ST. LOUIS – St. Louis Police Detective Luther Hall was often choked up as he testified about his beating and the possible destruction of evidence. His recorded video from the night of the beating almost didn’t see the light of day.
Hall recorded the livestream on Sept. 17, 2017, during the Jason Stockley protests. Right before his beating, you can hear shouts of, “Get on the ground!”
Hall said the beating seemed like it lasted forever but that it was probably about a minute. When he got back to police headquarters, he said another officer was able to insert his pinky through a hole in Hall’s lip. The officer told him to go to the emergency room where he got surgery. Hall then returned to police headquarters to gather his evidence.
Hall’s phone had what the detective described as a baton-shaped blow to it. He said he couldn’t access the video from his phone but it came up on his Cloud storage. He said a prompt asked him to choose ‘delete’ or ‘save.’ Detective Hall saved it.
The FBI said it pulled a still picture of the face of an officer as the last image before the stream cut off. Prosecutors and Hall said it’s the face of one of the three defendants – Officer Chris Myers.
Myers’ attorney, Scott Rosenblum, told jurors his client was nowhere near the beating and that he’d just picked up that phone. He cross-examined Det. Hall for hours, challenging Hall the hardest when questioning why Hall started his own investigation outside of police internal affairs.
Hall answered that he wanted to know who beat him and he wanted to find out if they were being disciplined for it.
Hall testified all day Thursday. At one point, the judge asked him to take a break because he looked like he was in pain. He’ll pick it up again from the stand on Friday.
