lead investigator, if any more investigating was taking place.
“At this time, no,” Biggs said.
She asked if he was aware of any interview after Max Buford, and he said no.
Biggs and the other officers left.
Haida asked Colburn to identify who wrote the crime scene report.
Colburn searched a briefcase, pulled paper out, and said Virgil Perkins.
“There should be a report from Virgil Perkins somewhere,” Haida said. “Virgil Perkins would have been at the autopsy.”
Kimble said she didn’t receive pictures of the autopsy.
Colburn said she did.
She said she didn’t get pictures with rulers on them, showing the measurements in the narrative, as she has seen in other cases.
She asked if the coroner would have his own set of pictures.
Haida told her the coroner’s office was in the building, on the first floor.
His clerk told her to pick up the phone at the door, dial 2, and ask for Tina.