Judge to decide coercion claim in trial for final Khalil Singleton murder defendant
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A circuit judge will decide Tuesday morning whether interviews with the final defendant charged in the 2012 murder of an 8-year-old Hilton Head Island boy are admissible in court during his trial.
Judge Thomas Cooper's decision will affect statements made by Aaron Young Sr. during a roadside traffic stop and an interview with investigators in the aftermath of Khalil Singleton's death Sept. 1, 2012, statements that prosecutors intend to introduce as evidence this week.
Young and his attorney, Robert Ferguson of Lady's Island, contend that Young was coerced into cooperating with authorities -- who promised exoneration for him and his son if they provided investigators with a gun used to shoot at a parked car that day -- and his interview with investigators was involuntary.
Young Sr., 39, is the last of three men to be tried for murder in the slaying of Singleton, who was shot nearly three years ago while playing in his grandmother's yard. Both Tyrone Robinson and Young's son, Aaron Young Jr., were tried and convicted in the past year.
A jury of seven men and five women was seated Monday morning in the trial. Cooper asked them to return by 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, when Cooper will decide on the admissibility of Young's interview.
The statements prosecutors hope to include as evidence are portions of the traffic stop and an interview at the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office substation shortly after Young's arrest Sept. 1, 2012, on William Hilton Parkway. In the interview at the Sheriff's Office, Young Sr. gives his account of the events leading up to the gunfire on Allen Road that preceded Singleton's death. Young Sr. would only say his son shot a gun in the air, not at Robinson's parked car.
The interview with Young Sr. and the roadside stop, all audio recordings taken between 5 and 11 p.m. that day, do not include a previously unheard audio recording by a Sheriff's Office deputy found in April 2014 just before the start of an earlier trial involving all three defendants. That recording led to the collapse of the joint trial, requiring all three defendants to be tried separately.
14th Circuit Deputy Solicitor Sean Thornton said the recordings showed Young Sr. did not give his statement involuntarily, since he never told investigators where the gun used to shoot Robinson's car was stored.
However, Ferguson was critical of the Solicitor's Office "compartmentalizing" the recordings, noting that nearly three hours' worth of audio recordings weren't included in the files prosecutors hope to submit into evidence, including the recording found last year.
Dr. Amanda Salas, a forensic psychiatry expert for the defense, testified Monday that there were still several "errors of coercion" in the recordings prosecutors hope to include.
Among those was the mischaracterization of the events on Allen Road as a shootout, one that ended with Young Sr. giving a false statement to investigators, she said. Salas said Young Sr. believed there were promises of leniency and exoneration for him and his son if he cooperated with authorities.
Salas' testimony in an April 2014 pre-trial hearing, along with testimony from Young Sr. and his father, Benny Young, were entered into the record for the current trial. Cooper planned on reviewing transcripts from the hearing before making his decision Tuesday.
During that pre-trial hearing, Young Sr. testified that investigators told him that he and his son would be "exonerated and made star witnesses" in a case against Robinson if he helped them recover the gun used to shoot the parked car.
Robinson, who is believed to have fired the bullet that struck the child in the torso, was convicted of murder in September and sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
Young Jr. was convicted of Singleton's murder and the attempted murder of Robinson in February and was sentenced to 30 years in prison.
Related content:
- Chaotic courtroom scene follows murder conviction in death of Khalil Singleton, 8, on Hilton Head, Feb. 25, 2015
This story was originally published August 10, 2015 at 8:20 AM with the headline "Judge to decide coercion claim in trial for final Khalil Singleton murder defendant."